Another deterrent to recruiting at Yale and similar schools by engineering employers is that Wall Street will probably take away many of the small number of engineering graduates anyway, leaving few to recruit who will not be lured away by Wall Street.
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Yes, across all Yale engineering majors, the most common employers in recent years have been as follows. A large portion of Yale engineering grads do not appear to be choosing traditional engineering type positions.
- Yale
- McKinsey
- Bain
- ClearView Healthcare
- Epic Systems
- McMasters-Carr
- Boston Consulting
Yeah, I also thought of mentioning Dartmouth along with Chicago. But their BA/BE-degree approach indicates at least some effort to accommodate students who end up wanting to go into Engineering, whereas as you point out, Chicago really has just a small niche program.
Yale is definitely not a relative standout in this area either, but as you point out, it was nearly on its way to extinction before Yale decided to revive it. There are now a reasonably significant number of people graduating with Engineering degrees (more if you include CS, which has joined the School of Engineering & Applied Science).
Again, I would agree Yale Engineering today is not a recruiting target in the way the much longer-established âtopâ Engineering programs are, and may not be for some time, if ever. But the recent resource allocations are documentable, as is the growth of the majors. And anecdotally, I have repeatedly heard Yale seems to be doing well these days in placing its graduates in top Engineering graduate programs.
I know three Yale/Harvard engineering PhDs who wanted to enter academia came up empty their first year on the job market despite having big-time PhD advisors. They had to do a couple years of postdoc at places like UIUC and Georgia Tech to strengthen their CVs, before landing tenure-track positions at T50-T100. Cornellâs and Princetonâs engineering PhDs, on the other hand, gave me the impression that they received offers more frequently straight out of school. Very small sample size, but it does support the perception of graduate engineering programs at different Ivies having different strength.
Assuming I checked all the right majors at the Yale College site (I didnât include CS except for EE & CS), it looks like in the Class of 2022, there was about a 62:24 ratio of employment (including researchers) to grad students (I am holding out all the small âotherâ categories). I have no idea how this compares to the âtopâ Engineering programs, but it confirms at least a good chunk of Yale Engineering grads are moving on to graduate programs.
Of the 62% employed, only 35% of them were employed in Engineering (not including research). I am going to guess that combination is lowâthat is only 22% going directly into Engineering jobs.
Research is another 15.4%, and there are some Data Science, Programming, Military, and Entrepreneur jobs that may be âengineeringâ jobs in the broader sense.
However, a whole bunch more were then in some sort of consulting/finance/business development/management job. Looks like at least 27% or so, more if you also toss in Sales or Advertising/PR. Again, I am going to guess that is relatively high.
In the end, I suspect Yaleâs ambition is not necessarily to ever compete with, say, Stanford or Cornell in Engineering. But I do suspect they want to be good enough at Engineering that if highly-competitive applicants are at least thinking Engineering is a possibility, they wonât necessarily simply rule out Yale. And then what they do with that degree might be any number of things.
Regarding the notion about the advantage of social referrals being awareness of a position opening discussed awhile back by @ucbalumnus: I see this occurring with parents helping their student get undergraduate summer research internships. Employees are the first to be informed when internships are available and open, and are often encouraged to recruit prospective students. In fact, employees who have HS or undergrad students will often let HR know that they have a prospective student who is available for a summer internship. I cannot say definitively, but having a summer internship for an employeeâs student may be an unspecified perk of employment. I have also seen where sons and daughters of colleagues in the field have obtained summer internships, influenced by the connection of their parents. The summer internships were intended and structured to provide some in depth experiences of technical work in the specific scientific area, and not intended to be a job recruitment tool. In general, I think the internship program provided experiences which helped the student decide to continue with a scientific career, or not. I did not see that the interns who got their positions via parental connections were any less successful than others who had no such influence.
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This is our impression too. Kid wasnât interested in a tech-focused college or attending college in the middle of the country. Stanford didnât pass the vibe check, but he found a lot to love at Penn where theyâve been quietly investing in innovation, research, and collaborative spaces.
In addition to E-quad makerspaces, there is Tangen Hall, a seven story 68k square foot makerspace touted as the largest student entrepreneurship hub in the world.
Penn isnât on the radar of most engineering bound kids we know, but I think theyâre poised to emerge as a hub of entrepreneurship and interdisciplinary research. Time will tell how they measure up, as far as placement and output, to the top engineering colleges.
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We spent a day at each Dartmouth and Brown while on an east coast swing visiting a bunch of schools. Iâm sure either would be fine, but when you look at both facilities and course offerings they pale in comparison to state schools that are considered by most on this forum to be fairly pedestrian.
Our son had three WUE safeties, Utah, Colorado State and Oregon State. He preferred all three, by a wide margin to the two Ivyâs he visited. In the end all three got applications, and the Ivyâs didnât.
Couple that with the fact that Dartmouth requires five years to get an ABET accredited degree and itâs a wonder that anyone applies.
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I guess this dates me, but back in the day it was generally accepted most Engineering students would either go to a âtechâ school or a state university for college. Private non-tech colleges were mostly known for liberal arts and sciences. There were always exceptions, like Stanford. But I guess I continue to assume state universities will be pretty dominant in terms of actually producing working engineers, and as far as I know that is still mostly true.
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Wasnât this more than a decade ago when you were touring with your kid? These schools have invested significantly since your kid applied, graduated from a college and finished his first few jobs.
Opened in 2017âŠ
Opened in 2019âŠ
Far fewer kids than most state schools with new state of the art facilities. Have you toured since 2012 when your kid was considering schools or are you commenting based on this long since dated experience?
This was your original post back in 2012âŠ
Even then in advance and in anticipation of your visits you seem to be trying to justify not paying up for a private. Thrilled it worked out for your kid but please provide historic context and up to date on campus experiences for the benefit of the casual reader, versus biased impressions from 11 years prior.
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Dartmouth Engineering | AB Current page from Dartmouth Engineering.
When we visited (several years ago but less than 10), one of the professors we talked to, emphasized an almost liberal arts approach to engineering. The professor was a Cornell trained engineer, and he said Cornell was great as a technical engineering school but he felt Dartmouth provided a better whole student experience. You can see that emphasis on their web page. There is a set of engineering types who will thrive and seek a very focused specialized engineering education. I think others like the science and practical problem solving skill sets of engineering, but they have wider interests.
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Assuming I checked all the right majors at the Yale College site (I didnât include CS except for EE & CS), it looks like in the Class of 2022, there was about a 62:24 ratio of employment (including researchers) to grad students (I am holding out all the small âotherâ categories). I have no idea how this compares to the âtopâ Engineering programs, but it confirms at least a good chunk of Yale Engineering grads are moving on to graduate programs.
24:62 ratio seems reasonable. However, Iâd be careful about how to interpret such a ratio. A large portion of students pursuing grad degrees can relate to students being unsatisfied with job opportunities with a bachelorâs, as much as can relate to students having good opportunities for graduate degrees or grad programs being focused on prestige of undergrad name. It also can relate to special encouragement or special programs offered at the college.
For example, I did engineering at Stanford. ~35% of engineering students at Stanford do a co-terminal masters, which involves simultaneously pursuing a masterâs (usually in engineering) and bachelorâs degree. A significant chunk more pursue grad degrees at other colleges and/or PhDs, so I would not be surprised if the majority of Stanford engineering students complete graduate degrees. Had I attended college where this type of program was less common, I probably would have been less likely to pursue a grad degree. Some example numbers for other colleges are below.
I suspect that the low 13% at Northeastern largely relates to their mandatory co-op program. Students who choose work in a co-op are likely to be thinking about employment soon after graduating and likely to get a job offer. Students who thinking about grad school after college, rather than employment, are less likely to a choose a college with mandatory co-op, typically delaying graduation to 5+ years. College programs can reduce rate of grad degrees, just as they can increase them.
Percent of Engineering Students Pursuing Grad Degrees
Cornell â 40%
MIT â ~40% (all majors)
RPI â 35%
Case Western â 27%
Berkeley â 26%
Pitt â 22%
Purdue â ~22%
U Washington â 22%
U Kentucky â 19%
Yale â 18%
Northeastern â 13%
I suspect that the few prospective engineering majors who choose Yale are generally not choosing Yale for the strength of the engineering program. Instead they like other aspects of Yale, which contributes to why a large portion of Yale engineers seem to go in to non-engineering type fields after graduation.
I looked up the specific portion of Yale students who majored in engineering in 2019 (prior to COVID). The portion of engineering is minuscule compared to many colleges that are better known for engineering, such as Cornell or Stanford. This also contributes to recruiting efforts. I mentioned that my company hires persons with an EE background. Why go all the way to Yale, if there are only ~5 students with EE (non-CS) majors, many of whom are probably not looking to work in engineering immediately after graduation? I expect many traditional engineering companies come to a similar conclusion. In contrast, a consulting company like McKinsey/Bain/BCC might see more value in recruiting at Yale and be open to hiring engineering grads, changing the distribution of types of companies Yale engineering grads see at career fairs. This also contributes to why Yale grads seem less likely to work in traditional engineering than average.
Portion of Yale Students Majoring in Engineering
Engineering Sciences â 2%
Biomedical â 1%
Mechanical â 1%
Chemical â <1%
Electrical (without CS) â ~0%
Environmental â ~0%
Agreed that not all kids seek the same experience. Similarly kids from some of these elite schools donât seek the same career outcomes and use their engineering degrees to get jobs in lucrative careers such as IB and management consulting.
The Ivies appear to hold their own in terms of financial worth. This is a ranking from FreeOpp that looks at ROI amongst CS majors.
- CMU $4,125,963
- Rice $3,781,869
- Brown $3,535,080
- Stanford $3,305,484
- Yale $3,296,380
- Harvard $3,268,145
- Caltech $3,102,888
- Cornell $2,966,699
- Cal Poly $2,920,317
- MIT $2,909,266
- UCLA $2,853,535
- UC Berkeley $2,843,321
- Duke $2,546,552
- Johns Hopkins $2,515,869
- Vanderbilt $2,461,053
- UIUC $2,417,724
- U Michigan $2,258,080
- Columbia $2,130,692
- GeorgiaTech $1,966,139
- UW Seattle $1,943,759
We Calculated Return On Investment For 30,000 Bachelorâs Degrees. Find Yours.
Look up the financial value of tens of thousands of college degrees.
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I also think a lot of the appeal of many of the âtopâ colleges is being able to change your mind about your major, or indeed not really know your mind at the time you are applying.
So, while this is pure speculation, I would not be surprised if a decent number of people who end up with a Yale College Engineering degree either did not intend that when applying, or only had it on a list of possibilities.
I think this helps explain why the âtopâ non-tech colleges tend to make sure they are at least pretty good in everything they offer. Among other reasons, they want to make sure people can decide on, or change among, all their majors while at that college.
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I think this is exactly right. My S24 really isnât sure what he wants to study, but some engineering disciplines are on the list. But the list also contains subjects like cognitive science, linguistics, political science, and economics. He also really loves his literature and history classes, even though he doesnât think he would major in any of those. He probably is not a candidate for a âtop 20â school, but we have found those seem to be the schools that offer the most flexibility for exploring a variety of majors across multiple disciplines that include engineering, and then choosing what you want to do without much hassle.
Except for a handful of schools, if he wants to consider engineering outside those âtopâ schools, his only feasible option is to apply as an engineering major, and then transfer from the engineering school to the school of arts & sciences if he decides itâs not what he wants, since transferring in to the engineering school is often impossible or nearly so.
Given that the type of job that (today 
) is most intriguing to him is some type of consulting, that makes the elite schools even more attractive. Since that is our experience, I can imagine that there are many people in a similar situation. I think students who are like him â good at math and science, but also interested in a wide variety of more liberal arts type subjects â are more likely to be drawn to careers that are not strictly engineering jobs, even if they enjoy and a major in Engineering in college.
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I donât really understand why this thread has devolved into an engineering discussion . . .
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The rest of us left the room once it became clear that those poor dumb Yale engineers were going to face a life of penury and misery.
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But at least they know what penury meansđ
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The original post of this thread mentions in the importance (or lack of) of college prestige in engineering. The discussion started talking about engineering at prestigious colleges and related outcomes. I suppose thatâs a change from the usual CC discussions that instead emphasize the importance of prestige in âeliteâ finance/consulting and CS at FAANG.
Nobody said that. I also wouldnât assume a higher relative rate of working at âeliteâ consulting and lower rate of working in traditional engineering means destined to a live of life of poverty.
You mean this original post?
Doesnât seem as you suggest to be specific to engineering.
It also mentions nursing and others but per @cinnamon1212 post the discussion had been primarily about engineering.
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