Can you get hired before you graduate as a mechanical engineer?

I’m just starting my grandfather is a really well known software engineer for Boeing and told me if I have a good GPA a lot of companies will consider picking you up your junior year and pay for the rest of your college and set you up. This was back in the 70s… does this hold true today?

Forget it. This is what Co-op programs and internships are for. The companies get to try our out before hiring you full time. Nobody is going to commit to hiring you until you have your degree.

I don’t know. But I do know that depending on how strong the market is, sometimes people get offers several months before graduation.

My father is an executive for a major oil company and he does a lot of interviews for both interns and new hires (full time positions). He was a mechanical engineering major and he has worked at refineries as well as in an office. He often tells me about who he interviews, and I have never heard of someone being hired for a full-time position before they’ve graduated like that.

What’s much more common is that they hire someone as an intern, usually for the summer after their junior year but occasionally earlier, and if that person does well as an intern, they will sometimes extend a job offer to that person sometime during their senior year of college, after the internship.

I’m not so sure that they’ll pay for the rest of your college, but yes, engineering students have been known to have jobs lined up for after they graduate whether it be through their internship or through career fairs during the semester. “Picking you up” might be in reference to having an internship or co-op, but that’s for your grandfather to clarify.

All of my ME buddies had jobs lined up before they graduated. Don’t think any of them got any tuition covered though.

I don’t think that happens all that often anymore. I advised a couple of students who were engineers. Even the really good ones did tend to be recruited and often hired by the companies they interned with in their junior summer, but the companies usually didn’t pay for the last year of college. They just hired them after graduation.

Unless your grandfather hires you, no, not in this time period.

That was pretty rare even back then. More like a scholarship program which some companies still have, but as far as I know none of them cover full tuition. Tuition was a LOT cheaper back then, especially at the state schools. That might be what they covered then. The other possibility is that he is confusing it with companies that would pay for grad school. I know that happened. I friend of mine who is now a prof at Stanford got her PhD paid for by Chrysler, I think it was. Could have been GM, I forget who she worked for at first, but I think it was Chrysler.