I’m an American who just started my first year of undergraduate studies at the National University of Singapore last month. I chose Singapore over the US because I wanted to live abroad, and Singapore checked pretty much every box for me: it’s in Asia, tropical, safe, developed, and English is the medium of instruction.
Now, even though NUS is a great university by global standards, the reaction I’ve gotten from many of my family members and friends is that choosing to study abroad as an American is inherently a downgrade, regardless of the university or country. That’s where my question comes from.
Also getting an undergraduate engineering degree at MIT isn’t more impressive than the same for most universities. It’s an undergraduate degree, they’re fairly standardized.
And at least for engineering jobs, only having an undergraduate degree if you went to MIT might bring more questions, like “why didn’t you get into the graduate program with the advantage of already knowing faculty?”
It is outright ridiculous to say that undergraduate degrees are standard and one would get similar education out of MIT and Oklahoma State University. The professors are not the same, the facilities are not the same, and the peers are not the same. May I ask: are you making this shockingly incorrect statement after completing an undergrad degree at MIT or Stanford or similar school, and being disappointed in it?
The only reason why schools like MIT have better graduates is because they cherry pick better students. Americans are completely brainwashed into thinking the institution matters on the development of an engineer or scientist. I’ve watched pharma make $200M mistakes listening to people because they had a Harvard degree.
100% this
That has very little effect on coursework, since there’s not much lab work in undergrad, at least not enough where variability will significantly affect outcomes
Sure, but overall course offerings and structure are standardized and guided by ABET-accreditation, which is required for the vast majority of engineering jobs. Between that and there only being 2-3 worthwhile textbooks for most topics, there’s not that much variability.
Graduate programs are where most engineering schools diverge, since that’s heavily based on funding, reputation, and specialization of professors.
Pretty weird assumption to make.
No, this is based on years of experience working with other engineers that recieved education from various schools throughout Ohio. There’s no appreciable difference in quality of undergrads between Ohio State, University of Cincinnati, Wright State, University of Toledo, Ohio University, etc. despite having very different reputations and whether they’re private or public schools.
Now if you’re done being wildly confrontational without knowing what you’re talking about, I’m going to move on with my day
The quality of your professors and their ability to teach is huge.