<p>I wouldn’t consider those “lower level schools”, particularly A&M. A 25 will not get you in there and won’t really be very competitive.</p>
<p>Why do you want engineering in the first place? What makes you think you can handle it at any school?</p>
<p>@chardo, because I am super strong in Math and Science and I love both areas. I can handle it. Thank you.</p>
<p>^ not meant to disparage. It’s just that we see so many kids choose engineering for the wrong reasons, then bail out when they can’t handle it or don’t like it. Engineering is the most difficult major. You need the goods and the desire. Just want you to be sure that you have both.</p>
<p>According to one world ranking system, A&M is the 22nd ranked Engineering school in the world. Arizona is in a group from 101-150 (shanghairanking.com). MIT is 1, GaTech is 9. You would have to dig into the methodology to determine if their ranking criteria is on par with yours, but suffice it to say that A&M is one of the top schools and is well-respected in Engineering.</p>
<p>What state are you from? Most likely your state has a good program in their flagship school.</p>
<p>Reputation does carry some weight but not as much as you might think. I somewhat recently retired from a big aerospace company where I was an engineering manager. I am also an MIT grad. Our HR department concentrated their recruitment on the top 10 or engineering schools and so we had more resumes from them than any other schools. However, there were no restrictions on who could submit a resume and I would see many different schools. </p>
<p>Over my career, I hired about 40 or so college hires. About 1/3 were from top 10 engineering schools. Those from the top 10 schools were offered a little more money than the other schools. Raise pools would average from about 3.5% to 5% (with the top raises about twice the average). So the higher starting salaries would help for a few years, but the difference would disappear and the on the job performance would dictate how far one went in the company (and how much would make). No one school or even the top 10 group of schools dominated the upper level engineering positions within the company.</p>
<p>I would not try to bring up where I went to school as it didn’t really matter as much as your performance on the job. But every once in a while someone would bring it up when meeting new people. I would notice a slight rise in their demeanor and most would say something about MIT. Then the meeting would begin and it was your knowledge, understanding and judgment that was being evaluated by the others in the meeting, not where you went to school.</p>
<p>Also, what you learn in school is only the basics of engineering. There is (or should be) so much more you learn on the job. I would venture to guess that well over 90% of the knowledge I used in my job was obtained on the job verses what I learned in school. To me, I felt that college was really an exercise in how to learn more than what you learned. The top 10 schools got more than their share of top students but a lot of good students went to non top 10 schools.</p>
<p>So bottom line to me. School matters only very little and mostly initially on the job. </p>
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<p>This is important and needs to be repeated along with perhaps an addendum about learning the fundamentals. You learn not only how to learn, but also the things you need to know so that you can effectively process all of the on-the-job learning you’ll be doing.</p>
<p>Usually, the programs known to be more rigorous are primarily simply going deeper into the fundamentals rather than adding many actual applications, in my experience.</p>
<p>@Torveaux, I will take that ranking site with a grain of salt. What little I know, I think Rice is way better than Rutgers (in my home state) and they are ranked almost equally on this site. But, I was looking at no particular ranking when I created this thread. </p>
<p>You have to take ALL ranking sites for all disciplines with a grain of salt. You can get a general idea of tiers, but that’s about it and even then there are some outliers. You have to know what they are ranking, how they are doing it and most importantly, how all of that pertains to your needs. </p>
<p>Much more important is how do you see yourself fitting into the mission and teaching style of the school and do you like the non-academics, both at the school and in the community.</p>
<p>Then, make the best of it!</p>
<p>Sometimes regional connections are more important than school ranking. </p>
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<p>It seems that most NJ residents posting here greatly underrate Rutgers.</p>
<p>I think that happens with many locales. The local school is not ‘exotic’ or ‘sexy’ so it does not carry the allure of an OOS or elite school. </p>
<p>I absolutely agree with the ranking info taken with a grain of salt. When were were putting together the giant spreadsheet for S1’s search, we did a weighted average of about 5 different ranking systems. He weighted Engineering rankings higher than general ones and he considered the methodology of US News to be less meaningful than that of Forbes or the Chinese one above and weighted accordingly. In general, I think if a school consistently comes up in the rankings on various systems, it is likely a top player. One can argue the placement, but if you think in terms of tiers it may help. </p>
<p>I would also concur with HPuck35 about performance being much more telling than school reputation. We have a number of Ivy league and other top school engineers working for our company. Oddly enough, many of them are doing operational analysis on finance rather than engineering, per se. Those with the top school pedigree get a certain measure of respect at first, but we have a bunch of these analysts and they report to an engineer that went to UTD. We had two that went to the same Ivy league school. 1 worked out, 1 didn’t. </p>