<p>I have been interested in petroleum engineering for quite a while now and I am narrowing down my college search. I live in PA but I know when it comes to PetE location is everything! These are the schools I have been looking at..</p>
<p>UT- Austin
TAMU
University of Oklahoma
WVU
Penn</p>
<p>I am leaning toward Oklahoma however. If I did go there I would do the accelerated program to get my MBA too. I know that both schools in Texas are better but I don't want to pay $30000 a semester to go to UT. Is Oklahoma a good school? How is their job placement? Would I be likely to work internationally? Starting salaries?
Are there any other schools I should be looking at?
Thank you!</p>
<p>I’m a senior in HS also from PA, i’ll try and help you with info I have researched myself as well as that garnered from meeting with faculty at both schools, plus several people in the industry I know personally. Applied to WVU, PSU, and Pitt. Got into all three with honors college at WVU.</p>
<p>First, i’d advise against getting an MBA right out of undergrad. It’s stupid, nobody will hire somebody with no industrial experience who just goes and gets an MBA. An MBA is more something that you get after working in the industry for a few years to help transition into management.</p>
<p>Oklahoma is a good school i’ve heard but have no second hand accounts, only info from the internet. Job placement at PSU and WVU is at ~90% as the field has become a bit saturated the placement is no longer 100%. You can work internationally no matter which one you attend, in fact companies like a willingness to move around and will pay you more. Most companies rotate you through several different areas/countries before moving you into management and/or an offive after about 5 years (unless you choose a more technical path).</p>
<p>WVU and PSU both have enrollment controls for the major. This means that at WVU you must be one of the top 75 GPAs applying to the program after sophomore year, and at PSU it means you must have a 3.0 (may change to a 3.3) and at least a c in several important classes. </p>
<p>PSU is definitely the better school (only talking about WVU and PSU), the starting salaries are right up there with UT Austin and above TAMU with salaries on average going from mid 80’s to mid 90’s and into the 100’s if you have a good (3.5<) gpa or are willing to move internationally right off the bat. WVU has starting salaries about 10k lower and doesn’t seem to be recruited quite as heavily (though they are still recruited very well and you can certainly land a great job with connections or internships or gpa). That said, WVU’s highest stating salary last year was 94k and and PSU’s was much higher, I was told about 120k excluding bonuses, of course these are outliers and you must consider that.</p>
<p>Overall i’m unsure where i’ll end up choosing. I really love Morgantown and WVU but PSU is a better school and is closer. State College isn’t terrible either. </p>
<p>Hope the info I provided helped, if you have any questions you are free to PM me and i’ll try and help you out.</p>
<p>Yes Oklahoma is a good school for petroleum engineering. The facilities are quite advanced and oil companies pour money into both the program and semi-related extracurriculars. Virtually all of the super-majors and regional oil companies recruit at the school, and every student must complete at least one relevant internship to graduate with a PE degree, which means the vast majority of students are placed. </p>
<p>I’m not sure about international work. Most of my friends, if they don’t move to one of the more remote oil extracting regions for their internship either stay in OKC or move down to Houston. Some of this might be due to the fact that I mostly know females in the field; as you can imagine, most women aren’t exactly keen on moving to places like Saudi Arabia or Nigeria. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think the MBA program is stupid. Not only will your employment prospects not increase if you do a combined BS/MBA, but they might actually decrease since you lack the work experience that most well regarded MBA programs require. </p>
<p>If you want a smaller school which awards quite a bit of merit aid, check out the University of Tulsa. It offers a number of other engineering majors should you change your mind about PE (lots of students do), and class sizes tend smaller than most of the big dogs. I’ve heard Colorado School of Mines is pretty good, although I don’t know much about the program. Very different from PSU though, and may be more expensive. </p>
<p>Thank you! I am a female that would like to work over there, haha! How are the scholarships for out of state students at OU? Also do they use rolling admissions so if I apply in October I would be more likely to get a scholarship?</p>
<p>A school in Texas would be good, though, because Houston is really big in the petroleum industry. You should also take Texas A&M and Texas Tech into consideration. They both have highly ranked petroleum engineering programs, and they aren’t nearly as expensive as UT Austin.</p>
<p>You’re going to get paid the same if you graduate from OU. Whatever company hires you will pay you the same as a grad from any other school. You don’t get paid more for graduating from other schools.</p>
<p>The differences that you see above are not dealing with the same companies. Company A that hires eng’r’s from OU, TAMU, UT and PSU is going to pay them all the same. Company B will do the same with their new hires. </p>
<p>my kids’ undergrad doesn’t have PetE, but many ChemE’s are hired for those same jobs. They get paid the same as those from higher ranked schools.</p>
<p>"but I don’t want to pay $30000 a semester to go to UT. "</p>
Were they the same companies or the same jobs? Shell might have a number of chemical engineers working in processing but not in the actual extraction.</p>
<p>Admission to OU is pretty much automatic with certain stats (if you have above a 22 ACT/1600 SAT and a 3.0+ GPA, you’re almost certainly in), although the school requires an essay. If you do it by September, you should be admitted by November at the latest. </p>
<p>My parents can’t pay very much because they have a ton of student loans themselves :-/ I only have $10000 saved up.
How much does work study help?? (Especially at OU because it is my first choice) </p>
<p>Unfortunately, $10,000 won’t cut it for OU, or really any of the schools on your list. Though OU’s tuition is relatively low for an OOS school, it makes up for that in fees. Lots and lots of fees. </p>
<p>You can try to start at a community college and then transfer to one of the schools. Most of the good PE schools have relatively low transfer requirements. For instance, OU only requires PE transfers to get a 2.5 college GPA, while South Dakota School of Mines (a super low cost option) states that applicants must have a 2.75 college GPA. </p>
<p>“Were they the same companies or the same jobs? Shell might have a number of chemical engineers working in processing but not in the actual extraction.”</p>
<p>Could be same companies, different jobs. That said, there isn’t going to be a difference in salaries based on where you went to school when hired by the same company for particular jobs. </p>
<p>If company A hires 5 PetE grads from various schools, then Company A is going to pay them all the same. They’re not going to say, "hmmmm…this new PetE grad went to TAMU, so we’ll pay him $85k, and this one went to UT, so we’ll pay him $88k, and this one went to OU, so we’ll pay him $80k. No…they’ll all get paid the same. </p>
<p>TJR…if your parents can’t pay much, then none of these OOS publics will work unless you qualify for large merit. How did you think you were going to pay for these schools?</p>
<p>Are you a junior? What are your stats?</p>
<p>Ask your parents how much they’ll pay each year.</p>
<p>work study is NOT a given. Many schools can only give WS to low EFC kids. And it doesn’t sound like you have a low EFC.</p>
<p>Students who get WS, usually get about $2k-3k per year. And that money is usually for “pocket money” and personal expenses. IT doesn’t cover tuition or room and board because WS money gets paid out in paychecks throughout the year.</p>
<p>You need to be very careful otherwise you’re going to have a LOT of unaffordable schools. YOU can’t borrow much as an undergrad. YOU can only borrow</p>
<p>frosh 5500
soph 6500
jr 7500
sr 7500</p>
<p>To borrow more (bad idea) would require willing and qualified cosigners. Since your parents already have their own big loans (from grad school???), they probably won’t agree and maybe won’t qualify to cosign yours.</p>
<p>What’s your EFC? Have you run the Net Price Calculators?
Are the $10,000 what you have saved, or what your parents can afford per year?
Work Study can be packaged into your financial aid award, typically it’s $2,000 you can earn by working on campus. You have to actually work the hours or you lose the money. Work- Study helps with miscellaneous expenses (textbooks, school supplies, laundry quarters, etc).
Since your parents are still paying off their loans, they won’t qualify for extra loans, so as Mom2CK said, you would only get $5,500 in loans (anyway, taking on more is very risky.)
OOS public universities 1° have OOS costs (extra charges that often double tuition) PLUS 2° no financial aid outside of the $5,500 Federal Loans and, if you qualify (if your family is low income) Pell Grants. That makes them very very expensive.
At some universities, you may have access to some scholarships, like Whenhen said, that decrease the OOS extra charge.
So run the Net Price Calculator on EACH college website since each school calculates costs differently.
Tulsa is a good option since you may get scholarships - it’s private so costs are the same regardless of your in state/OOS status.
Finally, if you’re <em>sure</em> you want to do PetE, you have Marietta College. They’re very successful at that but they’re not very good if you want to study something else. </p>
<p>My parents aren’t low income so I have basically no chance of getting need based aid. But my stats are 3.9 GPA and a 32 on my ACT. I was hoping to get a scholarship to help pay for an OOS school. Also I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at PSU (my in state) in state costs for tuition and room and board but it is $16000 and $11000 room and board. So once you add those up they are almost equal to OU or TAMU. I have no idea why in state is that high here.</p>
<p>Penn State (and Pennsylvania) is infamous for combining high in-state costs and lousy financial aid even for in state applicants. Part of it is low state funding, I think right now Penn State gets less than 10% of its funding from the state and they even considered going private.
With 3.9 and 32 ACT you should qualify for quite a few merit scholarships at OOS universities though. The most famous one on these boards is UAlabama’s (college of engineering = full tuition plus stipend, honors college, honors dorms, research opportunities) but I am quite sure you’d get good merit offers from LSU, OU, etc. </p>
<p>"My parents aren’t low income so I have basically no chance of getting need based aid. But my stats are 3.9 GPA and a 32 on my ACT. I was hoping to get a scholarship to help pay for an OOS school. "</p>
<p>Hopefully you are NOT a senior. Are you a junior?</p>
<p>If so, then you need a strategy. Forget about UT, you won’t get merit there. You “may” get merit at TAMU. OU is lousy with OOS merit if you’re not NMF. </p>
<p>“Hoping for merit” without “applying to merit schools” is a road to disaster. You need to apply to some schools that FOR SURE will give you VERY LARGE merit for your stats. Look at LSU. </p>
<p>Your goal IS NOT to get costs down to PSU, because YOU CAN’T afford PSU. Your goal is to get costs down to about $12k or less…depending on how much your family CAN pay.</p>
<p>ASK your parents if they can pay $10k per year? More? Less? Either way get a NUMBER from them. </p>
<p>You can only borrow $5500 for frosh year. THAT MEANS that you need MORE than full tuition to get everything paid for. </p>
<p>I second the recommendation that you look at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. I can’t say if their financial aid is stellar but you start out with the fact that the total COA for non-Dakotans is about $21,000. The school seems to successfully place many of its students in internships and co-ops, which of course will help pay tuition.</p>
<p>Sorry to interrupt in the enlightening discussion(yes, it is) I am myself looking for “Best schools” in Petroleum Engineering so what I have got to know is that No official ranking site provides this stat, but through lot of internet research I have found that Oklahoma is good and I have myself applied to it(International Student) but I have realized that Petroleum Engg thing is getting Saturated in US which was not the case few years ago which means more competition thereby I feel that for a bright future in PE one should try for colleges like U of Alberta(Canada),Malaysia. I feel Australia is the best place for this as the population is low and demand is increasing(in this region) therefore PE from here would give a great boost to the career.
What do you wise people think?
Here is the list you might wanna see- <a href=“http://www.collegerag.net/top-10-worlds-best-petroleum-engineering-colleges/”>http://www.collegerag.net/top-10-worlds-best-petroleum-engineering-colleges/</a></p>
<p>However, there may be differences in which companies come to recruit at each school. This may not be as much of an issue in petroleum engineering, where there are few schools with the major and many of the job opportunities are in larger companies, but smaller companies may have a stronger bias toward local schools in recruiting.</p>
<p>All Top PETE schools have their connections. I know companies that hire exclusively A&M grads and others that hire only UT grads. Going into my Senior year at A&M I have already completed 3 internships in the O&G industry almost entirely from getting on with companies because I go to A&M. </p>
<p>In the end though it really does not matter what school you graduate from, if you are a good PETE companies will hire you. End of story.</p>