Engineering and Nursing still hiring like mad in recession

Career Opportunities & Internships
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<p>Just thought I'd throw in my 2-cents for people who are still looking for a summer internship. It looks like an administrative switch of your major into either of these fields (you don't even need the classes) will net you plenty of internships this year.</p>

<p>My friend in nursing keeps commenting about how they are so understaffed here, and are recruiting like crazy. Yet, few girls want to major in nursing anymore. I don't know what majors they have chosen, since it seems like over half my university is female. Sometimes I wish I knew what they are all majoring in so I could minor in it!</p>

<p>I recently went to an engineering conference (it wasn't even a career fair). I half-heartedly dropped by resume in about 5 piles. I didn't bother to schmooze the recruiters and booth people. I also applied online to a company.</p>

<p>A week later I'm getting ridiculous emails and calls from extremely polite recruiters asking me to set up an interview. I decided to stay with the company I'm already with, and had to turn these others down. But am still shocked how easy it was to garner their interest. Usually an interview offer is synonymous with being offered a job at this point in the semester. Furthermore, I'm not a very 'academic' student, with a GPA that just won't jump that impassable 3.0 barrier.</p>

<p>I've been inquiring with people who accepted internships and the pay range has been 18.50 to 34 bucks an hour! (all undergrads!!!). Most of the people are making 24.50 as seniors with a company that has hired alot of my friends; this company is also putting them on full rides (always a decent perk) to augment the single or double full rides that most students in the field are already on.... As far as I know, the companies in my field also hire all disciplines of engineers.</p>

<p>Seriously, I would reccommend choosing nursing or engineering for anyone that is going to college with a desire to earn money. If you're at school to 'find yourself', I will still reccommend these majors since you will meet great people and develop alot as a person throughout your internships!</p>

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<p>I've been a structural engineer for 20 years, and I've really enjoyed it. I DID find that it's not particularly stable. A company will hire a bunch of people for a big project, and when the project ends and there's not another job, a big lay-off follows. My husband (whom I met in grad school) and I have both been on unemployment at times, something I NEVER would have expected! We both have master's degrees (excellent GPAs) and good experience. We finally started our own firm in 1999, and it's been great. We're small enough that we can ride out the slower times. Right now we are SWAMPED with work. Other engineering firms are calling us to see if we can help them out!</p>

<p>So I would recommend engineering, but just understand that NO job is guaranteed to last anymore.</p>

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<p>Why do you assume only girls are majoring in nursing?</p>

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<p>Theo</p>

<p>What school do you go to?</p>

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<p>Longhorn: You're certainly correct about layoffs. My father is an engineer who was laid off many times throughout his career. It required us to move to foreign countries at several points. At least right now things seem to be doing quite good.</p>

<p>I've heard structural engineering is a little more competitive than most fields, with people leaving because they were able to find plentiful jobs in transportation, etc.</p>

<p>The small firm I'm working for is also swamped with work. It seems like large companies offer big paychecks and small companies offer stability. Am I right?</p>

<p>Purdue: I go to U of Arizona. Home of Wildcat Basketball :).</p>

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<p>I'm not sure if the original post is BSing or what because I've applied to over 30 engineering companies and have yet to get a serious reply.</p>

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<p>I don't buy it...the engineering career fair at Michigan was pathetic this past semester. Thankfully I wrapped things up in the fall. Haven't heard good news from a single one of my friends in engineering.</p>

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<p>Few "girls" want to go into nursing? Nursing schools are overwhelmed by the number of both male and female applicants today. Many have an acceptance rate comparable to Harvard's.</p>

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<p>You can't lump all engineering fields into one when talking about the health of the industry. They're all very different. </p>

<p>Structural engineers who specialize in buildings aren't doing great right now, while I imagine those who specialize in bridges are doing well. Of course, the construction industry is far removed from the computer and dot com businesses. And then there's automotive, energy, aerospace, etc.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I'm not sure if the original post is BSing or what because I've applied to over 30 engineering companies and have yet to get a serious reply.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You are right. My mom was a document conroller for a very large company (you'd know it if I said it). When the job she was working on was winding down they kept trying to find a new job to send her to. Every time they got one lined up it would get cancelled because of the economy. It happened four times and now she is on unemployment. Their engineers who have been working steadily for years have also been having the same problems.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Nursing schools are overwhelmed by the number of both male and female applicants today.

[/quote]

True. I was a pre-nursing major for a while, before discovering that I can't stand the human body or the nasty things that come out of it. Nursing schools have a ton of applicants. The reason there is a nursing shortage isn't because there aren't enough interested students, but because there aren't enough nursing schools. Many programs are impossible to get into if you don't have a 4.0 in all your math and sciences.</p>

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<p>With all due respect, I have to call this how I see it - and that’s not good for the OP in this case.</p>

<p>At 34$/hr you are talking about an annualized salary of nearly 72,000 dollars - which I have to argue is almost unheard of for an internship. I’m not saying it’s not possible, rather highly unlikely. I don’t know how things work at UofAriz but here at Purdue the employers are given guidelines that correspond to percentages of starting salaries - at least for co-ops. Considering that co-op students usually make at least as much, if not more than internship students - it would seem that that figure is perhaps three standard deviations outside of the mean, even for the highly paid ChemE’s. Following the upper limit of the guidelines, or 85% of starting salary for a 5th term co-op student (meaning that in order to reach this upper limit you are expected to have already completed an equivalent of 4 internships with the same company), we are talking about a starting salary of 85000/yr. Going off of 2007 data for Purdue, this figure is higher than any graduate’s starting salary in any discipline - which by the way was an ECE for 78000/yr. In other words, unless UofAriz graduates are garnering considerably higher starting salaries than Purdue grads, I believe that 34/hr is either a complete outlier, or complete bull.</p>

<p>Second of all, I would have to argue that while engineering is definitely a good major - your description of the job market right now seems dreamy at best. Most notably, I think that recruiting at Purdue is down somewhere around 40% from years past, at least for companies actually hiring at career fairs (however some companies still come and set up booths just to keep a solid applicant pool). Nonetheless, I know students who were unable to land any internship at all, and these students had much higher GPA’s than you describe yourself having, plus, they have much more relevant coursework than you describe yourself having. Although I do believe that landing a job actually requires much more than a good GPA - usually the reason that you get an interview in the first place is greatly affected by your GPA and how much leg work you put into attracting the company - in your case, no leg work and a low GPA. This would lead me to believe that you are either extremely lucky, or full of bull. </p>

<p>All in all, right now many people are struggling to land any internships at all. Even at highly ranked engineering programs like Umich, Cornell, and Purdue - just to name a few that I am aware of - many people are having a hard time in this job market. Now, perhaps UofAriz has somehow magically sidestepped this economic downturn, but I think that’s highly unlikely. </p>

<p>As a side note, there are certainly still opportunities at Purdue, I managed to land a good co-op, however, many people were not so lucky. I also had to work hard to land the co-op that I got; I have a good GPA in comparison to you, I researched the companies I interviewed with extensively, and got the interviews in the first place by talking to employers at company presentations - not by nonchalantly dropping my resume in a pile and receiving unprecedented responses the following week. AND trust me when I say that I am making nowhere near 34/hr, actually, for my first term I will be making less than your lower limit example of 18.5/hr, though I do have some attractive benefits. Hopefully my second and third terms will garner a much higher wage, but in the end I will be happy to graduate with experience in a well recognized company - no matter what pay I receive for the co-op.</p>

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<p>"Going off of 2007 data for Purdue, this figure is higher than any graduate’s starting salary in any discipline - which by the way was an ECE for 78000/yr. "</p>

<p>It's really that low?? For us , 78000 is almost just the median for BS in engineering in computer science (75000) and computer engineering (76900) and the advisors told us that the max is somewhere around 95k</p>

<p>[url=<a href="http://career.engin.umich.edu/salary/20072008.html%5DMichigan"&gt;http://career.engin.umich.edu/salary/20072008.html]Michigan&lt;/a> Engineering | 2007-2008 Salary Information<a href="scroll%20down%20to%20median">/url</a></p>

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<p>lol and this just proves how bad inflation is...look
Average</a> starting salary for MIT grads tops $45K - MIT News Office
that's less than 10 years ago</p>

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<p>bearcats, you're comparing information from different years. If you use Michigan's May '07 numbers, you'll see it's quite different (purduefrank used 2007 numbers). The median UMich compE was $60k for that year.</p>

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<p>ken, even if you use michigan's 07 number, computer science was 71k... so 78k for a max still sounds low to me ( i am not comparing or anything it's just that 78k as a max surprises me)</p>

<p>also, according to the career center, every year there are at least a couple students who took up BB ibank or top tier consulting offer and makes around 100k a year starting.</p>

<p>but what's with the huge increase from 60000 to 76900 for computer engineering within a year?</p>

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<p>Bearcats, you have to take all of this data in stride, it differs greatly from year to year - but I still think my above post gives a general idea of what I think about the Op’s post.</p>

<p>In any case, to answer your question - in 2007 there were five engineering disciplines that had averages above 74K, which really translates into the well known fact that there is not a lot of variance in engineering salaries - they have high starting salaries and low salary variance. However, in 2006 the highest salary was a materials engineer for 96K, numerous other disciplines hit the 80000 dollar mark. Obviously there are variations from year to year, both with the high’s and averages. Perhaps 2007 was on the low end for the highs, but I still think they are on par with averages. For some reason I can’t find any 2008 or 2009 data yet, but I would assume that the 09‘ data will come in a bit lower than 08‘ due to the economy. I would still be hesitant to assume that every year there are people who get 100K offers, unless you see that in the actual data - it seems likely that a career center will put out statements that lead one to believe it is the norm and not the exception. Also, I am not sure why you are comparing a CS major with the engineering data that I provided, but that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense - as at Purdue CS and engineering are not even part of the same department.</p>

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<p>oh haha CS is under engineering here, you were talking about the top salaries in engineering...</p>

<p>i dont know. i should never have been in engineering in first place. I hate it now... I gave up the opportunity to go to some of the best business schools in the country for this crap</p>

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<p>purduefrank, my EE co-op pays $30/hour. First rotation, and I still have four semesters of school left. Some of the co-ops (ME or ChemE) who have already done a rotation or two make a couple bucks more an hour.</p>

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<p>my friend in EECS' summer internship with cisco pays $28 per hour, with $ 3000 living stipend</p>

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<p>What are the job opportunities like for an undergrad industrial engineer now? what is the pay like? Ii know its very difficult to predict but what do you think will be the job prospects for industrial engineers 4 years from now?..</p>