A cautionary tale…check the job placement rates for you major before committing to OSU. The “highly ranked” engineering and business schools have placement rates that are significantly lower than other lower ranked programs at other state colleges in Ohio. It seems job placement doesn’t factor into ratings.
–very disappointed parent of an unemployed May 2015 OSU engineering grad with a >3.0 GPA
@buzzlightyear3 - which major in engineering did your son complete ?
@dreamed - He was an Aerospace Engineering major. Check out the report though. While some majors are better/worse than others, the placement rates for each is much lower than the placement rates at other state schools in Ohio. I recently checked out the OSU business school too (younger kids interested in business) and found the exact same thing there.
Can you post the link to the report on OSU placements and also where the comparable reports from other Ohio college are?
@buzzlightyear3 Can you please provide a link or refer to the source of your information regarding job placement rates? I am curious to see.
@osuprof sorry our posts crossed. Thinking the same thing. 
https://ecs.osu.edu/post-graduate-status-major Maybe this page is what you’re looking for?
Yes @albert69 posted the link to the Engineering Career Services placement rates I was referencing. The latest year published was actually a good year for OSU relatively speaking. Check out some of the previous years. The stats are even more alarming. In fairness, there were some tough economic years in those periods too, but when I researched this a while ago, I still found a gap between OSU and other schools.
For OSU Business, check out page 22 of this annual report you’ll find that 20% of OSU business majors are still seeking employment 3 months after graduation. http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/7730/AnnualReport2015.pdf
In contrast, Miami University’s stat is that 93% of business majors have a job before graduation and 97.6% of all majors are employed or in grad school by fall after graduation.
I’ll leave you all to check out placement rates for other programs you are considering to compare/contrast.
Here are my anecdotal experiences with two kids that might account for the placement rate differences: OSU grad son had huge challenges engaging with faculty and advisors, finding internships/research opportunities, etc. There were promises of research opportunities that never actually happened, professors wouldn’t respond to email requests and couldn’t be found in offices, and advisors sent him to seek help at offices/locations that didn’t seem to exist. In fairness, my son owns responsibility for some of this too as the truly persistent kids are probably succeeding despite the environment. I will also add that despite the poor outcome, he absolutely loved OSU and feels like he got a great education. In contrast, I have a freshman DD at Miami and she is having the opposite experience in just about every way: professors are incredibly engaged and responsive, career services has already gone above and beyond in helping her follow-up with a company that she talked with at a career fair, and she’s already working with a professor on a research project.
In the end though, it’s been an expensive and depressing lesson for me and my son. Hopefully he will get a break soon. In the meantime, I’m helping him research 2nd bachelor degree options at different colleges which have much better outcomes.
Can you link the engineering statistics from other schools? I’m having trouble finding them.
@buzzlightyear3 I am sorry about your son’s situation. I tried to verify your negative claims about job placement in Engineering and Business and was not able to. You should be careful about making unsubstantiated negative claims about two of the stronger programs at tOSU. My son is only a freshman (direct admit) to the Fisher College of Business, but from what i know about the program through my son’s attendance, visiting the business school twice in the past year, speaking with students and faculty, including students who attended from our home school district, it is an impressive program (both undergrad and graduate), with excellent curriculum in many different areas of business, state-of-the-art facilities, and very strong career development and job placement opportunities. Checkout the links to the 2015 Annual Report and Office of Career Management. http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/7730/AnnualReport2015.pdf and
http://fisher.osu.edu/offices/career-management
91% of the undergraduate business graduates had jobs within 3 months of graduation.
I am sorry to hear about your son’s experience with the school. I think it is true at Ohio State has a lot of students, and it cannot work proactively to create opportunities for all of them. Among all big 10 schools’ engineering programs, OSU has the worst student to faculty ratio!.
One thing to consider would be branching to a different field: Aeronautical is a hit or miss major because it is very specialized and has a small number of employers. Consider taking a few computer science classes, where the market is very hot, and see if he can land something in that area (may be getting a minor formally?). My experience is that engineering majors from good school turn out very well in the software field with a small amount of formal education, because of their strong analytical bent and the abillity to pay attention to details. My two cents worth … I hope he is successful soon.
I have no idea how the post-grad employment stats are collected at these different schools, but was told at Madison for eg that they are proud of theirs being in the low 80s% (don’t recall exact #) despite it sounding low, since they require all their grads to submit this info vs other schools that report higher %'s are often not using 100% of their grad pool, but rather those that responded voluntarily… the implication being that the number of unemployed was understated, those students being less inclined to respond to survey. Just a reminder to check methodology.
looking at Fisher link in post #9: 80% of undergrads reported their post grad plans, of which 73% were employed…
@trackmbe3 – I don’t understand your allegation that I’m making “unsubstantiated negative claims” when two reports posted on OSU.edu were cited. You and I are citing the same report on business placement. I included a page number…although after verifying again I see I was one page off and it’s actually page 21 in this report that shows 20% of US citizen graduates are seeking employment. In looking through it further, on I see there are also statistics that 85% of business majors have jobs at graduation and 91% have jobs within 3 months. Given that the non-resident job placement rate is reported on the same page as being lower, I can’t explain the discrepancy among the 3 numbers…certainly must be some scope differences. In any case though, those placement rates are definitely lower than the Miami placement rates that I shared for business majors and which are posted on the Miami website. So again, I resent the allegation that I’m making “unsubstantiated negative claims.”
I stand by my original advice that started this thread which is that before anybody commits to a college they check the placement rates. If you disagree with that advice, than we will just agree to disagree.
http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/7730/AnnualReport2015.pdf
@WiParent4 – I 100% agree. It’s absolutely essential to understand the methodology, response rate, etc. The placement reports that I’ve seen posted though are based on a surprisingly high response rate, e.g. 80+%. They don’t provide details about the methodology, so it’s very difficult to know exactly how the surveys are done. However, when a statistic is posted on the school’s official website, I assume the school has done their best to present the statistics that present their outcomes in the best light possible while still presenting accurate data.
@osuprof – Thanks very much for your advice. Coincidentally, in talking through “Plan B” options, my DS also mentioned that he’s interested in computer science as well, so he has enrolled in some C++ classes. Do you have any advice/perspective on if a few classes will be sufficient or if he should pursue a computer science degree? Any more specific advice you can share on specific languages or classes he should take? Ultimately, he really loves engineering, but Aero-related companies do a lot of software/simulation work as well, so he’s thinking that having more coding skills will broaden his eligibility. At this point, he’d be thrilled with any professional job whether it’s Aero Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or software-related.
Learn Java and/or Python, and do a class on databases. May be a class on data mining/data analytics / machine learning, because that is really hot right now (and requires a stronger Maths background, which an aero degree should give you).
Regarding few class vs. another degree: start with a few classes and keep looking for jobs, with option of at least formally getting a minor.
Thanks very much @osuprof
@buzzlightyear3 This is not directed to you or your son but to students and parents in general. Do not wait until your senior year to develop relationships with people who have the power to hire you. Visit college and career fairs. Find out what types of positions they hire for, find out about internships or coops. Stay in touch withe the career office and take time to study how to interview and prepare a resume etc. as early as your freshman year. Take opportunities to work for companies that do the type of work you want to do. You are competing for positions with students who have done all these things and no matter how good the university’s placement office is the one who has to get the job is you. Good luck to all.
@Ivvcsf – Yep, I agree 100%.
I definitely pushed my son (again and again and again) to do all of those things while he was a student at OSU. He definitely went to career fairs; applied for internships; met with ECS starting in his sophomore year and had them review his resume; signed up for research projects (which didn’t materialize.) The frustrating thing is that he has no results to show for all of that, and when he reached out to professors and advisers to find leads or get more help he received no responses. Could he have tried harder and been more persistent? Absolutely. Could he have spent less time playing a club sport and instead spent his free time working on an engineering project/competition? Yep. I’m sure kids who are more persistent and/or who focused 100% on engineering-related activities have jobs now. The majority of the graduates do have jobs (or are in grad school.)
However, certainly there are other not-so-persistent students with non-engineering hobbies at other colleges too. What happens at those other colleges that results in very high placement rates? I have speculated at what might be some of the differences, but I really don’t know the root cause of the discrepancy.