re: 2015 Best Public Colleges in America

I'm not an engineer, but I've worked with -- and helped hire, on occasion -- plenty of them. Unless you're from a truly elite school like MIT or CalTech, employers care about pretty much two things: 1) are you a good engineer? Do you seem competent, knowledgeable, and willing to learn things that you aren't already an expert on? Eventually, unless you're fresh out of college, your own competence means worlds more than the names on your diplomas; 2) (sadly) did you attend an engineering school they attended or one that they've already hired good employees from?

The best engineer at my previous workplace came from N.C. State. The ones right beneath him came from G.T., Rutgers, Iowa State, and Carnegie-Mellon. Nobody gave anyone any grief over whether their school was top 10 (Carnegie-Mellon) or borderline top 50 or so (Rutgers.) I'm not saying that school rankings are meaningless, or that there isn't a quantifiable difference between the engineering education at MIT and the engineering education at Indiana State, but it seems a bit silly to get into a dick-measuring contest over non-elite school creditentials. For the most part, good engineers are self-made, not spit out of a classroom.