<p>As the title says..as we visit the schools that have admitted S.. what do you think the 5 or 6 most important questions to ask or info he should obtain from the schools he visits for a prospective computer engineering major?</p>
<p>What schools?</p>
<p>Before visiting, you can check the courses and curriculum on the web site of the school. Look for junior and senior level course offerings including algorithms/complexity, operating systems, computer networks, software engineering, databases, security, compilers, languages/automata, graphics, digital systems, computer architecture, artificial intelligence, preferably offered frequently (some small schools offer some courses only once every two years). If more hardware focused, look for courses in electronics and integrated circuits as well.</p>
<p>You can also make a quick check by checking if the school is either well known for computer science (top 50 or so in any ranking – do not worry about small differences in rankings) or has ABET accreditation in computer science or computer engineering. If neither, check the courses and curricula very carefully, since some schools, particularly small ones, can be very limited in computer science offerings.</p>
<p>If the school’s computer science department has course web pages up, check to see if it uses several programming languages in the courses. Schools which teach everything using one programming language may not expose students to the programming methods used in others.</p>
<p>See if the school has a career survey on its web site showing what kinds of employment and graduate school destinations that its graduates find. For employment and internships, consider proximity to computer companies as well as the school’s reputation. Some smaller companies recruit primarily locally because of limited travel budgets; the school’s reputation is what attracts non-local company recruiters to visit.</p>
<p>I am a big believer in taking advantage of opportunities for co-op, internships, undergraduate research programs, design-build competitions, and related programs that provide some hands-on experiences. These programs are very useful to finding out strengths/weaknesses and likes/dislikes while there’s ample time to adjust course selection and even degree program. Talk to administration and current students about what is available, how easy/hard is it to participate, what assistance the school does or does not provide, balance and integrate with classwork. A strong local IT industry helps, but is not a necessity for co-op and summer programs, as faculty and alumni networks may be more important.</p>
<p>Talk with current students about extent 1st or 2 years are used to weed-out lower-performing students, and what options they have to change majors. It happens and you want to have some good alternatives. </p>
<p>Not a discriminator, but if the school requires CS/CE students to have a particular type of computer, find out the particulars and carefully investigate the campus offering vs. what you can get locally. (Trade off is more $$ for hopefully all the required s/w and on-campus support, support should be less of a need for a CS/CE)</p>
<p>Schools he has been accepted to are PSU (in state), Purdue, Clemson and Drexel… w/scholarship money from Clemson and Drexel… waiting to hear from Vtech, Lehigh, UVA, Boston U, Michigan… S is visiting Clemson for first time next month and going back to PSU as well… just want to be prepared w/more detailed questions…</p>
<p>If one is looking for after-graduation employment data from the universities, make sure the response rate or sample size is identified in the data provided.</p>
<p>For instance, there are some universities that claim 80-90% employment of their grads, but the sample size is only 30% of the graduating class. In such case, only 24-27% employment rates can be said to be ‘verified’. This sort of distortion is quite common in Computer Engineering, which suffers from very high unemployment and underemployment (typical Computer Engineering types of jobs receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of resumes per position) due to outsourcing/offshoring. </p>
<p>Another scam that often presents itself in employment statistics of grads is that of the average salary. An average salary of $70k/year for grads is impressive if those grads are working in Austin, Atlanta, etc., but is actually quite lacklustre if those grads are employed in San Francisco, NYC, etc. Work location is important when evaluating claims of high salaries paid to graduates.</p>
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<p>Non-response does not mean unemployed. And if it did, there would be no point in going to college for any bachelor’s degree, most of which have worse employment rates at graduation in the same career surveys with similar response rates.</p>
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<p>You had the bad luck to graduate in the career-killing crash of 2002 and did not get a job then, so, with your record of long term unemployment, you are now considered unemployable by employers. It isn’t fair, but others (who graduated not during the crash) are not seeing the same dismal job prospects you are seeing.</p>
<p>But the lesson for freshmen to learn is that the economy and industries have cycles, which can sometimes be extreme. A freshman entering in the 1998 bubble graduated in the 2002 crash; a freshman entering in the 2002 crash graduated in a better job market in 2006. A senior should strongly consider applying to graduate school and employment, in order to keep the options open in case the job market is bad at graduation (going to graduate school delays entry to the job market while not looking bad like a few years in the unemployment line).</p>
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<p>Actually they are. But nice try at obscuring the truth. Even UCB has very poor employment statistics, and Cornell’s basically match. Only around 30-40% of CompE grads are finding jobs from either school upon graduation.</p>
<p>Schools that want to present better statistics certainly have the option of expending greater resources to contact greater numbers of grads. If they’re all employed, especially in the tech sector, using LinkedIn or similar tools shouldn’t be difficult. </p>
<p>In the case of UCB and Cornell grads, the salary data presented is also an independant verification of relatively poor employment prospects.</p>
<p>A profession that has a large number of people discarded from it, for whatever reasons, definitely is going to have long-term problems in terms of salary advancement for its employees. Which is exactly what is seen with the low salaries typical of the technology sector. And bubbles, especially of firms that really don’t produce capital-intensive goods (ie: most Internet firms), can collapse very quickly.</p>
<p>Tech sector hasn’t expanded employment-wise in a decade. Over a million guest workers have been imported from India, China, and elsewhere. Entry-level jobs are virtually non-existent. The sector was relatively young to begin with prior to the crash. Do some basic math before you start spouting nonsense.</p>
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<p>As usual, you are making the incorrect assumption that all non-responses are unemployed, which is not true.</p>
<p>If it were true, then only about 10% to 20% of graduates overall would be employed, which would mean that there is no point in going to college to major in anything in terms of improving one’s job prospects. Clearly, this is not true.</p>
<p>Mark, I’m sorry, but the reason you don’t have a job is because there is something seriously wrong with you, your resume, your references, etc. No one has a problem finding a job for 10 years except for you. Stop spamming the forum and scaring off kids.</p>
<p>Go look at the UCB statistics, 45% unemployment rate amongst the EECS 2010 graduates, and only a $71k starting salary of those who are working – mostly working for companies that are generally concentrated in the highest cost living centres of the United States.</p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm</a></p>
<p>Remember that UCB only admits 1 in 10 applicants. So just that process alone ensures that the UCB EECS graduates are going to be, by definition, dramatically above average. </p>
<p>These grads, being in the SFBay area, also have easy access to one of the richest and most diverse technology sector employment markets in the world, yet, of the responses received, can only sustain a 55% employment rate and a $71k average starting salary.</p>
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<p>I’m not spamming the forum. Just giving a dose of the truth which should be considered very carefully, along with the dismal statistical data (ie: the UCB survey). Do some math; the tech sector was already quite young prior to its collapse. A million guest workers imported, largely to work in the sector in the past decade. No expansion in employment in a decade. Where did all the former workers go? What happened to all the new grads that flooded into EE/CS/IT/CompE programs in record numbers during the late 1990s and early 00s? Did they all die or something? Has there been some mass slaughter of EE/CS/IT/CompE grads that I’m not aware of?</p>
<p>That top grads can often spend years sending out resumes that have been reviewed by career counsellors, etc., to receive very little response from tech sector participants, and that salaries haven’t meaningfully grown in a decade is pretty good evidence that there is very little demand for talent in the sector. This is also why you see practically no entry-level positions in the sector anymore, and positions that formerly were entry-level, now demand 5-10 years of experience.</p>
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<p>55% employed + 31% graduate school + 7% other, leaving only 7% unemployed. You need to include the full story.</p>
<p>And if $71,000 per year is “bad” for a new graduate, then you must have a distorted idea of what pay levels are “bad”.</p>
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<p>45% unemployment based on that data alone which is less than a 50% sample. Grad school is not employment.</p>
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<p>Considering that the employed people are in the highest cost living places in the United States, its not exactly a very high salary level. Distorted, hardly. And since some work for employers who are known to give offers in the $90k-$100k range, a significant number must be employed at substantially below the average. Hardly a healthy situation or indicative of great demand for graduates.</p>
<p>^ Graduate school is something some people choose to do to become competitive for more interesting, higher-level jobs in industry, or to try to get into academics or research. The number of students at UCB who would decide to go to graduate school should be expected to be quite high, since these are some of the best students nationally. Also note that “unemployment” can only meaningfully be discussed for people seeking employment. People who choose graduate school are not “unemployed” in any real sense, even if you don’t consider graduate education an “occupation”.</p>
<p>So your logic is that some people get starting offers of $100k, the average is $70k, so most people earn less than $70k, so there is no demand for talent? Let’s just ask the obvious follow-up question: where are the $100k new grads coming from, and if they’re not in demand, why are they being offered so much? The best software engineers can be more productive by more than an order of magnitude compared to average software engineers, so why is a large spread in salaries surprising?</p>
<p>Would you link to your resume or website so we can evaluate your credentials ourselves? The phrase “sour grapes” comes to mind.</p>
<p>I totally agree with aegrisomnia.
Seriously, the data you posted suggests an unemployment of 7%.
You cannot claim that everyone who did not respond to the survey is unemployed.</p>
<p>And UCB has an admissions rate of ~25% for undergraduate. Its not that exclusive except for graduate school.</p>
<p>Please, stop making excuses and seriously, don’t scare off the next generation just because you had a bad experience. ALL of my friends are gainfully employed in a variety of tech fields. I don’t know a single person from you who sat around for years and couldn’t find work.</p>
<p>Ha ok this got a little off track… does anyone have an opinion of the schools I mentioned in my previous post? And are there any other suggestions for questions to ask?</p>
<p>Bandgy writes Schools he has been accepted to are PSU (in state), Purdue, Clemson and Drexel… w/scholarship money from Clemson and Drexel… waiting to hear from Vtech, Lehigh, UVA, Boston U, Michigan… "</p>
<p>That’s a lot of schools so I can understand your desire for questions that may allow you to differentiate between them. There’s a lot of information on the college website but it might be useful to ask them to direct you to statistics on the companies that come to recruit and where graduates were placed. Also, the size of the computer science/computer engineering department may differ between schools so: 1) how many undergrads are in the program, and 2) how many faculty are in the department.</p>
<p>I’m shooting in the dark though. I suspect that many of the big state schools have significant similarities in their comp engineering curriculum.</p>