<p>Only mining has co-op in McGill. Seriously, I wouldn’t choose programs based on co-op. All it gives you is working experience and a few months counted towards the professional accreditation. All engineering fields have excellent internships and all the universities you mentioned give you excellent opportunities to find those.
The stats in PerpetualStudent’s posts are just average pays. There’re many more software engineers than chemical so obviously, the average is higher. Chemical engineers study about processes so they most likely will be managers and leaders in projects. And those people are too few to make any difference in calculating the averages. Thus, it will “appear” that electrical has the best average income. But you’re not aiming to be just “average”, aren’t you?</p>
<p>Both Materials and Mining engineering have co-op programs at McGill.</p>
<p>@FreedayFF:</p>
<p>Indeed there are more electrical engineers (don’t know about software) than chemical engineers. I do not see how this means the average pay will be higher. Note that the Job Futures values are average salaries 2 years after graduation, not across all workers in the field: this is a figure that should be very important to a student. It’s unlikely there are managers or other highly paid positions in those stats to skew them. No one will be a manager in engineering 2 years after their bachelor’s.</p>
<p>@RebeccaL:</p>
<p>My opinion is that a co-op program is better than PEY. As I understand it PEY will give you one 12-16 month work term. A co-op program will usually get you three or four 4 month work terms. You will get exposure to more companies, and sooner.</p>
<p>That being said, FreedayFF does have a point. You can manage well without co-op as long as you get internships. However, it helps to be in a structured program that makes life easier for employers. </p>
<p>It is a personal anecdote, but I will add this. Nearly all the people in sci/eng at McGill that I knew (Computer Science, Electrical Eng, Software Eng, Computer Eng.) got jobs at the end of their degrees because they had previous internship experience. None of them were in a formal co-op program, but all worked hard on their own to get work experience.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot. I think both PEY and co-op have their own advantages. PEY can let the students do larger and longer projects in the company. However, co-op can provide more experience. ^.^</p>
<p>@PerpetualStudent: you are right. Electrical graduates probably have the best starting salaries. I was just talking about maybe 10 or 15 years down the road, chemical engineers will have more advantages in taking manager positions since what they study (processes, all kinds) will help them oversee engineering projects. Nevertheless, it also depends on what kind of projects too. For example, electrical engineers will lead a power plan constructions, bio will lead resources projects. But majority of projects nowadays are related to chemical, if not all are to some degrees. So yeah, chemical engineers are more likely to be bosses.
Btw, I’m just reciting what we learned from FACC100 :D</p>