<p>How much will an electrical engineer or computer scientist graduated from Cornell make an hour, compared to one graduated from MIT or Stanford?</p>
<p>Common misconception: The school that you graduated from do not determine your salary. MIT,Cornell,Stanford are all great schools, and their pay will be roughly similar at similar companies..</p>
<p>If a company, say Boeing, decides to hire a graduate from the University of Nebraska and a few from MIT, they most likely won't be paying the MIT grads much more at all. Business just doesn't work that way... unless you can provide immediate value and justify a large difference in pay than the other new hirees, you're getting the same for the same position. The separation in pay will occur when experience proves more worth... heck, the Nebraska grad could be a better leader and end up managing the MIT grads, nobody knows.</p>
<p>Well, there is one nuance that you have missed out on. The fact is, many of the 'top' employers tend to recruit only at the top schools. Sure, if you come from a no-name school and manage to get hired at a top employer, then you will make the same money as those people who came from top schools and got hired at the same employer. The question is, can you really get the offer coming from the no-name school?</p>
<p>For example, consider this snippet from the Fortune article about the hiring practcies at Google:</p>
<p>" For the most part, it takes a degree from an Ivy League school, or MIT, Stanford, CalTech, or Carnegie Mellon--America's top engineering schools--even to get invited to interview. Brin and Page still keep a hand in all the hiring, from executives to administrative assistants. And to them, work experience counts far less than where you went to school, how you did on your SATs, and your grade-point average. "If you've been at Cisco for 20 years, they don't want you," says an employee. "</p>
<p>However, I do agree with the general point that even the best engineering employers don't pay substantially better than no-name engineering employers. That is why many of the best engineering students don't take engineering jobs - instead they end up taking jobs in investment banking or management consulting in which they will get paid substantially more than the average engineer. For example, for the guy who barely graduated from the no-name engineering school, getting a regular 50k engineering job from a no-name company is a pretty sweet deal. However, if you graduated at the top of your class from MIT, then getting a 60k starting engineering job doesn't look too appealing, especially when you can get a 120k starting job as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.</p>
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Well, there is one nuance that you have missed out on. The fact is, many of the 'top' employers tend to recruit only at the top schools.
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<p>I disagree, because 'top' employers are (usually) very large multinational corporations (Google is not the sole 'top' employer--if they even fit the definition of 'top' employer) and would serve themselves best by recruiting all over. State universities do produce many very well-rounded, intelligent, hard working, and talented graduates too. Employers would shoot themselves in the foot to miss this fact. </p>
<p>Not to argue, but actually, I find your entire evaluation pretty shortsighted and I'm not sure where you come to your conclusion
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That is why many of the best engineering students don't take engineering jobs - instead they end up taking jobs in investment banking or management consulting in which they will get paid substantially more than the average engineer.
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<p>Is there a website that provides substantial information on this subject or something?</p>
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Well, there is one nuance that you have missed out on. The fact is, many of the 'top' employers tend to recruit only at the top schools.
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<p>agreed with 311griff. in fact, there are probably more local college hires than top college hires. i know for boeing (i interned there), university of washington and washington state university get a ton of hires (more than MIT) simply because of a boeing campus located in the seattle area. but sakky is accurate also in saying that it's tough to get the top jobs. on the new hire list, i remember seeing about 20 MIT grads and 1 grad from morgan state university. the morgan state guy is making the same as the MIT guys but he's the only one. but that's an extreme example. top engineering firms will recruit regularly from both the top tier and middle tier. </p>
<p>google is an exception because they have a reputation for being elitist in their recruiting process. most other firms recruit outside the top colleges.</p>
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I disagree, because 'top' employers are (usually) very large multinational corporations (Google is not the sole 'top' employer--if they even fit the definition of 'top' employer) and would serve themselves best by recruiting all over. State universities do produce many very well-rounded, intelligent, hard working, and talented graduates too. Employers would shoot themselves in the foot to miss this fact. </p>
<p>Not to argue, but actually, I find your entire evaluation pretty shortsighted and I'm not sure where you come to your conclusion
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<p>I don't define 'top' employers as the big multinationals. The truth is, the big multinationals are not particularly successful in recruiting at the top schools.</p>
<p>I'll give you an example. Even before their recent troubles, the Big 3 auto manufacturers had vastly cut down on their recruiting at MIT, and do very little recruiting at Stanford, Caltech, and Berkeley. Why? It's not because those schools are bad - indeed, these are some of the top engineering schools in the country. The problem is that many of the grads from those schools just don't want to work for a Big 3 auto manufacturer. One big problem is Detroit - a lot of them don't want to move from Boston or from California to Detroit. Another, perhaps even bigger problem, is the stodginess of those companies. A lot of grads at these schools would rather work at sexy startups. This is especially true of grads from Stanford, who are absolutely infatuated with the startup culture. MIT also has a burgeoning startup environment that enthralls a lot of their grads. </p>
<p>And of course the truly 'top' engineering employers are not those big multinational engineering companies at all, but rather consulting and banking firms. See below. </p>
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Is there a website that provides substantial information on this subject or something?
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<p>Sure, how about this:</p>
<p>"around a quarter [of the EECS grads from MIT] go into investment banking and other financial or management consulting"</p>
<p>Here's another way you can look at it. Take a look at the kinds of companies that the MIT engineering students go to. Note, I'm not talking about the management grads from the MIT Sloan School or the Econ grads. I'm just talking about the MIT engineering grads. </p>
<p>For example, I see that on page 6, for the EECS grads, what do I see but companies like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, UBS, Deloitte, Bain, Citadel, Ernst & Young (CGE&Y), AT Kearney, and Mercer Oliver Wyman. </p>
<p>Past years featured such employers as McKinsey, BCG, Charles River Associates, Mitchell Madison, Monitor, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase. Again, I would point out, I'm talking about MIT engineers, not Sloan graduates. </p>
<p>So, 311Griff, I think the issue is what is meant by 'top'. To me and to many others, 'top' employers are not necessarily big famous multinational companies, but companies that people prefer to work for. While that may seem like a tautology (in that top companies are those companies that people most want to work for), it really isn't. For example, if you want to get into banking, Goldman Sachs is widely considered to be the gold standard in terms of who you should work for, even though Goldman Sachs is only a mid-sized bank (in terms of revenue) and is a bank that most common people have probably never heard of. Bank of America, for example, is a far 'bigger' bank (in terms of revenue) that is far better known by regular people, but very few people would turn down an offer from Goldman Sachs to work at Bank of America. Right now, many of the top computer science grads would rather work for companies like Google or Yahoo than work for a far larger computer company like Computer Associates. Let's be honest. Working for a company like Google or Yahoo is 'cool' and 'sexy'. Working for a company like Computer Associates is not. Fair or not fair, that's how it is. </p>
<p>So, getting back to what I said before, you have to ask yourself why is it that 25% of MIT EECS grads choose to go to consulting or banking. 25% ain't a small number. Furthermore, this number has been fairly consistent. Every year, a significant fraction of MIT EECS grads take consulting and banking jobs. Why is that? I think we can all agree that it has nothing to do with them not being able to find engineering jobs. After all, this is MIT we're talking about. Furthermore, these grads tend to be the ones who got pretty good grades. If you just barely graduated from MIT, you're probably not going to get hired at an elite consulting firm or bank. So these are some of the better students. I think we can all agree that they could easy get engineering jobs if they wanted to get them. The issue is not a matter of 'can they', it's a matter of 'do they want to'. And as far as many of those grads are concerned, they simply don't WANT to get an engineering job, not if they can get a job in consulting or banking. </p>
<p>So take the case of McKinsey. Look at where McKinsey recruits. With few exceptions, they are all top schools. </p>
<p>Or take a look at Yahoo. Yahoo only recruits at a couple of non-top schools. Every other one is a top school.</p>
<p>For example, Yahoo doesn't recruit at San Jose State, yet San Jose State is only a short drive from Yahoo. But Yahoo does (obviously) recruit at Stanford. </p>
<p>So I don't consider Google to be a real 'exception', as long as we agree on what it means to be a 'top' employer. The truth is, many of the top students would be bored to tears in working for a traditional big multinational employer. They want something glamorous and high-paying. Certain companies, notably consulting companies, banks, and certain high-tech companies, can offer that. Many traditional companies can't or won't. </p>
<p>Location is another problem. For example, employers constantly complain that they can't get Stanford grads to take jobs outside of Silicon Valley, and hence many of them refuse to recruit there. But the attitude of Stanford graduates is clear - there are so many interesting and cool tech jobs in the Valley that they don't feel that they should have to move. On a similar vein, that is why several Ford executives have remarked that they tend to recruit less at MIT (and hardly recruit at all at Stanford), for the simple reason that MIT grads don't really want to work for Ford. The company is highly hierarchical, and MIT grads want to be on a fast track that Ford can't really offer. Not to mention that, again, not a lot of MIT grads are really champing at the bit to move to Detroit. </p>
<p>So the point is, we have to be careful about what we mean by 'top'. I would say that the elite consulting firms and banks are definitely 'top'. Very few employees at those companies are from no-name schools. And these are precisely the kinds of jobs that have proven to be highly alluring to many of the top engineers. An MIT engineering grad can legitimately ask why he should be an engineer and make 60k in his first year when he can work for Goldman Sachs and make 120k in his first year.</p>
<p>Oh my god................</p>
<p>sakky - what you said about engineering majors going into i-bank and consulting is quite interesting. I was wondering, do i-bank and consulting firms find those with engineering BSs desirable and why?</p>
<p>sakky, I still conclude--from your arguments--that everything you are talking about is highly subjective, and simply can not be applied to your original argument of:</p>
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The fact is, many of the 'top' employers tend to recruit only at the top schools.
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<p>Just because--according to your subjective research--your tiny list of top schools' graduates are choosing to do start ups rather than work for Fortune Magazine's 100 best companies to work for, doesn't mean that top employers are tending to top schools exclusively.</p>
<p>You seem to be arguing in a rather circular pattern, you know "chicken and the egg."</p>
<p>Well, you actually just said it yourself. You are now using the Fortune Magazine's 100 best companies to work for list. First off, that list is flawed, mostly because it has little to say about the exclusivity of certain companies. For example, the Rochester-based supermarket Wegman's has always been one of the top-ranked employers in that list for many years. I don't dispute that Wegman's is a very good employer for the people who are working there. But let's face it. It's a supermarket. Most of the employees there are general laborers. I highly doubt that somebody with an EECS degree from MIT would want to work at Wegman's. What would he do there? There really isn't a whole lot of opportunity for somebody with that kind of education there. So I agree that Wegman's is a very good employer for the people who are there, but that doesn't mean it's a good fit for MIT engineering grads. </p>
<p>Let's be honest. You don't need a top education to get a job at Wegman's. I've been to Wegman's. I've even shopped there. Most of the people working there are high school graduates. Some of them are just high school students. It's not that hard to get a job at Wegman's. So what the list really says is that Wegman's treats its employees very well. But it has nothing to say about how hard it is to get a job there, or what kind of jobs you'd be doing. Let's face it. If you graduate from Harvard or MIT, do you really want to be bagging groceries at Wegman's? Be honest. You know you don't want to. Sure, Wegman's would be treating you well, but come on, you're bagging groceries. How many people really want to be doing that for the rest of their lives? </p>
<p>But nevertheless, as you can see in the list, many of these companies are not 'big' companies. Look at the list. There are plenty of quite small companies there, including many that most people, including me, have never even heard of. I've never heard of Griffin Hospital. I've never heard of Vision Service Plan. I've never heard of Alston & Bird. I've never heard of Standard Pacific. </p>
<p>And that's what exactly I'm talking about. You formerly made a reference to people wanting to go for the superbig multinationals. Yet look at that Fortune list. I don't see General Motors. I don't see Ford. I don't see General Electric. I don't see ExxonMobil. I don't see Pfizer. I don't see Chevon. I don't see Merck. I don't see IBM. I don't see AT&T. These are all huge blue-chip multinational companies. Yet they are nowhere to be found on the Fortune list of Best Companies to Work For. Why is that?</p>
<p>So if anything, the Fortune list doesn't detract from my point, it actually STENGTHENS my point. According to Fortune, a lot of people would rather work for startup companies instead of these big multinationals. Again, a tiny little company of 1000 employees like Griffin Hospital is ranked #4, but a huge multinational like General Motors with 300,000 employees is nowhere to be found. What's up with that? </p>
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doesn't mean that top employers are tending to top schools exclusively.
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<p>So again, we have to be careful about what we mean by 'top'. I think I have emphatically proved the point that 'top' does not mean a big multinational. Like I said, GM is a big multinational, but I doubt that too many people want to work there, considering their problems. Heck, many of GM's best people are actually looking to leave because GM is in very serious financial trouble. </p>
<p>I also never said that top employers tend to top schools EXCLUSIVELY. I even showed that Yahoo recruits at Rutgers (but interestingly not at San Jose State). However, it is clearly true that Yahoo recruits mostly at the big-name schools. Google obviously recruits at only the top schools. Every one of the top consulting firms and banks recruits at a select group of top schools. </p>
<p>Furthermore, a lot of startups don't even really 'recruit'. The truth is, most startups are highly cash-strapped organizations that have little money to recruit. They basically end up hiring the friends and acquaintances of the founders, because they don't have the resources to do a real recruiting pitch. Hence, it becomes a case of 'who you know'. Most of the very first employees at Google, Cisco, Yahoo, Sun, and the like were all Stanford graduates, not really because of Stanford per se, but just because they happened to know the founders, and the founders came from Stanford. Steve Ballmer was hired by Microsoft for one simple reason - he was the old Harvard dormmate of Bill Gates. Let's face it. If he had never gone to Harvard, he would have never met Bill Gates, and he would not be CEO of Microsoft right now. Whether you like it or not, the old business axiom still rings true - it's not what you know, but WHO you know. </p>
<p>Look, nobody is saying that you HAVE to go to a big-name school in order to get to a top employer. My point is that it HELPS. Can you get into McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or Google from a no-name school? Yes. But it's harder. That's the point.</p>
<p>Compared to investment bankers, stock traders/stockbrokers, and hedge fund managers, they get paid chump change.</p>
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sakky - what you said about engineering majors going into i-bank and consulting is quite interesting. I was wondering, do i-bank and consulting firms find those with engineering BSs desirable and why?
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<p>The same reason why they also hire Art History majors (which I have seen happen). In fact, you can just cruise around the websites of the top investment banks and consulting firms and look at the profiles and you will see a wide variety of academic backgrounds. From humanities to the sciences to engineering, etc. </p>
<p>So you ask why would they want to hire engineers? Well, first of all, I would make a general point about what education is really all about. Just because you major in something doesn't mean that you're obligated to work in that field. Very few History majors actually become historians, very few Poli-Sci majors actually become political Scientists, very few Sociology majors actually become sociologists. You choose a major because you find it intellectually interesting to you, but you are not obligated to spend the rest of your professional life within that major. </p>
<p>Now, as far as why consulting firms and banks would want to hire engineers specifically, several reasons come to mind.</p>
<h1>1) Engineers have proven that they can think quantitatively, and a lot of consulting and banking is quant-oriented. Basically, engineers have proven that they are highly comfortable with numbers and equations.</h1>
<h1>2) Engineers have proven that they can work very hard. Consulting and banking are notorious for long, exhausting hours. If you graduate with an engineering degree, then you have proven that you can work for long hours, unlike many of the liberal arts majors which, to be frank, are relatively easy and where a lot of students don't have to work very hard in order to graduate. Let's face it. There are certain liberal arts majors in which you can pass your classes while doing hardly any work at all, and in some cases, while barely even showing up. I think every engineering student has had the moment where he has been studying extremely hard for weeks on end, only to notice lots of students in other majors lounging around and doing nothing.</h1>
<h1>3)They are really renting the 'name' of your school. Look, the fact is, consulting and banking are highly customer-oriented. These industries are basically selling people's expertise. So why should you hire one consulting firm over another? Well, basically, the consulting firm has to convince you that they will bring over star people to work on your account. It's far easier to sign up a new client when they can say that they will have a bunch of Harvard or MIT grads working on your account, as opposed to a bunch of people who went to no-name schools. Whether you think that's fair or not fair, that's how marketing works.</h1>
<p>Look, whether you like it or not, this is how the game works. I don't find it a coincidence that Chelsea Clinton's first job after graduation from Stanford and Oxford was at McKinsey. Let's face it. Consulting and banking are highly coveted employers by a lot of people, particularly those coming from the top schools.</p>
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Compared to investment bankers, stock traders/stockbrokers, and hedge fund managers, they get paid chump change.
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<p>Who's "they"?</p>
<p>Thanks for the awesome information sakky. I am attending stanford next year as a management science and engineering major but I never really wanted to have a career as an engineer (I had planned to get a MBA eventually).</p>
<p>However, your talk about i-banking and consulting really opened my eyes.</p>
<p>One more question, if I were to apply for business school, what would look better on my application in terms of work experience, an entry level engineering position or a consulting position?</p>
<p>sakky, too bad you don't know when to quit, or what "subjective" means as in "Arguing about 'top' anything is a subjective endeavor."</p>
<p>311Griff, you don't find it the least bit ironic to continuing making posts telling ME when to quit? Pot, meet kettle. </p>
<p>I agree with you that 'top' anything is a subjective endeavor. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, ceteris paribus, going to a top-school gives you more career options such that you can pursue success according to your own terms. Everybody defines success differently, I agree. For example, some people may define success as beoming a millionaire investment banker. Other people may define success as not getting a job at all and just staying home and raising the kids. However, having a highly regarded degree will give you a better chance of becoming that investment banker, and it STILL gives you the choice of staying home to raise your kids. In other words, the better degree provides more flexibility.</p>
<p>Nobody is saying that the higher-regarded degree will ALWAYS be better than a no-name degree. But the odds are in its favor.</p>