Can A Southern Engineering Degree Work Anywhere?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

Hi all,

I have searched diligently, but if this thread is covered elsewhere, and I missed it, so sorry.

My junior son is very bright (4.0 uw, 30 ACT but will go higher…on track and studying for 1440-1500/1600 SAT) and wants to major in Chem or Elec Engineering. We are lucky to have UTKnoxville and TN Tech here in our state, but I am concerned about the Engineering degrees being able to ‘move’ if need be. What if he marries a girl who lives in CA…will they have any faith in a UTK, TTU, UA, UAH or other southern school’s degree. (Please don’t let me offend anyone…just curious here).

I am an Auburn grad, and we have visited both UA and Auburn, but Auburn is super expensive now. Our family EFC is over 25,000 but we cannot spend more than $15000. If he can get a 33 ACT, then he would only get $6000. UA is more affordable but now that the COE add’l 1/3 scholarship is going away, it is not cheap. If he gets a 32 for UA, things will be better, but my question remains - is this a degree with weight that can travel?

UTK is nice but still a very southern school. We have no clue as to its reputation. USNews ranks it somewhere but I don’t really buy into that stuff. UAH might be good but its still very much a commuter school.

Interestingly, kids around here who actually study for the PSAT or ACT are not the norm by any stretch. No one talks about schools outside of this region either. Bates, Cooper Union, or any other college beyond OSU might as well be in Egypt. :slight_smile: Of course, I am generalizing here as I don’t know everyone who lives in TN but colleges are not a hotbed of conversation anywhere around here. Even kids from the private schools go to UTK and UTC, UK, Belmont, and David Lipscomb in droves. It doesn’t seem that kids want to go anywhere else, I guess.

It would so cool if he could go to a school that would encourage his growth like a small LAC but get him going in his Engineering endeavors as well. We cannot, however, afford the better private Engineering schools, it seems. I looked into 3-2 schools but its a terrifying thought that you could lose scholarship funding by leaving thus having to pay for the second school.

He loves to debate politics, he’s president of the Forensics team for public speaking, and he’s just an amazing young man - sorry to brag - Typical EC’s. Typical AP’s and Honors classes. Hardest curriculum offered. Probably top 5% but our school allows non-honors to be in top of rankings so who knows at this point. He will do fine anywhere, I know. I just want to make sure we know about what all of his choices could be.

He went to a camp at Gtech this summer and loved Atlanta, but there’s no way we could afford that. Rhodes is in Memphis, and I’m not sure how I feel about that inner city situation there.

So the question is how to do we learn about other schools that he might be a candidate for and that might be interested in him? College matching doesn’t show any results for some reason - cost must be the factor.

Someone else said it best that we are too rich for FA but too poor to pay for college. Someone else said LAC’s need young men to round out there numbers…most of those I have only heard of here…so sorry to say, but people don’t talk about college in our rural town. Side noteWhat’s interesting is that other than two really smart kids we know who went to Centre and Case, no one else really leaves the state or strives for a better education. You would be amazed how many kids don’t even take the ACT or SAT much less talk about college.

Thanks if you read this thesis here. I welcome your opinions.

2

I understand your plight–I wish we lived in a state with a spectacular flagship school with a strong engineering program, but I also live in TN. I have heard good things on the local level about TN Tech, but my S has zero interest in attending and we are pushing for something with more of a nationwide name as well since he will probably want to live elsewhere.
FWIW…I’m outside a major city in TN and it is as college oriented & competitive as the students were in northeastern town in which I grew up or the CT boarding school I attended back in the day. I know you said you’re in a small rural town, so I guess things are very different where you are. This site is very helpful, even if it’s often just the starting point for further research.

UTK would probably be your best bet since it has more name recognition than the smaller campuses (although I know several people with kids at UTC who absolutely love it). Also, from what I understand, after the first engineering job, it matters much less about where you go to school than how you can do your job, making allowances for people who are able to use an alum network. With the Hope scholarships, etc., UTK is a great deal for instate. You could save the “leftover” money for a master’s degree in another state if he decides by the end of college that he wants to live elsewhere.

3

This site should be your new best friend. You can search for all colleges with accredited engineering degrees. Accreditation is extremely important when it comes to engineering. http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx

It is true that LACs, especially those that dont’ have engineering schools, are looking for strong male candidates. LACs that don’t offer engineering, or that only offer 3/2 programs, are often 60/40 or eve 70/30 female/male, and are hoping to achieve better balance.

You might want to look at schools in the Midwest. People tend to focus on the coasts and ignore “fly-over” country, but there are some schools with solid engineering programs to be found in the Midwest. One that S is looking at is Valparaiso.

His willingness to spread his wings will be strongly influenced by his parents - so keep encouraging him, and he will rise to the occasion.

4

By and large, engineering is engineering. Provided the program he studies is accredited by ABET, it will be recognized by employers all around the country. http://main.abet.org/aps/accreditedprogramsearch.aspx

There is a useful thread near the top of the financial aid forum that has links to other threads on the topic of merit-based aid and lower-cost colleges. It may be worth your time to read through that. Since you are chasing merit aid, you may just want to start with these two:
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ - Your son qualifies for a number of these right now with an ACT of 30. Some of the applications (like Alabama’s) are really short. He could probably fire a couple of them off tonight. Pay attention though as some have relatively early cut-off dates or are guaranteed only until the money for this year is exhausted.
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/ - A bit more of a challenge to apply for, but possibly will give him more options.

5

If he wants to study engineering, he should choose a school with engineering natively. 3+2 programs introduce uncertainty with both admission and financial aid at the “2” school (and it is an extra year of cost to begin with). Also, many “3” schools limit the choice of major (e.g. must major in physics or chemistry at the “3” school), so that there is less ability to take additional H/SS courses if that is the goal (although some “3” schools do allow any major, as long as the engineering prerequisites are also taken).

People with degrees from state schools in the south work in CA in engineering or CS. Have not encountered any from TN, but have encountered some from AL, FL, GA, NC, TX. It is the case that college recruiting tend to be local and regional (e.g. UAH is evidently a feeder to NASA Marshall Space Flight Center nearby), so a student (or anyone) trying to find a job in another region would have to do more of his/her own work to search for and apply to employers in another region.

Here are some big scholarships that he may want to look into:
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/

6

Thanks everyone for your thoughts!! Yes I have been all through the automatic full tuition lists, but its hard to know which ones to add to the list since we don’t recognize a lot of them. We can only visit so many.

We have figured out that Co-ops are going to be key with this major in order to get experience and make contacts outside our region.

7

@happymomof1, the OP’s son is a Junior.

I was under the impression that a lot of high school seniors were utilizing the free 2-year Community College option in Tennessee (Tennessee Promise). Isn’t this the case?

The Univesity of Tennessee Engineering Program has the following Engineering disciplines

*(0) Agricultural
(1) Chemical
(2) Civil
(3) Electrical & Computer
*(4) Engineering Physics
(5) Engineering Science and Mechanics
*(6) Industrial
(7) Mechanical and *Aerospace Engineering
*(8) Metallurgical/Material Science & Engineering
*(9) Nuclear Engineering

  • Not typically found at most Engineering School.

If you want to see the reach of the UTKnoxville engineers, look at the companies that recruit on campus.

8

Promise is awesome but kids have lots of hoops to jump through plus comm service, if I am not mistaken. Also we are concerned about missing out on helpful freshman scholarships.

9

You are absolutely right about UTK’s different types of degrees but unfortunately S16 is into Elec or ChemE

10

To answer the OP’s question - the simple answer is yes. I am always a proponent of attending engineering school in your own state at the large state program. In reality, once a school has ABET cert, they are all very similar. Or to put it the other way around, any company that hires engineering would not dismiss the degree.

If I lived in TN, I would have no problem sending my own kid to UT.

11

University of Alabama Huntsville was mentioned. It looks to me he would be awarded a full tuition scholarship. That would make UAH a safety. They are ABET accredited in both ChemE/Materials Engineering and Electrical Engineering as well as others. It’s my belief that for engineering UAB a very good value.

12

That’s not entirely accurate. Some companies are actually quite picky when it comes to the schools they recruit. Some are not. That said, somewhere like UTK is large enough and well-known enough that it probably won’t have too many issues like that, but a place like Tennessee Tech might run into issues outside of its own geographic footprint simply because people don’t really know anything about it. It all depends on the specific company, though.

Also ABET accreditation means a program has met a set of minimum requirements to earn that certification. It does not mean all ABET-accredited programs are equivalent. The only real guarantee is that they meet the same basic, core requirements. The electives and extracurricular a that are offered may be dramatically different from on accredited program to another, and the actual content of the common courses may vary somewhat as well outside of the base requirements.

I’m not picking on Tennessee Tech or anything. Any ABET degree ought to set you up for getting job offers. It’s just really not accurate to say that all ABET degrees are equivalent and some companies definitely make a distinction.

13

boneh3ad - yep. I had a longer post that when I re-read it made no sense, so I deleted most of it. What I should have left in was a point about (generally) every state having a large ABET school. Those programs are what is very similar, which is the point I was trying to make, and you made very clearly with the comparison of TN tech and UT.

14

Some types of engineering are fairly broad, so elective offerings and departmental emphasis can vary significantly. For example, an EE department may have relatively high or low emphasis on power systems, signals and communications, device electronics, or computer architecture and engineering. Checking catalogs and faculty rosters can help determined what emphases the department may have.

Also, the organization of the curriculum can vary considerably even within the constraints of an ABET-accredited degree program.

It is more accurate to say that ABET accreditation shows that the degree program meets a relatively high minimum standard, rather than to say that all such degree programs are the same.

15

My cousin went to UT-Knoxville, graduated in Computer Engineering, and has a great job in Dallas. My other cousin is at TN Tech in another engineering discipline (not sure which one) and loves it.

Also, have you considered VaTech? Not sure how much $$ you could get there though. My family has strong VT ties and they all love it (went OOS from TN).

ETA: My own DS, a senior, is looking very closely at UA and UAH because of the scholarships he was offered and their good programs. He is also considering GT (not sure he will get in there), VT,Clemson, FSU, and FAU (smaller state university very close to our home).

16

I think Tennessee has a great program. My brother-in-law went there then went on to Rice for his graduate degree. If it is way less expensive than out of state programs, it makes sense to stay there. Virginia Tech is a great school, too. My niece went there and loved it. But, if he attends UT and does well I think he should be fine.

17

My oldest ds graduated in 2011 from a small regional tech university. He had a high GPA and a had had great co-op job (he co-oped with 2 other students that semester-- one from GA Tech and one from VA Tech.) He had multiple job offers at graduation, all with either large national or global companies. (No, his career was not limited to small unknown local companies.) He now works for a top global chemical company (he is a chemE.) In the 4 yrs since he was hired, he has received numerous awards and has been promoted (and transferred to a different site location in a different state.). He works alongside graduates from name brand engineering schools. The only differences in their careers are job performance related, not the school name on their diplomas.

18

Perhaps counterintuitively, a large, national company is more likely to have heard of the quality regional tech schools around the country. After all, those companies generally have large geographic footprints themselves and have experience with a lot of universities of various sizes. Probably the most common companies that may pass on lesser-known schools with which they are not familiar are going to be things like startups or companies that are so competitive to get into that they can afford to be perhaps unfairly picky, such as some of the Silicon Valley companies. Of course, that’s all well and good because there are still lots of great jobs out there that don’t fall into that category.

19

Do southern engineering students learn a different curriculum than the rest of the country?

Of course not, and they are employable anywhere. My son is a senior engineering student at Alabama. Some of his friends have recently been hired by Raytheon in AZ, Honeywell in CA, Lockheed in CO. My son interned in NY and MD, and has interviewed (fingers crossed) for the engineering leadership development programs at three major aerospace/defense companies, household names. These companies hire great candidates from all over the country. Even the south.

20

BTW, Alabama engineering has lots of students from TN on full tuition scholarships. 32 ACT and 3.5 GPA gets full tuition plus $2500 per year.