Berkley, Harvard, Michigan or Penn state. In fact, one aero engineer from Penn state didn't know what a areynolds number was, or a froude number.... MIT, caltech? Sure

Niche is a Pittsburgh-based education review and ranking company, sir. Here's the rundown: It's an American company that runs a ranking and review site, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It started life under a different name — Niche.com was formerly known as College Prowler, founded by Luke Skurman in 2002 as a publisher of print guidebooks on U.S. colleges. Skurman is still the founder and CEO. It rebranded to Niche and shifted from print guidebooks to free online content around 2009, then expanded well beyond colleges — today it covers K–12 schools, colleges, cities, neighborhoods, and companies across the United States. Claude says: A ranking that weights acceptance rate and student-survey vibes most heavily is measuring how hard a school is to get into and how much students like being there — not whether the engineering education or research is any good. Those are different questions, and Niche conflates them. That's why a brand-heavy Ivy with a modest engineering school can outrank Virginia Tech, which is a genuine heavyweight by the measures that actually track engineering output: research expenditures, ABET program depth, PhD production, and recruiter reputation. The fault is as much on anyone treating a campus-satisfaction grade as if it were an engineering-research assessment.

Niche is the only one that does letter rankings which is why I assumed it was Niche. I would question someone taking information from QS and reformatting. ** Edited by jdkhokie at 6/20/2026, 9:17:43 PM ** Edited by jdkhokie at 6/20/2026, 10:07:53 PM

In blocks of 5s.

seems a bit O&M low... tho' Holden/MINE biased here, mea culpa... b.street

I think it overweights academic research if one is considering strength of undergrad teaching. Different if considering a grad school. In my discipline, picking your mentor meaning prof running your project mattered equal and likely more than the school. From their site: What the Rankings Measure The rankings evaluate over 1,500 institutions worldwide using a standardized methodology based on the following key indicators: Top Universities +2 Academic Reputation (30%): Global surveys of academics evaluating research and teaching quality. Employer Reputation (15%): Surveys assessing how well an institution's graduates perform in the workplace. *Research Impact & Citations (20%): *Measures of the average research impact per faculty member. Faculty/Student Ratio (10%): An evaluation of teaching resources. International Outlook (10%): The proportion of international students and faculty. Sustainability & Employability: Modern metrics evaluating environmental impact, social responsibility, and graduate career success.

amount of research that the publics are. And who even knew Columbia, Penn, NYU, Yale and Northwestern had Engineering programs.

Didn't even know they offered engineering classes. Wonder if most of their engineering students have to take remedial math when they arrive?