Only four out of 27 Dale & Krueger colleges were outside the top 50. Penn State, Miami U, Xavier and Morehouse. A new study is looking at a far more diverse set of colleges.
1 Like
The one kid I know who worked for Google (possibly still does, I haven’t kept up), went to Liberty.
I don’t think Google is very picky about college name. I think they care a lot more about what the applicant can do. Same with Amazon, but many I know who worked there didn’t like it and left. It’s one of the reasons I only shop via Amazon is if I absolutely can’t find what I want elsewhere.
1 Like
I know that is not the point of this discussion, but many of those attending MIT don’t care about earning potential. MIT students are very different from students from other top schools. They are geniuses but because of that or as a side effect of that their soft skills are very low or not existing. From my DD graduating class majority went to get their MEng, PHD or MD. Next big group is working on their startups and the rest went to top Tech or IB companies. Also not all engineering majors pay the same. Even MIT grads don’t start with six figures in mechanical, environment or material engineering.
1 Like
? My MIT grad is neither a genius, nor low on soft skills. He is an articulate extrovert, debate champion, and engaged and active in the community. I don’t which soft skills you are referring to- but if they involve communications, relationships, empathy, or relating to other people you are very much off the mark.
Your post is highly inaccurate in many ways- but since I know dozens of MIT grads, I felt I needed to correct this VERY out of date stereotype.
7 Likes
Perhaps there needs to be a study of outcomes comparing students who were admitted to highly selective Prestigious Colleges who:
- Matriculated to the highly selective Prestigious Colleges.
- Matriculated to other less selective Less Prestigious Colleges.
Of course, the comparison needs to be stratified by such relevant factors as choice of major, pre-college family SES, and whatever else that is not college choice that could influence outcomes. But the idea is to compare students who were “worthy” in the eyes of admissions readers at the highly selective Prestigious Colleges and see how much choosing the Prestigious College versus a Less Prestigious College actually matters for such students.
2 Likes
It is quite possible that a portion of MIT applicants thought that the MIT name would enhance options. It is also quite possible that a portion of students who decided against MIT did not think the MIT name enhance options over alternatives. This is not particularly meaningful. What would be more telling, if you took half of MIT accepted kids and put them at a quality college that offered a similar list of tech/engineering majors, but did not have a reputation like MIT, then compared outcomes between the attended MIT group vs did not attend MIT group. I expect the MIT accepted kids would generally also have great outcomes, regardless of whether they attended MIT or not.
Tech hiring focuses on whether the applicant has the experience and skillset to be successful on the job, not whether the applicant attended a “top 10 STEM school.” For example, the most common engineering major at MIT is mechanical engineering. MIT mechanical engineers do not have their choice of 6-figure salary offers, so long as they do not bomb the interview since that’s not what mechanical engineering jobs typically pay, regardless of whether the student attended MIT or not. Instead the 6 figure starting salary tech positions are primarily in software engineering/CS and require moving to an extremely high cost of living area like Silicon Valley. 6-figures starting salary is often required to be competitive for Silicon Valley CS, but mechanical engineers are not eligible for a software engineering position like this because software engineering positions expect the applicant to have a CS skillset and will test for CS ability in the technical interviews.
Instead, the list of employers that hired MIT mechanical engineers in a recent year is below. There are a wide variety of different companies, most of which are not on your earlier list. Are there any tech companies on this list that you think would avoid well qualified mechanical engineer applicants who did not attend a “top 10 STEM school” like MIT?
AB InBev, Accenture, Amazon.com, Inc, Apple, Applied
Predictive Technologies, Aurora Flight Sciences, Bain &
Company, Boeing, Broadway Technology, LLC, Brooks
Automation, Creare Inc., Deloitte Consulting, Ford Motor
Company, Gaia-Elements, General Motors, Harvard University,
Hewlett Packard, Intuitive Surgical, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Kitty Hawk Corp, Kuchnir Dermatology and Dermatologic
Surgery, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, MathWorks,
Microsoft, MIT, Nest, Inc, Northrop Grumman, Oasis, Oliver
Wyman, Revive Solutions Inc., Self-employed, SharkNinja
Operating LLC, Shell Oil, Sistine Solar, Sonos, Space
Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Starry Internet Service,
Tactile Inc., Tesla Motors, U.S. Navy, Verus Research, Wafer
LLC, Wolf, Greenfield, and Sacks, ZOLL Medical Corporation
The MIT mechanical engineering major (course 2) salary stats reported for this previous year were Median = $73k, Mean = $74k. This MIT mean/median is consistent with the previously reported CollegeScorecard earnings that are repeated below (from a few years ago, not inflation adjusted):
20 = non-Ivy, USNWR ranked 1 to 20
T50 = USNWR ranked 21 to 50
Major Ivies T20 T50 Pri T50 Pub All
Mechanical Engineering $71k $72k $66k $66k $63k
Engineering (All Majors) $70k $73k $69k $67k $63k
2 Likes
So why do you think all these kids want to attend MIT? Couldnt they just attend some other school and be just as successful? They will make the same money and have access to the same opportunities attending San Jose State. All these kids with perfect SAT scores, extracurriculars foolishly thinking MIT may open more doors than just your college down the street. If they had just done their research they would have known they didn’t really need to take those 12 AP courses or win those science and math awards. They could have just gone to San Jose State with their 67% acceptance rate and not had to fret over whether they were admitted or not. And their ignorant parents who hired college counselors and SAT prep tutors - all of that was completely unnecessary.
You’ve completely convinced me that a MIT diploma carries the same weight in the job market as San Jose State.
Who knew?
My kid didn’t take 12 AP courses, had no college counselor and zero SAT prep tutors… but chose MIT anyway. Not for the earning potential, not for the “door opening” either.
He chose it because the “drinking from a fire-hose” analogy that EVERYONE kept repeating- professors, alums, current students, adcom’s- was exactly what he was looking for. MIT didn’t insist “You must apply to the engineering school if you want engineering” or “CS is an impacted major”. Since everyone pretty much studies the same thing until they are done with HASS and the core- it doesn’t matter whether you think you’re god’s gift to physics or chemical engineering- everyone studies the same stuff. As a person with a lot of interests, having to decide while still in HS “I’m going to be an X” wasn’t appealing to him (and as it happens, he changed his major several times at MIT, picked up a minor, swapped out the major and the minor, etc.)
There are reasons- enjoying the vibe, craving the educational challenge- that people choose a college which have nothing to do with starting salary. Right???
And only on CC do people “fret” that they aren’t going to get admitted to MIT. In the real world, EVERYONE with a cursory understanding of statistics knows that admission is unlikely. So there’s no fretting. Apply, then figure out a solid Plan B and hope for the best. Fretting means you have a poor understanding of the odds- which doesn’t bode well for someone who wants to attend MIT.
3 Likes
Since you know so many MIT graduates, do you think that’s typical?
No SAT tutors, not many APs, no college counselors, career opportunities aren;t a priority.
My sister’s kids attended one of the Top 10 high schools in the country. Many kids were “fretting” over their college applications so I dont think it’s just CC. Logical or not, many kids have their “dream school” and worry about being accepted to that school even if they know the odds are stacked against them.
Prior to COVID (2019), 21k kids applied to MIT. This does not strike me as an extremely large number compared to state school alternatives. You mentioned San Jose State. 35k applied to SJSU that year – far more than MIT. The most applied to colleges, like UCLA, received over 100k applicants.
The kids who apply to MIT are a unique self-selected group that are not typical kids. I expect this group generally considers far more than just which college will yield the highest expected salary. Some probably want what they perceive as the MIT experience. Some probably were impressed with something that is offered at MIT, but not alternatives. Some probably are influenced by peer pressure from friends/family/school/community/… Some probably are big on USNWR type rankings. There are likely many contributing factors that vary from one applicant to the next.
I am among this group. Many years ago, I applied to MIT and was accepted. To Initially get down to a more manageable list of possible colleges, I started with a long list of all colleges in the United States that offered my preferred major of electrical engineering and were at least somewhat selective. This left hundreds of colleges. I then rated these colleges in a couple dozen criteria that were important to me at the time. I considered things like location, class size, available of desired ECs, etc. I did not have an expected salary component to the ranking. On this ranking list, MIT was among the top 2. After I had finally applied and been accepted, I was more subjective in selections and placed a greater emphasis on things like feelings and general fit. One of the reasons I ultimately decided on a differnet college over MIT was because I felt that a non-tech college might offer more opportunities, if I changed my mind and decided on different non-tech major when I was in college.
2 Likes
One of the main reasons why “only” 21k students applied to MIT is because most students don’t think they’ll get in.
If the odds were better, Im sure far more would apply.
In comparison to HYPS?
I think in general, many kids won’t apply to Ivy League schools because of the odds.
The main difference is that now these schools are test optional, the applications have gone up substantially for most schools (including the top ones).
I think one of the factors attracting a subset of students to top ranked schools is the perception that the name of their school and the opportunities afforded there will give them a boost in being admitted to top graduate school programs.
“It’s so crowded nobody goes there anymore”.
I think a more relevant reason relatively few kids apply to MIT is that it is a much more narrowly focused undergrad experience. Not at a CalTech level, but it is not a more comprehensive undergrad experience. Comprehensive: STEM + social sciences + humanities/languages + maybe some sort of pre-professional school or arts angle (business, journalism, theater/music/ visual arts, whatever).
Edit: per the school site, > 91% of those who have declared a major have a primary major in engineering, natural science, physical science or math.
MIT actually has all of these as majors: Majors & minors | MIT Admissions
However, many majors have few students in them: College Navigator - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
What may deter many humanities, social science, and business majors from wanting to attend MIT is the substantial general education requirements. At most colleges, fulfilling science general education requirements can be done with “physics for poets” or “rocks for jocks” type of courses. Not so at MIT.
And despite offering some of these things, it doesn’t really meet a standard definition of comprehensive. If ELit or Arabic or History generally dont find the curriculum appealing, they don’t enroll. And if they don’t enroll, those undergrad departments aren’t really built. When I was attending school, I was torn between a STEM and social science path. I did reasonably well at the “hard” STEM for two years but ultimately decided I didn’t want to pursue. A school can offer the courses for something, but if there are only 8-10 people primarily focused on that major, it’s just not going to be the same experience. Even if you aren’t intimidated by the actual STEM classes an you find them interesting, does someone studying anthropology or art history really want to go to MIT? Probably not.
My thesis advisor is over at MIT in political science. And they are a great program, but from an undergrad perspective, I’m not sure it’s a great fit even for political science majors who love math/chemistry/physics.
I’m just happy my graduating son will make as much, if not more than the median for MIT mechanical engineers, despite graduating from a lowly public university. This thread has been enlightening.
3 Likes
I agree that few non-STEM leaning students would have MIT as their first choice (even fewer would pick Caltech). They certainly don’t offer nearly the same breadth of course offerings in humanities and social sciences as Harvard or Stanford. Their focus is primarily on STEM after all. However, there’re over 400k STEM graduates each year, and even more students each year intend to choose STEM (because a significant portion of them switch out of STEM before they graduate). The vast majority (well over 95%) of them never applied to MIT/Caltech. So I believe they were deterred by the substantial STEM cores at these schools as @ucbalumnus suggested, or they preferred a less intensive focus on STEM in their undergraduate education.
My 2021 graduate nephew in-law also makes more than the median MIT engineer (with a 3.1 GPA studying economics and real estate at a mediocre state school with no internships) because he caddied for the VP of a Fortune 100 insurance company.
Apparently he’s being recognized in the company as an up and comer.
I thought these golf connections were just folklore but apparently it’s true.