<p>
I just simply don’t agree. If work quality is comparable there will not be a big difference in career.</p>
<p>I don’t agree either. If hypothetically, the Alabama grad changed jobs 5 times in the year it took you to promote the MIT engineer. Most would probably agree that the UA engineer would be making more.</p>
<p>You’re also discounting the fact that changing jobs can possibly land you a lower salary than before.</p>
<p>Often times with engineering, the proof is in the pudding (unlike Finance and Consulting). Having a degree from MIT isn’t going to allow to BS your way through why your navigation code landed Apollo on Mars.</p>
<p>Its a matter of opportunity, or lack thereof, that makes the difference. </p>
<p>Its not much different than NFL recruiting from colleges. The big schools attract recruiters by the masses, and offer the players much more visibility. Not only this, but they attract the top players and coaches to begin with. A star running back at BuFu U gets picked up every now and then, but he has to be an absolute standout. This while half the U Florida team will get picked up regardless. </p>
<p>A moderately good student like myself at Purdue has a handful of companies to choose from come graduation, even in this economic climate. If I were at a no-name school I would have to work twice as hard to get a job, let alone a handful of offers. Whether or not I perform well on the job will probably determine whether or not the school name pays off down the road - but I know it wont hurt. I look at it like the school hands me the ball, what I do with it from there is up to me.</p>
<p>G.P. - I was kidding about the MIT grads on Wall Street in response to Sakky’s post. (If I knew how to add a smiley emoticon I would have added one.) Lighten up.</p>
<p>After working for years as an engineer I have a few thoughts.</p>
<p>-Once your into a company as a mid-level engineer(bachelors or masters), my experience is that the school you went to makes no difference. Honestly, I wish it made more difference because I went top a bunch of highly ranked schools. I am/was dissappointed at how little difference it actually does make. 15 years down the road do they care if somebody went to MIT when it comes to a promotion…my experience has been…“not at all”. For these intro level jobs is the difference in salary between the top 5 or 10 engnineering schools that different from the top 100…my experience has been that there is little difference.</p>
<p>With all this being said, school rank can make a huge difference. Here is how…</p>
<p>-It can help with your first job and internships, and the first job can really set the tone for your career. The better ranked schools bring companies from across the US who want to interview you. With this being said, the US economy has been so messed up over the last 10 years that it seems like companies either hire anybody with an engineering degree and a pulse or they simply don’t hire.</p>
<p>-Part of the rank is how much money these Engineering schools have in Grants and fellowships. If you’re are in graduate school for a Masters or PhD, the highest ranked schools will have a lot better chance to fund you. Even a Teaching Assistant in you Masters degree will give you tuition waiver, stipend, and a good experience for your CV/resume. To me, this is huge.</p>
<p>-The school you go to makes a significant difference when applying to grad school. </p>
<p>-Once you get into the top jobs as an engineer, especially those that require a Ph.D. the institution that you got your Ph.D. from makes a huge difference. These type of jobs are academic jobs as a Prof, Prime Slots in a Start-up, or Research jobs at a major company.</p>
<p>To briefly summarize:</p>
<p>Prestige will help you land your first job but after that work experience matters. More importantly if you compare two top schools (lets say Michigan and MIT), there won’t be a MIT signing bonus or bump in salary. Sure, MIT graduates might have higher salaries than Michigan but I bet that’s due to the companies that recruit at MIT (Wall Street and etc). If two students are competing for the same job, prestige won’t give you extra bucks–your GPA/activities will.</p>
<p>On the graduate school wise your school name matters but what matters more is WHO you worked for.</p>
<p>I feel like a lot of these “brief summaries” are pretty much what I said back in like the 5th post, haha.</p>
<p>Sorry bone, I skimmed most of the posts. </p>
<p>Now lets go debunk the “law of wall” and revolutionize turbulent flow. </p>
<p>DOWN WITH EMPIRICALLY CORRELATED CONSTANTS</p>
<p>Haha, good luck with that. Meanwhile, I am going to keep writing this research proposal so that maybe NASA to fund my Ph.D. I figure I have a good shot. It is in their interest that I successfully delay transition in hypersonic flow, that way their vehicles don’t burn up.</p>
<p>The last deviation from the thread:</p>
<p>I once had NASA funding to look into radiative heat transfer problems, specifically ablation upon re-entry but that dried up due to the recession. </p>
<p>It was a sad day for me but a great day for Shiner Bock breweries.</p>
<p>Hahaha, I have Shiner in my fridge right now. Is radiative heat transfer really an issue on reentry? I would have thought that convection would heavily dominate to the point of making radiation negligible, although at those temps, I suppose even radiation could be a pretty nasty factor.</p>
<p>And if you are a Shiner fan, does that mean you go to school in Texas or did you pick it up somewhere outside of its home state?</p>
<p>Reentry temperatures vary but you’ll expect at the very least a 800K temperature and thanks to the nasty T^4 dependency, radiative heat fluxes can become nasty quick. On the same note, convection will play a role but if we are looking at the thermal tile properties, even a small increase in reflective properties can make a big difference.</p>
<p>I’m a native Texan so Shiner has always been part of diet.</p>
<p>Gotcha. That is what I figured after reasoning it out in my head.</p>
<p>And I am not even a native Texan and I think that stuff is great! I am just living down here for school, and that was the first thing I bought at the store, haha.</p>
<p>this thread is so wrong. Not every engineer graduate to become engineers. At Michigan Engineering, 20% of engineering grad end up working in lucrative fields like finance and consulting… every single prestigious investment bank and management consulting firms recruit here. Do you seriously think you can say the same at a school like Cal Poly?</p>
<p>Also, you might want to get into grad school or get an MBA one day. A top school gives you instant credibility. A bad school does not. Obviously GPA is very important, but all else being equal, who do you think would get in? a 3.7 from MIT or a 3.7 from Cal Poly.</p>
<p>Even within the engineering field, being a target school means better recruiting, more leeway for lower gpa…</p>
<p>does the MIT graduate w/ a 3.7 have the same “hands on” experience as the cal poly graduate w/ a 3.7 :P</p>
<p>“all else being equal” o.O</p>
<p>keep ur funky stares to yourself. MIT does not offer hands on experience. theyre book worms.</p>
<p>The better question is does the MIT guy have the same interpersonal skills as the Cal Poly guy. A lot of times the answer would be no, and that would help put the two closer to the same playing field. I would say the MIT guy still gets the job though anywhere but the west coast.</p>
<p>is “all else being equal” or “ceteris paribus” that hard to understand?</p>
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<p>That’s not true. Students at top schools like MIT are less likely to go directly into practice; most pursue graduate school, non-engineering positions, or R&D positions. However, the students that do go into practice do get “hands on” experience in internships.</p>
<p>One misnomer about engineering - it’s not a trade. Engineering is not a field where you “get your hands dirty and figure it out” like auto mechanics, or culinary arts. Many schools, especially the teaching schools like Cal Poly, believe it is, but that is not the case. A student that learns using that method is not an engineer, but rather an engineering technician, despite what that person’s degree might state.</p>
<p>A real engineer is someone who is taught first principals and can deduce practice from the basis of theory. A real engineering student should be able to explain a distillation column, for instance, before ever seeing one or being told what one is. They should be able to use the basics of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and mass transport to identify how such a theoretical piece of equipment should work. Such an education allows students to have a fundamental and theoretical understanding of the unit, so that when faced with issues in practice, the student can resolve the issue using fundamental analysis and not text books or case studies. </p>
<p>The current philosophy of most schools to lecture, show, then explain creates substandard engineers. That is why the school you attend matters.</p>