Advice

Hi guys, I was offered conditional acceptance for Fall 2018, and I’m wondering whats the best path for me

I’m going to attend UGA this year and have decided to transfer to Tech using the conditional transfer pathway. I am choosing between industrial engineering and computer science and I need advice. my questions are below

If one is doing industrial engineering or computer science, how far will Georgia Tech carry me in the industry? what is the starting salary i should expect starting and later on after MBA?

If one wants to work in silicon valley one day and create startups, work at facebook, google, and twitter is isye or cs better?

Is a top MBA feasible from GT ISye or CS? Im talking about harvard or stanford

how hard is GT ISYE or CS?

Thanks

Your salary depends entirely on what sort of job you land and what you do and how fast you get promoted.
Salaries for engineers vary widely by geography as well. So California has some of the highest pay for very young engineers. You may want to get half way through an engineering degree before you worry about whether you want or need an MBA. Many engineers find masters degrees in CS or EE to be much more helpful than an MBA. MBA’s do case studies, may learn financial math, may study accouting, or marketing or may study supply chain management.

MBAs are also useful if you want to get into the top investment banking jobs, for instance, and some GT grads can do that straight away. Goldman Sachs hires a lot of graduates from Wharton, which is U of Penn, who have undergrad degrees in engineering/CS, as well as Harvard, Stanford and MIT MBA students.

MIT’s Sloan School may be a good fit, as its more quantitative.

MBA graduates might choose to work at Delloitte, or Price Waterhouse or any number of management consulting firms. Many positions in management consulting don’t care if you do an engineering degree at all. You can major in economics or history and still get a great job after a great MBA, with good grades, at any top management consulting firm. If you take that job, you will live out of a suitcase, and travel to clients for a month at a time. You will not see your spouse very much but make a ton of money if thats what you want. However that is NOT an engineering career.

Engineering careers involve design, manufacturing or R&D. Some engineers choose sales and marketing.
Engineering involves building something, whether it be hardware, software or a bridge.

The companies you mention, Google , Facebook, Twitter, hire both engineers and MBAs. Those are entirely different job functions. Read more about MBAs to learn more. YOu can also get a masters degree in accounting, and get very highly payed. Accountants balance the books for high tech and other types of firms. Its a complex function and involves a lot of responsibility to get this exactly correct, and it matters for taxes as well as stock holders.

Your question about industrial versus CS, again, its what interests you. Read on GT website about both majors now so you know what you want. At Georgia Tech, the GPA transfer criteria for CS is 3.3, and the transfer for all other majors is 3.0.

The CS group at GT is very competitive. They are taking more and more out of state students. Certainly Google, Facebook and Twitter are more focused on coding and software than manufacturing, but they may do some manufacturing in foreign countries like Mexico, SW Asia and China. They need US engineers that understand manufacturing, but that does involve a lot of overseas travel if manufacturing sites are abroad.

@aye123 You will need a 3.3 GPA for any major in the conditional program, or you will not be allowed to transfer into GT. It will be a big step up from UGA to GT. It would be best if you try for a 4.0. at UGA. Don’t think too far ahead, the MBA does not matter now. You need to focus on how you are going to get top grades in your classes at UGA. You should line up tutors if you need them right away. You don’t want to miss this opportunity to go to GT, so you have to focus really hard on studying to make it in. You have a lot of work to get really good grades next year. And it does seem you need to select a major now, based on attached website, which you seem aware of. Your major selection should be based on your strong interests, and not a salary you hope for ! Have you coded before and do you like that? Are you interested in areas of computing like computer security, artificial intelligence, or databases? Or are you more interested in industrial processes, in say the auto industry or oil and gas industry or aerospace industry? Look carefully at the websites and then do more research about CS and engineering.
CS at Georgia Tech is fairly mathematical. Do you like mathematics? Industrial engineering will focus more on statistics, but also have a strong math component.

You may want to look over other majors like mechanical engineering or computer engineering as well. It seems you can pick any major right now but you will have to stick with it, per the terms of your conditional acceptance.

See this website:
http://admission.gatech.edu/conditional-transfer-pathway

Sorry if I am repeating everything you already know. Its not a good idea to pick a major based on a guesses about salaries though. Find what you love and then you will successful. That can be hard since Georgia Tech is asking to pick right now, and very unfair to you, and all GT students, to not have the freedom to explore majors.

@Coloradomama thanks for your response. I’m really interested in data science (reason for why I wanted to do ISYE) in particular, but am also interested in computer science’s concentrations of AI, machine learning etc. I really love math, but nonchalant about statistics. I’m reallly interested in CS but the reason why I’m hestitant is because I don’t want to end up as a full time developer. The reason why ISYE seemed appealing is due to the strong math base. Although I’m not fond of stats, I love calculus and discrete concepts quite much. I HATE physics! Which is definitely why I don’t want to take ME or EE. Since industrial is more pure math based I believe it may be a better fit. I also am interested in coding, and know basic coding languages.

Although I care about salary somewhat, I really want to know which major will help me the most in employment and outreach. I’m taking classes at UGA to expose me to various classes of both fields so I can decide.

Another question I have is actually how much of a difference will a CS/ISYE degree make from GT vs UGA?

bump

@aye123 I may not be the right person to answer but I will give it a shot. I was a manufacturing engineer for integrated circuit clean room type of process engineering, in the 1990s, a consultant for patent litigation for 15 years, and also worked in quality engineering for integrated circuits for the magnetic disk drive industry. I am a little dated, in my knowledge of engineering, so its hard to know if my answer will be helpful. I work for MIT’s Admissions office as a volunteer now. My bias is ranked engineering colleges for the math rigor.

So given my bias I think if you like math and want to learn math, Georgia Tech over UGA, will offer you very challenging mathematics and you will test yourself against other top math students and learn from them. A lot of learning at engineering colleges is from your fellow students. Make good friends where ever you go and you will learn a lot!

I am totally unfamiliar with UGA so I may be missing something positive and compelling about that school. Visit both and ask a lot of questions.

As far as your major. Again, I don’t really know enough about the two GT departments to be useful, by reading the website for ISYE, my sense is its got a business and manufacturing flavor to it. The College of Computing is more about everything to do with computers from media and art to interfaces to programming , with some systems engineering thrown in for good measure. There is overlap between these two degrees.

Pull up the class requirements for each degree and see what resonates more with you. You will be fine in either major. Also if CS is your thing, you can get a masters degree in CS after the engineering bachelors degree, so you will have lost no time really no matter which you choose. You can do a systems engineering masters after the CS bachelors as well.

Double majoring is harder at GT than other schools, so you do need to make your best choice and feel good about that choice!