Which are the good Universities you know?

Many Universities in Michigan have a lot of emphasis on engineering for obvious reasons; our auto industry is there, so especially Mechanical Engineering is a focus. Michigan State University is one of the few schools in the United States that has a bachelors degree in Packaging Engineering, I don’t know if there is some sort of PhD level opportunity, but I wonder if that would interest you since it is very specialized and very visual in way, ties into marketing also. Designing a new bottle for a product, what materials, how will the logo and artwork, fit on the package, etc. Michigan State is a wonderful Univerity (I went there) very strong campus life and nice town, but it is a very cold winter there. Not sure if you are planning on living where you choose, or doing most of your work from a distance.

But, lets get back to other specifics you have asked about. Since California is our center for the movie industry, I would think animation education would be most likely found there; or, possibly Florida where Walt Disney World is located.

I wish I had a more concrete answer, maybe others who answer will, but hopefully I was a little helpful.

Purdue University has a very strong, well-respected engineering program. I have to agree with @JLeslie‘s recommendation as well for graduate studies in engineering. Look at the universities in Michigan and Indiana. The obvious recommendation would be MIT, but financial assistance may be limited, as the school is highly competitive.

You may find the University of Colorado’s digital animation program of interest.

Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tn. Vanderbilt is an aggresive university in the medical arts. Nashville is proud to have Vanderbilt located in our city.

Top Schools for Mechanical Engineering
(Source: U.S. News, www.usnews.com):

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology-
This institute’s Mechanical Engineering program is ranked first in the nation by U.S. News.

-Undergraduate Student Body: 4,136; Faculty to Student Ratio: 1:7; Tuition Costs: $32,300; Average High School GPA of Incoming Freshmen: 3.9; Test Scores of Incoming Freshmen: ACT: More than 80% had scores 30–36, SAT: More than 60% had scores 1400–1600.

2. Stanford University-
This university is ranked fifth in the category national universities by U.S. News.

-Undergraduate Student Body: 6,555; Faculty to Student Ratio: 1:6; Tuition Costs: $31,200; Average High School GPA of Incoming Freshmen: 3.9; Test Scores of Incoming Freshmen: ACT: More than 60% had scores 30–36, SAT: More than 60% had scores 1400–1600.

3. University of California, Berkeley-
This institution has an average freshmen retention rate of 96% as reported by U.S. News.

-Undergraduate Student Body: 22,880; Faculty to Student Ratio: 1:16; Tuition Costs: In-State: $6,413, Out-of-State: $24,233; Average High School GPA of Incoming Freshmen: 3.9; Test Scores of Incoming Freshmen: ACT: Not Listed, SAT: More than 30% had scores 1200–1299.

@prasad In case you do not know MIT (Massachusetts Intitute of Technology) is in Massachusetts, regarding @PandoraBoxx ‘s answer. She is right, it is a highly sought after engineering school. There is also Michigan Technology (MTU), I did not want you to possibly get confused. Michigan Tech also has engineering, but does not have near the presitige, and it is wayyyy up north; verryyy cold winter

@john65pennington
I am a Vanderbilt student, and I love it. I am proud to have Nashville as my city.

@prasad We have a great engineering program. I am an undergraduate in electrical engineering, and it awesome. We are ranked 17th in the US overall, and our engineering program is also ranked very high. The grad students I know really love it. There are a lot of research opportunities here.

If you have any specific questions about vandy or nashville, please ask.

@jackm great school..no doubt!

And, love the view…especially down around Franklin!

@BoBo1946 Do you live in Nashville now?

@no, but have spent a lot of time there. Spent Christmas at the Opryland Hotel…OH MY GOSH….

@BoBo1946
Wow, that must have been something. Opry mills is beautiful at Christmas.

jackm, here is something you will love to know about the metro police dept and vanderbilt. on each officers protective vests, we have a glued on sign that states: TAKE ME TO VANDERBILT. this is there, if the officer injured cannot speak.

@john65pennington Thats interesting. Are you still a metro officer?

@jackm if you have not seen Opryland Hotel at Christmas, you have missed a “happening!”

Have you been to Opryland Hotel?

@BoBo1946
Yeah, I go there with my friends sometimes.

@jackm next Christmas, book it…you will be glad you did….awesome!

Thank you very much to everybody.
@JLeslie Your information about where Auto industry is (Michigan) and about Florida and California is very valuable. I haven’t heard of specialization in packaging, though material handling comes in Industrial Engineering; looks good, I will try to find out more about it. Thank you very much.
@PandoraBoxx Yes, I have heard of MIT; it’s top 3 in world (I read it last year or so).
@john65pennington Thank you for telling about it, though it is Medical.
@jackm Thanks for the information.
@BoBo1946 Thank you for the detailed information, it’s really good, I don’t know if I could have got this information myself.

Thank you again.
Another doubt. Are there courses in fine arts or commercial arts? Can I go into it? And after becoming an artist, how does an artist earn his living? What kind of jobs are there?
And, after animation?
After PhD? (I know a little, jobs in R & D departments, as scientist in research institutes)

Jackm, i was in uniform for 44 years here. nothing i have not seen, smelled, felt or heard in all those years. just retired.

@prasad I should have mentioned that California has some new start up companies developing “greener cars” I don’t know many details, or the real future for these companies.

@JLeslie Thank you. Green car means simply environment friendly car, which doesn’t harm nature as of now. It makes use of other fuels than petroleum products like petrol, diesel, etc.

@prasad Yes. I should not have used a slang term. My apologies.

Private universities may have some of the best reputation, but they are also the most expensive. So make sure you also consider state and public universities.

University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth is well known (in the area, at least) for its strong engineering program. It also has an excellent visual arts department, and certain classes are open to anyone, not just art majors. The school has excellent professors, many of them who also teach at more “prestigious” institutions.

I suggest UMass Dartmouth because I go there now, but there are many other state schools in Massachusetts worth looking into, if you’re considering going to school in New England. Sorry I can’t suggest any more; I don’t know of too many other universities and colleges that haven’t already been mentioned.

About expense, there might be scholarships available in some of the very specialized PhD programs.

Carnegie Mellon has excellent programs in various kinds of engineering, and it sounds like it might be a good fit for you because it’s also very strong in the fine arts. They put a great deal of emphasis on interdisciplinary programs, and they encourage their students who are interested in multiple fields to pursue both, and to find ways to incorporate all of their interests into the work they produce. The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon might be something to look at too – they do a lot of video game design, but I think they might also do some animation (more in the field of interactive animation than animated movies, I think).

I’m pretty sure Carnegie Mellon actively pursues international students, especially for their graduate programs, and they have a variety of financial aid opportunities specifically for international students. They might have grants or scholarships that you qualify for, or there might be paid research fellowships or assistantships that can help you pay your way through the program – it sort of depends which of their PhD programs you’re interested in.

I got my Bachelor’s degree there, and I absolutely loved it – I would definitely recommend it to anyone who’s interested in both arts and engineering, as those are its biggest strengths and they’re very open to combining the two.

There’s so much room for argument here I’m almost deterred from really coming up with an answer, but my school’s (the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor) engineering program is generally ranked among the top ten in the world. I think the ARWU ranked it sixth in the world. I’m a computer science student here and I love it.

@JLeslie as much as it pains me to give MSU credit for anything (just kidding :P), the Package Engineering field was essentially pioneered at Michigan State.

I’m going to do my graduate degree at Carnegie Mellon University, which is also generally ranked among the best engineering programs in the country and the world. Their computer science program is hard to beat.

MIT, UC-Berkeley, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Cornell University, Stanford University, Georgia Tech, and CalTech round out what I would consider the best engineering programs in the country (including Michigan and Carnegie Mellon), and in no specific order.

I tend to think very little of college rankings, but this is one of the most popular college rankings. This ranking is specifically for graduate Mechanical Engineering programs.

@noyesa Go Greeennn!!!

@noyesa Have you started at Carnegie Mellon yet, or are you starting next year? We’ve got a little CMU Fluther posse here in Pittsburgh – welcome to the ‘burgh!

@JLeslie no comment. Unless you’re talking about basketball. I don’t even want to think about football right now. :D

@sdeutsch Nope, I want to hear back from MIT and Illinois. MIT is usually more generous about finaid, and CMU has a reputation for being a wee-bit stingy. I live in Ann Arbor right now.

Sorry for the double answer, but I also wanted to touch on Canadian universities, as there are several that have excellent engineering programs. If Canada has an Ivy League school it’s the University of Toronto. Also, McGill University in Montreal has an excelent physics program—I can’t imagine the Mechanical Engineering isn’t great as well.

In my opinion, as long as you attend a University which is accredited in your field of study, you’re going to get a solid education and a credential that will hold up on your resume/CV. Some Universities are better known for certain programs, sometimes there’s good reasons for that and some times it’s more about PR, tradition, prestige and such as well. If you go Ivy League or to some real “name brand” (translation: expensive) school, you might get a leg up on the competition for some of the most prestigious (translation: highest paid, but hardest worked) positions with some of the most successful companies (translation: Fortune 100) right out of the gate.

My suggestion however is to figure out first which schools offer the program that you want to go into…that can probably be done on the internet. Visit some of the school websites and request information from any and all that seem like they may be of interest to you. You should be able to find out things like placement rates, accolades, etc., and you’ll have to inquire about scholarships, grants and other forms of financial aid both from the schools and from any outside sources you can find. Just keep an open mind and gather as much data as you can, and eventually your decision will become more clear.

@noyesa Good luck with your financial aid! My little sis went to Illinois and loved it there (she still lives in Champaign, in fact). If you do end up in Pittsburgh, let me know! :)

@dalepetrie Some great advice. It’s worth noting that, no matter what you major in, many Ivy League schools will be better regarded than others. No matter how much Michigan, for example, pretends it’s an Ivy League school, beating most of them out in the majority of the rankings (that’s a fact), somehow I imagine an engineering or computer science degree from Yale jumps off the page more than one from Michigan, Illinois, Carnegie, etc., all of which have (far) better engineering programs.

And there are plenty of great engineering schools out there that are close or just as good as the non-ivies that just don’t get the name brand recognition. The curriculum at UM—Ann Arbor, for example, really is harder than MSU. I’ve tutored and reviewed tests from both schools and most MSU students probably would fail Calc 1 at Ann Arbor if they aced it at MSU, but I can’t say that you would really have a much harder time securing a job with a degree from Michigan State vs. Michigan. It’s really hard to say anything with certainty.

Stellar, successful people come from all kinds of schools. I’ll be going to one of two of the best computer science schools in the world next year, and I was a piss-poor high school student and started out college at a local community college. I thought there must have been a mistake when Michigan accepted me.

@noyesa Are you from MI, or just went to school there? Michigan is considered a Public Ivy. True the private schools don’t see it in the same league, and many people have no idea what schools are considered public Ivy’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy Pretty much the advantage of the Ivy League is not just a good education, but networking, and an assumption that if you were able to get into an Ivy League you were probably top of your class. I grew up outside of the state and Michigan has a very good reputation, Michigan State is Moo U. LOL. Just kidding. State is seen as a big ten, and degrees like Packaging and Hotel Administration are highly regarded in their industries.

I went to the University of Wisconsin. It’s a statewide system, with campuses in different cities in the state. I attended the flagship campus in Madison. They have great engineering programs and a fine Communication Arts and Media Department. It’s a big campus though, and the winters can get cold.

@JLeslie Yep, I grew up in Dearborn and later Canton. And I’m well aware Michigan is a Pubilc Ivy, but that’s just a term someone uses to describe a school that is public and has Ivy-like character (prestige, rigor, tradition). The term has become less meaningful—there was a book released some time in the past decade where they made something like 50 more recommendations for public schools that are considered public ivies, MSU among them called Green’s guide or something like that.

Around Ann Arbor, people will be sure to point out that Michigan is one of the original eight Public Ivies. But honestly, that doesn’t really mean all that much either, since schools that aren’t particularly prominent anymore (U of Vermont, Miami (Ohio)) are also part of the original eight, despite being outclassed by schools that aren’t in the original eight. I think it’s more impressive to point out the fact that Michigan is ranked in the top ten in more categories than virtually any other school (yes, Ivies like Harvard included), from Archeology to Nuclear Engineering. It generally ranks among the top 5 public schools worldwide, and habitually places first nationwide, tieing neck and neck with Berekeley. I think that says a lot more than “Pubilc Ivy”! Not to mention, it’s the only school with an alumni chapter on the moon. :)

By the way, State is a Big Ten school, but that’s just a D1 athletic conference. Michigan pretty heavily outclasses the other Big Ten schools academically. Only Wisconsin, Illinois, and (maybe) Iowa approach it. Northwestern is generally more prestigious, but it’s a private school, so maybe that doesn’t belong in this comparison.

@noyesa I just mean that when I tell people I went to Michigan State most, especially men, say, “Spartans right.” Not, “you have a packaging major there, don’t you?” Although, one woman once did say that to me, she was a packaging major from another school though. In fact many many times people say, “Wolverines right?” And I have to correct them. Or, “in Ann Arbor, right?” Sigh.

@JLeslie yeah, people generally don’t think much of schools that don’t have a division 1 football team. I told my mom I was planning on going to Carnegie Mellon and she asked why with my grades I would go to a school nobody has heard of. Pretty common theme. Probably the same reason people think Ohio State is one of the best schools out there.

@noyesa OMG. Your mom is killing me. LOL.

@JLeslie Never mind. It’s common in industries. Another term if you would like to know is, Greenfield which means built from scratch, and Brownfield which means modified the existing.
@ParaParaYukiko Thank you. That’s interesting, here I think they offer scholarships also.Unfortunately, I didn’t find doctoral programs for me, but there’s Masters program for Mechanical engineering. Thanks.
@sdeutsch Thank you very much. This is the first time I have seen combination of arts and engineering. Only thing about ETC (Entertainment Technology Center) is that there are no financial aids, otherwise it’s really good.
@noyesa Thank you. Thanks for a list of Universities. I came across this, List of Universities with Industrial Engineering faculty. Georgia Tech is one of the oldest Universities (or probably oldest) to offer Industrial Engineering. Thanks for Canadian Universities.
@dalepetrie Thanks for your advice, it’s helpful. I should start inquiries. And, yes. I will have to do a part time job for my living there to cover at least personal expenses. I don’t know much about it, but heard that it’s hard to do both part time job and studies. Further, I don’t know living expenses there. Thanks for advice!
@aprilsimnel Thanks. I couldn’t find programs related to me. Anyway, thanks.