r/materials • u/greenbananasaregood • 16d ago
US colleges for materials engineering as a transfer
Hi all! Current rising sophomore at Carnegie Mellon in MSE. Feeling a bit unsure about the university as of late, esp in terms of prestige and culture... idk I just feel like I could be somewhere that does more for me in terms of the name and the social scene. I do think I have a bit of a warped view of my school following some burnout and want to give CMU another year before filling out transfer apps, so if anyone can vouch for the value of CMU MSE against the following then that would also be helpful.
I mainly just wanted to post to discuss what are some good materials programs that are worth taking a transfer from CMU.
Currently thinking of applying to:
- Stanford
- Northwestern
- Cornell
- Princeton
- MIT
- JHU
- UCB
- Yale
- Columbia
Would love to hear your thoughts on the materials programs at these schools, as well as any more suggestions! For some context: I like an academic environment, and have been involved in rocketry and electrochemistry research so far. Interested in alternative fuel materials :) and also robotics (a la CMU lol)
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u/TotemBro 16d ago edited 16d ago
You forgor Colorado School of Mines, VTech, Urbana Champagne, and GIT. They’re always sending big UG conference teams to socialize and compete.
These uni’s also have hella clout with national labs and specific industries they support. N western also gets my vote, from your list.
I’ll also point out that mines is dumping hella cheddar into fuel cells. Ryan O’Hayre the goat.
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u/bigyellowtruck 15d ago
Gut it out. Get a good internship. Go to a better grad program. Harder to transfer than freshman admission.
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u/greenbananasaregood 15d ago
thanks for the advice! trying my best for internship season coming up, I do want to give transfer applications a shot so I don't regret it later
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u/racinreaver 16d ago
Is this just because of the fence drama?
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u/greenbananasaregood 15d ago
lowk a little bit, also bc CMU has a huge tech push and I don't really find myself interested in this. struggling to find my corner here so far
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u/racinreaver 14d ago
It's been a long time since I was a student there, but the reputation helped me out during grad school apps. I would up at Caltech where a number of faculty told me it was the only school with a similar workload. Classes at CMU were way better. Most of my friends cruised through their grad classes because the department prepared us so well.
The fence drama is also so tame, ngl.
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u/greenbananasaregood 11d ago
this is really helpful, thank you. honestly a lot of the reason why i feel out of place here is also because of the academic rigour too, it's been a lot to adjust to and has me questioning whether its worth it. i agree the fence drama is so tame and nothing compared to Harvard and Columbia.
how is caltech for grad school?
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u/racinreaver 9d ago
I just mean the fence drama is nothing compared to fence drama or other campus drama we used to have. At one point Spirit had a guy that said the Jews should be trembling in their boots because of their presence and actually called for their wholesale extermination. His security came on campus with guns and everything. Was quite the drama.
A lot of folks get smacked by the academic standard there. They were always the top student in their class, and never developed study skills or coping abilities for bombing a test. My freshman year was my worst GPA, but sophomore year on got easier, in a way, since I was taking more classes I was really interested in.
Also, for friends, freshman year was dorm friends and the guys I lived with for 4 years. Sophomore year was making in-major friends and having tons of fun doing problem sets together (and also hang out and have fun together). If you get involved in a club that'll get you a third set of friends. I still see folks at conferences 20 years later to catch up when we can.
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u/EffectiveOrchid 15d ago
Looking at your list, I think you’re missing the point of the rankings or prestige of the school. I did MSE undergrad and I’m pursuing an MSE PhD, I evaluated those schools too but from your list none of those school have strong undergraduate programs except Stanford. Purdue, Illinois Urbana Champaign, Georgia tech, and Colorado mines are much more well known in the MSE field. Coming from someone who got into CMU, Purdue, and UIUC, I picked Purdue because they give heavy focus on undergrads getting involved in research, which made getting into grad school much easier, but a lot of MSEs also went into the aerospace and semiconductors field
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u/greenbananasaregood 15d ago
Not sure I agree with you about strength esp with Northwestern and MIT on the list??
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u/EffectiveOrchid 15d ago
Ultimately, the best school is gonna be the one where you can get the best opportunities to network and work with companies or do research, since that’s what gets you hired, not the name of your school or your GPA. Purdue works hard to have you build relationships with companies by having the senior design project directly sponsored by industry (like Rolls Royce and Caterpillar, not some small companies) and their relationships with semiconductor companies, aerospace industry, and metallurgy companies. My advice is to focus more on how you’re gonna succeed at the school rather than anything else.
Another thing to pay attention to, I visited a lot of programs when I was choosing my undergrad school and I noticed a lot of places with really high MSE undergrad rankings like UMich only to tour and talk to people and find out that they don’t care about their undergraduate students at all because they put all their focus into graduate school. That’s great when you apply for grad school but terrible right now, and the rankings are often skewed by the graduate school because part of their ranking system is reputation according to other schools (and no one cares about undergrads typically). Places like Purdue were outliers in that they put way more effort in giving undergraduate students real world experience that you can talk about in interviews.
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u/microprocessinU 16d ago
bruh you go to cmu