<p>I keep hearing about this "option" for engineers and I have very little knowledge of it myself.
How many engineers end up in this field?
What are the jobs like?
What's the pay like?
Can you get a job in the field with a BS from a top school in your major?
MS?</p>
<p>Yes, I don't have specific stat but many consulting firms value the analytical skills of engineering students and routinely recruit at top engineering colleges. The offer is usually more attractive than that of typical engineering position. However, their recruits will likely end up not doing any hardcore engineering.</p>
<p>yes, I heard that too.
eng. graduates in the consulting field don't do much hard core eng. stuff.</p>
<p>so, its a good field for people who are interested in going into other feilds w/ a eng. degree.</p>
<p>Clearly, here we are talking about management consulting (accenture, booz allen, mckinsey...) and not engineering consulting (Bechtel etc).</p>
<p>Most people I know ended up doing computer work like SAP applications so I guess have a tech background is good. They tend to look for good grades.</p>
<p>I have a related question: At what point does the engineering student approach the "fork in the road," if you will, between aiming for a consulting job and aiming for a more technical path (i.e., get an engineering job or go to engineering grad school)?</p>
<p>I know that if I spend all my extracurriculars (summer jobs, internships, what have you) doing non-technical stuff, it's harder to get into engineering grad school or get an engineering job after graduation. I'd like to know if the consulting (or i-banking, if you like) world is similar. Like, if all my extracurriculars are in technical things (e.g., intern at GE/Exxon/Lockheed/IBM/NASA over the summer, do research with professors, etc.), will recruiters take me seriously if I apply for a consulting job?</p>
<p>hope this doesn't feel like too big a departure from the main thread topic.</p>
<p>I'm currently a consultant for an experimental aerospace group in Pasadena. The job is really relaxed but really uses the mind.
My pay is $62.50/hr...but since I am still in school I only work one day every two weeks.
A lot of engineers at JPL do consulting on their "off-time" to pick up a little more cash. If you network well, you should be able to pull of some basic consulting jobs while in college.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I keep hearing about this "option" for engineers and I have very little knowledge of it myself.
How many engineers end up in this field?
What are the jobs like?
What's the pay like?
Can you get a job in the field with a BS from a top school in your major?
MS?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'll put it to you this way. It's become something of a running joke at MIT that many of the best MIT engineering students do not end up taking engineering jobs, instead heading off to consulting (as well as investment banking). Many MIT engineering students are less interested in landing a job with a top engineering firm than in landing a job with McKinsey. </p>
<p>Personally, I think this is just an indictment of the engineering industry in that, sadly, the best engineers are simply not rewarded properly, hence, creating a braindrain. Most engineering firms are simply not willing to pay for top engineering talent. That is why many MIT engineering students, which are clearly some of the best engineering students in the world, feel that they are better off in not actually working as engineers, because they feel that they have better opportunities in consulting or banking, which basically means that engineering is not able to offer them enough opportunities. Sad but true.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'll put it to you this way. It's become something of a running joke at MIT that many of the best MIT engineering students do not end up taking engineering jobs, instead heading off to consulting (as well as investment banking). Many MIT engineering students are less interested in landing a job with a top engineering firm than in landing a job with McKinsey.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This can be said about just about any undergraduate degree. How many history majors go on to become professional historians?</p>
<p>And, once again, in contrast to Sakky I feel that this has nothing whatsoever to do with engineering. The investment banks and consulting firms overpay and skim off some of the cream of all majors, not just engineers or even mostly engineers. Mostly they steal liberal arts majors from other liberal arts employers. For every engineering firm that loses an engineer to a consulting firm there are numerous employers of liberal arts grads who lose their potential employees to these same firms. </p>
<p>Basically no industry overpays new grads like these two industries do. So that means every other industry pays less. That includes all engineering-related industries, but also the far more numerous all-every other type of industry that everyone else who aren't engineers go into.</p>
<p>I don't necessarily think there's something wrong with engineering just because there exists two particular industries that pay more. Industries which are really only open to a trivial # of grads. </p>
<p>Yeah some MIT guys will take these offers, and won't go into engineering. And some Yale liberal arts majors will get these offers and then won't go into advertising, or whatever. So then is there something fundamentally wrong with advertising? Most people outside the top 15 schools, regardless of major, will never see these opportunities anyway. But this is hardly an issue confined to engineering employers, not are they the most affected by it. So there is no particular reason to single them out. IMO.</p>
<p>Monydad, my reason to single out engineering is the same as it has always been - that the Federal government and the business community has already 'singled out' engineering. I'm sure you've seen all of the reports - that the US does not produce enough engineers, that the business community laments the lack of technical skills among young Americans, that the US needs to reform its education system to emphasize greater math and science skills to meet the challenge of Asia, etc. etc. Numerous reports from various periodicals have discussed this theme in the last few years.</p>
<p>And my response to all of those articles is simple - the US already, right now, produces plenty of superstar engineers who decide not to go to engineering. Like I said, plenty of the top engineering students from MIT, Stanford, and other top schools never work a day in their lives as engineers, instead opting for other careers. Many other people who could become top engineering students don't even bother to major in engineering, instead opting to major in something else. Management is now the 3rd or 4th most popular undergraduate major at MIT. It never used to be this popular before - and in fact, the burgeoning popularity of management has compelled the Sloan School to expand course capacity to accomodate the extra demand from undergraduates. I'm fairly certain that most of these Sloanies could have gotten engineering degrees and become quite good engineers. They just don't WANT to do that, instead opting to prepare themselves for a job in consulting or banking.</p>
<p>So it is not I that is singling out engineering, but it is rather that the mass media, the government, and the business community has ALREADY singled out engineering as a field that more Americans are supposedly going to enter through better government and social policy. Nobody in government is pushing more people to major in American Studies. You don't see any news articles decrying the lack of Americans majoring in Leisure Studies. You don't see business leaders like Jeff Immelt, Bill Gates, or Craig Barrett complaining about how the nation's youth lacks knowledge in Film Studies. It is engineering that is singled out as a focus upon which to enact educational reforms. </p>
<p>Since engineering is the field that has already been singled out, that is why I also single it out. And my response to all of that is simple - the reason why not as many Americans study engineering is that, frankly, it doesn't pay well enough and it doesn't offer as good of a career path as other fields do, particularly for the superstars. If engineering companies were to offer superstar salaries and great career development, then those MIT engineering students who opted for consulting or banking would no longer do so. Sloan Management would no longer be as popular of an undergraduate major at MIT as it is today, as many students would switch to engineering. Not all, of course, but many. </p>
<p>Hence, the real issue is not really that the country doesn't produce enough engineers, but rather that the incentives are simply not aligned, again, especially for the top people. The real issue is then not a lack of ability of American students to study engineering, but rather, an unwillingness on the part of companies to pay engineers properly. </p>
<p>*Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: "It's marketed as--I don't want to say dead end but sort of 'O.K., here's your role, here's your lab, here's what you're going to be working on.' Even if it's a really cool product, you're locked into it." Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. "If you're an M.I.T. grad and you're going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day--as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that--it seems like a no-brainer." *</p>
<p>Now, don't get me wrong. I think these problems are mostly located at the top - with the very best engineering students. If you're a mediocre student at a no-name school, then getting an engineering degree with that 50k starting salary is a sweet deal because, frankly, you're probably not going to do much better than that. It sure beats the heck out of getting paid 30k with a liberal arts degree. But if you're a star, i.e. you're an MIT or Stanford or Caltech student, then you have a lot of options available to you, and engineering therefore doesn't look as appealing.</p>