Don't go to an Engineering College !!

College Search & Selection
61

<p>[irony/url</a>:</p>

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...Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs...

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</p>

<p>e.g.: A [url=<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061160904-post2.html%5Dlamentation"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1061160904-post2.html]lamentation&lt;/a> on the shortcomings of engineering](<a href="http://www.answers.com/irony%5Dirony%5B/url"&gt;http://www.answers.com/irony) using the fruits (computers, Internet, message board, etc.) of the discipline being lamented.</p>

<p>To students considering engineering as a vocation and passion:</p>

<p>Curiosity is your paint, imagination is your brush and the future is your canvas. Let art and science guide your strokes of heart and mind in the service of mankind.</p>

62

<p>This same thing is said about being a scientist. If it's your passion, go for it. But don't do it for ulterior motives like job security, job stability, salary, ease of finding employment or any of the other things that are commonly associated with the hard sciences, because you will most likely be disappointed. At this particular juncture in the economic world, I can't see going to college for business or law either. I guess this generation of college students should just major in Norwegian studies and start collecting unemployment.</p>

<p>The grim reality is that the median salary in the United States is about 50K/annum. That number is made up by a large amount of people with years and even decades of experience. The positions that pay well in excess of the median are few. </p>

<p>Don't go to college for some perceived financial advantage. Instead, go to college for the opportunities it opens up. Without college, it would take much longer and may not even be possible to pursue many careers. If used appropriately, a degree can be a tool that will open you up to new experiences, both professionally and personally. It's not a bad deal, just don't expect it to pay off quickly.</p>

63

<p>You know, when I see people posting something stupid like this, I wonder why they haven’t taken their life already.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>First of all, if you are going for engineering you should like what you are doing. You won’t mind spending the extra time studying or doing problems if you find what you are doing interesting and fun. Yeah, and about your friends in liberal arts having fun, lol, try finding a job with a major like that. I have friends who just graduated in mass com, English, business, that can’t find a job to save their life. Engineering provides a solid background to go into any field. An engineering degree represents a person who is well educated and knows how to solve problems when they arise. A lot of other people I know who majored in education are now working at Wal Mart because the kids they were teaching were so bad they couldn’t stand it anymore. About them dating in school, well that is ultimately their choice. If you want to date you date, if you don’t want to date you don’t date. It is your choice. Or maybe the engineers decided they didn’t want to have a whore for a wife/husband, which is all you find in college, lol. Especially liberal arts majors, lol. They also didn’t want someone who would empty their bank account and marry them just for their money.</p></li>
<li><p>If you are an engineering major you don’t care about every other worthless class that is offered at a college campus. You will like what you are doing and actually enjoy it. If you don’t, then don’t major in engineering. Chances are, if you’re engineering major none of the other subjects interest you at all. Everything besides math, science, and engineering will put you to sleep and you will be able to pass everything other subject with flying colors because they are so pitiful. You also will consider every other subject worthless, and realize anyone with the IQ of a Sloth can major in those areas.</p></li>
<li><p>So, I guess people only live in California and Massachusetts, give me a break. There are many places to work as an engineer. I don’t know of anyone who graduated from a Southern University in Engineering who had to move to the west coast. Good luck with the earth quakes, tsunamis, landslides, forest fires, and volcanic activity.</p></li>
<li><p>Long Hours, well you are just in the wrong field. I don’t know too many engineers who work over 40 hours a week. Everyone who works 40 works in oil related industries. But they are well compensated for the time they put in.</p></li>
<li><p>Mostly men huh, yeah that is right, but most women aren’t interesting in engineering regardless. They like having a lot of free time with friends and everything else that goes with it. It is also not cool among the in crowd to be interested in science/tech. The women who do major in engineering usually do really well. They are also able to find jobs, unlike there liberal arts counter parts. Good luck finding a job outside of teaching or managing a Target.</p></li>
<li><p>Mostly Foreigners- well look who is being racist. Honestly, why do all of these foreigners go into engineering, because they know it will offer them solid job opportunities and a great starting salary. A lot of these people have a hard time finding jobs outside of programming/computers because they don’t know how to communicate or express their ideas effectively. Getting a job has a lot to do with being knowledgeable about what people want. You must be able to present information and express your ideas in an effective manner. You should have seen how the foreigners did on the last engineering presentation we were assigned. Let’s just say it didn’t go well.</p></li>
<li><p>Salary will top out early. Well, those engineers must have some really crappy jobs. Liberal arts passing up engineers, haha, first they have to find a job to even start getting paid, lol. 3-5 years experience, maybe in programming/computer, the technology moves so fast you can easily be replaced by fresh college graduates, but even the foreigners will be replaced by others in those fields. In other engineering disciplines, the more experienced you have the more valuable you are to the company. Show me someone out of college who can manage the construction or design a sky scrapper. Show me one college graduate that knows how to drill a directional well at 28,000ft. Show me one college graduate that can supervise the production of a military jet fighter. Show me one who can design an entire power plant or Nuclear reactor. Your statement has no backing. Oil companies offer big bucks to engineers who have the experience and knowledge to oversee large projects. You have no idea what the hell you are talking about.</p></li>
<li><p>By 30’s you’ll be worried about your job. My uncle isn’t worried about his job, my dad isn’t worried about his job. Maybe you just have a crappy job. I know if the company loses them they are screwed. Royally screwed. Worry about your job in your 30’s only applies to the computer/programming industry that is it. Other industries need experienced professionals to make the big decisions and supervise projects. This is just a stupid statement. You show your worth to a company by how much you learn, know, and do. If you’re not doing then you deserve to be fired.</p></li>
<li><p>Won’t be a manger, well that all depends on the business and career choice. Really, if you are a horrible engineer, you won’t move up into management. That is why it is essential you keep learning, know how to express your ideas, and know how to manage situations. Your there to beat out everyone else to prove your worth. Just like with everything else. A doctor won’t manage a hospital; they will continue to do their job like everyone else. People are just hard to please no matter what they go into. If you want to go into management get an MBA. If engineers wanted to be managers, god forbid, they would have majored in business.</p></li>
<li><p>Outlook bleak. WOW, are you off. We need to increase our energy by 50 percent in the next 30 years. Who will solve those problems, engineers of course. Who will rebuild America’s aging infrastructure, engineers of course. Who will keep our military growing in technology and ahead of the game. Engineers of course. Without engineers/scientists/mathematicians we would still be living in grass huts, under the ground, and dying at early ages. Quite frankly, I doubt the human race would be around at all. The future has some very difficult challenges to overcome. The outlook for engineers never looked so bright. So, if you want to save humanity from destruction, become an engineer.</p></li>
</ol>

64

<p>"when I see people posting something stupid like this, I wonder why they haven’t taken their life already"</p>

<p>You're a jerk.</p>

65

<p>"6) many if not most of your coworkers are going to be foreigners"</p>

<p>What you don't like Chinese or Indians or other "foreigners" you xenophobic, sinophobic, Indiaphobic redneck sounding person? I would love to have the chance to return to the home of my ancestors and maybe work on my mandarin if I get the chance.</p>

66

<p>Nah, I like Forever LSU belvitt. I mean he says it quite bluntly and un-pc, but he gets the point across pretty well.</p>

67

<p>"when I see people posting something stupid like this, I wonder why they haven’t taken their life already"</p>

<p>I completely agree. Racists, xenophobes, sinophobes, Indiaphobes, and asiaphobes should rethink their lives.</p>

68

<p>with Xmas I expected the witches and demons to come out of the woodwork, much as Dickens had them torment Marleys Ghost in his classic play. And right on schedule we have LSU ;) Read it carefully, prospective engineers. Do you want to work with someone like this? A roomful of them?</p>

<p>And if you like made-up "facts", LSU is your man. My first posts provided links and quotes that you can check. LSU? Apparently his market research consisted of his dad and uncle. Salaries don't flatten out?

[quote]
The NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) report on 2008 college graduates continues to show that those with technical degrees are not only getting job offers ahead of other graduates, but also drawing the highest salaries. The big discrepancy in the starting salaries of engineers and liberal arts majors is "one that we've seen forever. Liberal arts majors are just very different," says Luckenbaugh, NACE's research director. However, Luckenbaugh says that liberal arts majors have more long-term career opportunities, not only to attain higher salaries but also to reach leadership positions. Engineering graduates will usually reach a salary plateau sooner than a marketing or public relations professional."Those with liberal arts degrees may take longer to reach a better salary, but they will always have more career options in their future."
TG:</a> July 2008 Edufacts

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[quote]
For years the IEEE and other engineering organizations have complained of salary compression for engineers, based in part on age. The salary curve, they claim, rises sharply in the first 20 years of an engineer's career, plateaus and then falls off as they head into their 60s. Sure enough, the EE Times survey's salary curve parallels that track. It shows big boosts for respondents in their 20s and 30s, virtually no increase for engineers in their 40s and a decline after 55.
EETimes.com

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What</a> you see from LSU is a great example of what they call "cognitive dissonance" at work, something you'll learn about in that psych liberal arts class he sneers at. He's committed to engineering, and information to the contrary is frightening. So he attacks it because he's in too deep to change. With cognitive dissonance, you reconcile two opposing thoughts by denying one of them. Exhibit A: LSU</p>

<p>But you, the prospective engineer, you're not in too deep yet! And ask yourself how you'd like to work with people like LSU that have proudly proclaim no interest in anything outside of engineering, that despise women, and wear blinders about what's happening in their very career. I'll leave you with a few choice LSU quotes; isn't this someone you'd cross the street to avoid encountering?
[quote]
Or maybe the engineers decided they didn’t want to have a whore for a wife/husband, which is all you find in college, lol. Especially liberal arts majors, lol.</p>

<p>most women aren’t interesting in engineering regardless. They like having a lot of free time with friends and everything else that goes with it.</p>

<p>Chances are, if you’re engineering major none of the other subjects interest you at all. Everything besides math, science, and engineering will put you to sleep

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</p>

69

<p>Ok, obviously LSU was joking around with some of his statements that's why he said "lol"...though he really shouldn't have said that. Anyway I can find many obnoxious liberal arts majors who are here "just for the learning" and scorn "greedy pre-professionalism". Yuch! For the second one, I'm pretty sure he meant "interest*ed* in" and for the last one, it's more or less true. Liberal arts majors don't enjoy engineering classes as a whole anymore than engineering students. Some (not all of course) of them even say "eww...math" and this is at Stanford where everyone is pretty proficient at math! I don't want to fathom how it is at other schools! I mean, I dropped history my senior year in high school and would have dropped English if I could. I just didn't like it. And now I'm ****ed that I have to take core liberal arts classes at Stanford that waste my time (that force me to wake up for ungodly 9 and 10 am classes, therefore I sleep during them) and keep me from taking classes that really interest me. It's not a boon to take liberal arts courses if you don't want to. </p>

<p>Marleys_ghost, I'm a freshman (therefore still prospective) and not really swayed by your points. That's because you fail to tell me how studying engineering prevents you from doing things liberal arts majors can do! Fine, talk about all the problems in the field of engineering (as if other fields don't have those problems) but you don't even need to be an engineer with an engineering degree. So many engineers at Stanford and MIT go into the exciting world of finance in fact! I still think that, provided that you are fit for the challenge, engineering is the best undergraduate degree because it leaves sooooooooo many options open. You can still do whatever those liberal arts majors want to do with your engineering degree! Also, many liberal arts majors sort of end up unemployed, even at Stanford! During a reception for admitted students, I asked the recent graduates what they were doing. Those who had graduated with engineering degrees were either working for prestigious companies like Google, working on Wall Street, or going back for graduate degrees. Those who had graduated with liberal arts degrees were either in law school, Wall Street, free lance writers, or believe it or not, unemployed. With a degree from Stanford! Thats 200k down the drain right there...</p>

70

<p>Don't feed the troll......</p>

71

<p>
[quote]
with Xmas I expected the witches and demons to come out of the woodwork, much as Dickens had them torment Marleys Ghost in his classic play. And right on schedule we have LSU Read it carefully, prospective engineers. Do you want to work with someone like this? A roomful of them?</p>

<p>And if you like made-up "facts", LSU is your man. My first posts provided links and quotes that you can check. LSU? Apparently his market research consisted of his dad and uncle. Salaries don't flatten out?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Dude, what is your problem? Did engineers play tricks on you when you were a child? Did you flunk out of engineering school? </p>

<p>
[quote]
The NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) report on 2008 college graduates continues to show that those with technical degrees are not only getting job offers ahead of other graduates, but also drawing the highest salaries. The big discrepancy in the starting salaries of engineers and liberal arts majors is "one that we've seen forever. Liberal arts majors are just very different," says Luckenbaugh, NACE's research director. However, Luckenbaugh says that liberal arts majors have more long-term career opportunities, not only to attain higher salaries but also to reach leadership positions. Engineering graduates will usually reach a salary plateau sooner than a marketing or public relations professional."Those with liberal arts degrees may take longer to reach a better salary, but they will always have more career options in their future."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Right, I'm not going to dispute that a liberal arts degree can be a good background for grad school or whatever, but the problem is that not everyone can even get a job with a liberal arts degree. When I worked in fast food my supervisors and many of my coworkers had liberal arts degrees, and couldn't get any other jobs. </p>

<p>I have a suspicion that the people who go into leadership positions with liberal arts degrees went to elite schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc - and their connections were the biggest factor in getting those leadership positions. For kids who have rich parents and connections, getting a liberal arts degree is a viable option. But for a middle class kid who gets a liberal arts degree, the career outcome is usually wal mart or fast food. </p>

<p>
[quote]
But you, the prospective engineer, you're not in too deep yet! And ask yourself how you'd like to work with people like LSU that have proudly proclaim no interest in anything outside of engineering, that despise women, and wear blinders about what's happening in their very career. I'll leave you with a few choice LSU quotes; isn't this someone you'd cross the street to avoid encountering?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>What's wrong with you?</p>

72

<p>
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What's wrong with you?

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He's a troll. Doesn't tell us anything about his education, background, experience. Just comes in yellin and screamin about the perils of a perfectly fine profession and tries to stir up controversy.</p>

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<p>


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<p>Yes, I'm sure LSU Forever represents the personality of every single prospective engineer out there. The logical fallacies in your argument make me want to vomit, but just to play devil's advocate, yes, I would rather work with a roomful of people like LSU than with someone as stupid and insufferable as you.</p>

74

<p>
[quote]
He's a troll. Doesn't tell us anything about his education, background, experience. Just comes in yellin and screamin about the perils of a perfectly fine profession and tries to stir up controversy.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think his problem is that he's willing to point out all of the potential problems with engineering (some are just his own opinion though, I personally think that it's really interesting to work with people who have diverse backgrounds) - without pointing out the advantages of engineering. </p>

<p>Yes, liberal arts degrees have their advantages, but engineering degrees do too.</p>

75

<p>Well said, al6200. </p>

<p>My s has a ME degree, but took plenty of classes outside the engineering school, both as required distribution classes and by choice. The engineering requirements are comprehensive and labs are lengthy, so there may be less time to take as many other courses merely for intellectual curiosity. </p>

<p>The advantage of the engineering degree in some schools (well, in my s's opinion, though he didnt choose a school where this was so) is that you can waive the language requirement because of the demands of he engineering curriculum. That was attractive to him, since he was tired of languages. He had mutiple job offers in hand during the first month of his senior year of college last year,so was in the enviable position of picking and choosing. One was with a venture capital firm that wanted someone to understand from a design standpoint whether the things they considered investing in were well designed. He would also have been involved the finance side of things and probably would have (and may still) get an MBA at some point. The position he chose utilizes his engineering background, but he is inolved in research, design, manufacturing, funding, budgeting etc of the projects in the small firm he chose to work for. The job is exciting, intellectually stimulating, fun, educational, involves travel, etc. *** Forgot to mention, he just got his first (6 month) review, complete with a bonus and a raise. In this financial climate, that sounds pretty good to me****</p>

<p>So don't let someone with a serious case of sour grapes for some unknown reason, try to talk you out of a wonderful career, with many differing engineering subspecialties. Personally, though I might not choose a degree in, for example, philosophy, I wouldnt get up on a soapbox and shout out to all the masses the evils of choosing to major in it or try to save their souls.</p>

76

<p>Kingofqueens,
Glad you enjoyed his thread-- stay tuned, as he'll start another one in a few months with the same content.</p>

77

<p>I despise women? It's alright if the only person who ever loved you was your momma. This is just too good for me to pass up. Oh, yeah, I'm just a dumb engineering student who doesn't like anything outside of engineering. Well, tell that to my English professor's who still use my essay's as examples in their English classes. I guess your some engineering drop out who switched to Mass Communication, or you were raised by a group of Neo Nazis. There are only so many explanations to explain an oddball like this.</p>

78

<p>Yes, you are right. I just get a kick out of people like this. Our problem isn’t terrorism, it’s people like this who are living among the general population.</p>

79

<p>bump this thread so the new crop of HS seniors can get a chance to consider their future choices.</p>

80

<p>Hey marleys_ghost: please use scare tactics to push more people away from engineering.<br>
Then, when the bridge you are driving on collapses, or there are no computers for you to use, or you need wiring redone in your house, feel free to complain that the engineers are not doing their job properly.</p>

<p>BTW, while there may not be a shortage of engineers, there is a surplus of students graduating with liberal arts degrees in history, art, music, english, etc. who cannot find jobs because there isn’t a need for them.</p>