Comparing Engineering Schools

<p>Interesting link re: recruiters, Haystack. I also would not have paid more for a Michigan degree in engineering since we have Virginia Tech and UVa instate. But not everyone feels this way. We know people now who have their kid at Michigan in engineering and I am pretty sure they are full pay OOS(dad is a physician). What SamFar’s parents are willing to pay will influence some of this but we don’t have that information.</p>

<p>Yea, I should have said that I would not pay for Michigan because coming up with the $55,000 would not be easy for us and would impact our ability to adequately save for retirement. OTOH, if you have that kind of money laying around and using it has no negative consequences, spend it as you want.</p>

<p>My company recruits at all of the 5 schools you listed. They are all top shelf. It’s a great list. It does not recruit at UKentucky. </p>

<p>I think going to a school like that is worth the money. Those are all hard schools though, and be prepared to work a lot harder and party less than your liberal arts brethren because you are getting a true professional degree as an undergraduate, and there is a lot you have to learn in a short amount of time.</p>

<p>mom2collegekids, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I do not feel comfortable sharing with the whole world my personal stats or my parents’ personal finances. Let’s just assume the both are adequate for the task at hand.</p>

<p>I understand that you don’t want to share identifying details. That’s totally ok.</p>

<p>If your parents are saying that they will pay the costs, then super. If they won’t, then that will be a problem since you can’t just borrow the money on your own. </p>

<p>The bottom line is that the companies within your region will hire/recruit at Ukentucky. The fact that some NE company isn’t recruiting at Kentucky is really irrelevant unless you absolutely have to work for one of those divisions in the NE. That said, even if a company doesn’t send a rep for recruitment, that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t get a job there. </p>

<p>I’m sure that NE divisions probably aren’t sending reps to recruit at UAH (a univ with very good eng’g by my home). Who cares? lol Seriously. Those grads are still being recruited and hired by big name & smaller name tech companies, Fortune 500 companies, etc. Those grads are still walking from graduation into well-paying jobs…even w/o being graced with a rep from the NE :rolleyes: (The NE isn’t some Holy Grail for high tech anyway)</p>

<p>Most schools have some sort of Career Fair. You can look at that info to see what companies recruit at Kentucky and the other schools you’re interested in. For instance, Virginia Tech has a yearly Engineering Expo which many companies attend. <a href=“Engineering Expo | Student Engineers' Council | Virginia Tech”>https://expo.sec.vt.edu/students/employer-list/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Samfar,</p>

<p>No issue here with you wanting to go a great OOS school. But be prepared to handle the additional cost. For example, you very well may want to consider Purdue over UofM, simply due to the $40,000 in tuition savings ($29K at Purdue vs. $39K at UofM).</p>

<p>Otherwise the three large state schools are very similar, and you should visit each campus before you make up your mind (only you know what you like…).</p>

<p>Good Luck!</p>

<p>From UK’s website:</p>

<p>Co-ops</p>

<p>Our mission is to provide students with at least 12 months of work experience while they continue to make progress towards an academic degree in engineering. The co-op program integrates theory learned in the classroom with its practical application in industry.</p>

<p>We also strive to provide industry with the students needed to maintain a skilled and well educated workforce for future years. Our employers get a chance to mentor a student, introduce him or her to their business, and possibly hire him or her after graduation.</p>

<p>Through co-operative education, we help students obtain transferable skills, such as communication, leadership, presentation, teamwork and social skills. Students get a glimpse of “real life” as an engineer.”</p>

<p>Our assessment tools provide the college with necessary tools and data for accreditation.</p>

<p>Participation and Outcomes</p>

<p>Roughly one-third of UK ‘s eligible engineering and computer science students elect to participate in co-op. Many employers located across the nation are consistent co-op partners – such as the National Security Agency, GE, Eastman Chemical Company, Duke Energy, Marathon Petroleum, BMW, and NASA. “In state” employers such as Ashland,<em>Lexmark, Trane, LinkBelt, Messer Construction, CMTA, Turner Construction, Alltech, CMWA, Progeny,</em>Toyota, the Center for Applied Energy Research, Altec Industries, LG&E and KU,*Ceradyne, Parker Seals, and many more participate.</p>

<p>About thirty percent of our co-op work outside of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.</p>

<p>The company size is not important; the work assignments must, however, complement academic programs. Most Co-op employers request students to work for a total of three, full-time semesters (about four months each) alternating with semesters of study on campus. Typically, 90 percent of UK’s co-op graduates have received job offers before receiving their diplomas. Their starting salaries are consistently in the 75th percentile of starting salaries being reported nationwide by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.</p>

<p>Fifteen percent of UK co-op graduates go on to pursue advanced degrees, securing fellowships and assistantships from such schools as UK, Purdue, GA Tech, MIT, Duke, Virginia Tech, Johns Hopkins, University of Florida, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and UC Berkeley.</p>

<p>I suggest that you contact UK to find out where their Eng’g grads get employed.</p>

<p>Tony Colella
Director of Engineering Recruitment
University of Kentucky
College of Engineering
383 Ralph G Anderson Bldg.
Lexington KY 40506-0503
Phone: 859-257-0552
Fax: 859-257-4922
<a href=“mailto:joseph.colella@uky.edu”>joseph.colella@uky.edu</a></p>

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<p>Mom2collegekids, you missed my point. </p>

<p>It’s more the fact that many companies like mine that do national recruiting don’t think that going to UK is worth the time and money. That is relevant if you want the most exciting opportunities. </p>

<p>Sure, you will find companies that recruit at UK, but almost ALL companies who do national recruiting will recruit at the 5 the OP listed. If you want the largest and most lucrative pool of opportunities, you are more likely to find that at the top schools.</p>

<p>I can’t compare those schools to each other, but my son did check out Case Western and was very impressed with it (as were his parents). They also offered him a 20K per year merit scholarship which was also very nice!
It does stand apart from the others schools since it is much smaller as well as being private. My son was more interested in small to medium sized engineering programs so Case Western was a good fit for him, though he ultimately chose another school :)</p>

<p>Recruiting at Purdue <a href=“https://careerfair.purdueesc.org/ir2013/students/employer-list/[/url]”>https://careerfair.purdueesc.org/ir2013/students/employer-list/&lt;/a&gt; and Michigan [SWE/TBP</a> Career Fair: Companies Attending](<a href=“http://umcareerfair.org/companies/]SWE/TBP”>http://umcareerfair.org/companies/)</p>

<p>*Quote:
The fact that some NE company isn’t recruiting at Kentucky is really irrelevant
Mom2collegekids, you missed my point. </p>

<p>==========</p>

<p>It’s more the fact that many companies like mine that do national recruiting don’t think that going to UK is worth the time and money. That is relevant if you want the most exciting opportunities. </p>

<p>Sure, you will find companies that recruit at UK, but almost ALL companies who do national recruiting will recruit at the 5 the OP listed. If you want the largest and most lucrative pool of opportunities, you are more likely to find that at the top schools.*</p>

<p>lol…I got your point. Don’t underestimate me. ;)</p>

<p>I know how national recruiting works. You’re not going to send out reps to 100+ schools with good eng’g programs when you can get what you want by visiting 5-10 schools. It isn’t worth the money to visit 100+ schools…too expensive, too much man-power, too much in travel costs. </p>

<p>Much of eng’g recruiting is LOCAL. And many national companies have local divisions…and those that are local to UK will recruit THERE. They aren’t going to skip over UK and only visit UMich, Cal or wherever. </p>

<p>It may sound sexy to get recruited to work across the nation, but many students don’t even really want that. Many are happy to be recruited by the big companies that have divisions within 500 miles of their universities. </p>

<p>I know that you’re a big fan of borrowing large amounts to go to top ranked schools. However, in many/most cases, the ROI just isn’t there. And, if taking on large debt was involved, then it really was a short-sighted decision.</p>

<p>To the OP:</p>

<p>Visit if possible.</p>

<p>Although Purdue and U Illinois are ranked similarly, S and I visited Purdue and it seemed a good fit. There was a lot we liked about the campus and the programs available. The visit was well planned by the school.</p>

<p>We visited U Illinois and S and I both HATED the visit. It was disorganized, my S thought the campus appeared dirty, and I left feeling like we were not a priority to them (I left a LONG rant about our visit on the thread titled colleges you crossed off your list after a visit).</p>

<p>After the visits he chose to apply to Purdue and didn’t even apply to U Illinois. Ultimately since he didn’t get a merit award offer, he is now at another school, but the visits helped determine where to apply.</p>

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<p>That depends entirely on the employer. It certainly isn’t considered a prestigious engineering program by any means, but depending on the eventual job goal, that may be a nonissue. Kentucky, for example, is going to have a more regional recruiting profile than are Illinois, Purdue and Michigan. A company from, say, California is likely much more familiar with engineers from these three schools than Kentucky given the reputation that those three already enjoy. So, while an interviewer may not be thinking that Kentucky graduates are minimally competent, they will be starting from behind in trying to get hired over graduates from schools that the company is known to like hiring.</p>

<p>Of course, this is all a moot point if the ultimate goal of a given student is to get a job at a company that is known to hire at the “less prestigious” school.</p>

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<p>This is absolutely false. While the money won’t likely be ridiculously different, it is pretty well-known that graduates from what a given company considers a top school may make several thousand dollars per year more than graduates of a less respected school by the same employer, even if the employer deems the second graduate worthy of hiring. That said, it won’t likely be substantially different and this will vary quite a bit by company.</p>

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<p>Don’t get so hung up on rankings. The rankings loosely correlate to what employers think of a given program, but it is far from perfect, and you don’t have to go to a top 10 school to have a good shot at jobs. Probably the best way to look at it is to check the companies that recruit at a given school’s career fairs and career services. If those companies match the kind of companies that you hope to work for, then that school is likely to be perfectly fine for you, even if it is East Random University. On the other hand, if their recruiting companies tend to be a lot of stuff you have no interest in, you may want to keep looking.</p>

<p>All that said, if you have the grades and the money and the desire to go to a top 10 school, by all means do. Challenging yourself is always a positive thing to do, and while going to a top school is not a guarantee of success or guaranteed to make you a better engineer, there will be more resources and opportunities to do exactly that at these schools if you have the right mindset to utilize them.</p>

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<p>This is only true for some companies. Google’s recruiting is certainly not only local. Ditto Lockheed, Boeing, Intel, Microsoft, and many other “prestigious” companies that lots of engineers want to work for. Those companies recruit nationally and regionally, but nationally they tend to target “top” schools based both on limited resources and a perceived skills match with the average graduate of said schools. You won’t have as many of those opportunities at Kentucky as you will at Michigan or Illinois or Purdue. Whether that is fair or not is another debate.</p>

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<p>This is very true, and that is why a student needs to think about that when choosing a school. Choosing a school is all about matching the school to your ultimate educational and career goals. With this OP, there isn’t really enough information given to advise one way or the other in terms of whether a top school is worth it.</p>

<p>The other compounding factor is that most high school students applying for college don’t know exactly what they want to do or where they want to work when they finish. For those many students, if the price is right, it is certainly advantageous to go to the school that leaves the most doors open, and in at least a decent number of cases, a “top” school is going to have more open doors than a “middling” school.</p>

<p>I was a manager for one of the large aerospace companies and we did target the top 10 or so engineering schools in our recruiting. So we did end up with a lot of engineers from those top schools but still had people from all over working at the company. </p>

<p>Those from the top 10 schools did also get higher starting salaries but not that much more. One’s performance dictated what kind of merit increase you got and the difference in starting salaries washed out very quickly. </p>

<p>Focus on schools where you can be successful. The one given that did make a difference was that we had a strict cut off at a 3.0 GPA and sometimes informally much higher (depending on the quantity and quality of the applicants). The cutoff wasn’t adjusted by the college attended.</p>

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<p>However, the bigger companies have more recruiting resource and greater needs, so they tend to recruit more widely than smaller companies. You are much more likely to see GAFAM in your non-California school career center than you are to see a small Silicon Valley startup. Also, you probably know who a lot of the big companies are, so you can apply to them directly.</p>

<p>Here are Lockheed’s college recruiting events. Note that they are not limiting recruiting to “top” schools.
[Lockheed</a> Martin · Campus Events](<a href=“http://www.lockheedmartinjobs.com/campus-events.asp]Lockheed”>http://www.lockheedmartinjobs.com/campus-events.asp)</p>

<p>Boeing’s list of upcoming college recruiting events.
[Boeing:</a> Interns & Graduates - Career Fairs](<a href=“http://www.boeing.com/boeing/careers/collegecareers/events_calendar.page?]Boeing:”>http://www.boeing.com/boeing/careers/collegecareers/events_calendar.page?)</p>

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<p>Fair enough, though applying directly is often disadvantageous compared to getting to put a face to a resume. You also still see a lot more engineers at those schools from the perceived “top” schools, especially in leadership positions, though some of this can certainly be attributed to the larger overall size of many of those programs.</p>

<p>Ultimately, though, I stand by my usual advice: take a look at the career fairs and see what companies recruit and make a school decision that does not close off any career doors that you think you may be interested in pursuing while also making financial sense and where you will be comfortable. I’d also generally recommend going to the “best” school that fits all these criteria.</p>

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<p>Large size helps. Also, the “top” schools are often more selective at the admissions level, so, for a given size frosh class of engineering majors, more will graduate in engineering at the “top” schools than at other schools, resulting in a greater number of recruitable students at the “top” schools over other schools with similar size frosh classes of engineering majors (i.e. more attractive for employers to recruit where there are more recruitable students).</p>

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<p>Just fixing a typo in case anyone reads it later and has no idea what I was talking about.</p>

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<p>Why can’t you respect the OP when he said that his financing is adequate. </p>

<p>I’m not <em>always</em> a fan of borrowing large amounts of money to go to top ranked schools. I think it depends on the situation. I’m often a fan, but not always. </p>

<p>For this OP, I took him at his word that he has the resources. I think the 50K involved that he’s talking about is potentially a very good investment if he gets into an exciting company working on cutting edge stuff where his value will grow much faster than it would at some local yokel company doing routine commodity engineering work. </p>

<p>If he had to borrow that money, it’s a obviously a less good investment, but still potentially good. The downside risk is no doubt higher. If it were $100K of his own money, I’d say don’t do it - UK is probably a better bet. If it were $100K of his parents money, it would depend on the prospects of the parents to pay it back.</p>

<p>I would not generally recommend $100,000 of student loan debt, whether the student’s or the parents’ (and the student would need parent or other co-signers). That means that neither the student nor the parents have the money, and they are all hoping that the student makes enough money to pay it back in a reasonable time after graduation.</p>

<p>Note that if the parents take loans or co-sign student loans, they need to have life and disability insurance on the student to pay off the loans if the student dies or become disabled and unable to work.</p>