<p>Hello Electrical engineers, thanks to everyone one reading this and even more to those who will answer. I have several concerns about the major, so I wanted to ask these questions to the people who know it best. </p>
<p>First of all, where did you go to school? And how has this determined your job field and your salary as well? I believe that attending a Big school with a great program may help you with finding good jobs, but as many have said before, rankings are not everything and talented people will show their skills wherever they are. However, how has the rank of your school helped you with these concerns? </p>
<p>Second, Did you have any research experience while in college? And if so, any on the renewable energy field? You know, like solar, or wind power or alternative ways to generate electrical power. Moreover, has your research experience helped you not only at college but at the job to, if so how much, a lot alittle, not at all? </p>
<p>Please feel free to add as much information as you wish on this topic</p>
I am an EE major. I did both a bachelors and masters at Stanford. My job search only involved handing out my resume at career fairs on campus, which were held a few times per year. Some were only for tech majors. Some were not. Lots of popular companies were well represented such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Almost all companies I gave my resume to offered to pay for a trip out to interview, including flight + hotel + car at more distant locations. One sent me plane tickets even though I did not give them my resume and made it explicitly clear that I was not interested (it related to farming/agriculture tech, which didn’t interest me at the time). However, not as many made a job offer. I got the impression that the school name was very helpful for opening doors to new grads getting an interview at desirable companies. But I did not think it helped as much on the next stage, where your personality and technical knowledge displayed during interviews became more important than what school you attended.</p>
<p>I did about a dozen of these interviews during spring break, traveling across several states, then accepted an offer. I requested that they increase the offer to match the average starting salary for MS EE students at my school, as published by the career center, which they did. I had little work experience in the field, and this was my first full time job, so I thought it was a fair salary.
I was a research assistant in a psychology/biology field, unrelated to EE or renewable energy. I expect it had little influence in my job.</p>
<p>I am a EE major as well, bachelors only and in Canada. I also did a biomedical minor. What I found is that the companies in career fairs proceed very slowly (I start getting phone calls for interview 3 months into a job that I apply online a week later than the career fair). I did not get into a big school so I have no comment for that but I did worked in 3 companies in the energy sector (I am still in the energy sector).</p>
<p>EE in western Canada is pretty easy to find jobs, most if not all of the 100 grads in our school got jobs within 10 months (this was just 2 years back), and alot got into big corporations.</p>
<p>As you can see my research experience is very different from what I am doing right now, not that the companies care since all of them have rotation program that teach you from scratch anyways. Truth be told, I did not learn anything from university that is even remotely close to what I did in my jobs nor do they care about my research experience.</p>