Engineering - Does School Matter?

Another story for you about colleges, I had a young engineer working for me who graduated from what I would call a Tier 3 (albeit ABET accredited engineering) engineering school, but to his credit he was still a solid engineer. He told me he didn’t think there was any difference in attending a Tier 1 school vs a Tier 3 school as calculus was calculus and would be the same everywhere. That is naïve. For example, my DD who at that time was a ChemE at the state flagship but decided to take a summer calculus class at the local campus as the grades still count since it is part of the same system. You could view this as Tier 1 vs Tier 3, both the flagship and the other campus are ABET accredited. Hardly had to attend the calculus class received an A+ and referred to it as easier then high school which was quite different on how hard she had to work in her calculus classes at her flagship university and where a significant amount of the class did not pass. Now lets go to the other extreme, Cal Tech, NO ONE describes calculus at Cal Tech like that, but yet graduating from the local Tier 3 engineering college also got you an ABET accredited engineering degree.

ABET is what matters.

I can tell you that I’ve seen a bias AGAINST MIT engineers up here. One MIT grad at the first company I worked at was let go because he was great at finding problems but not solving them. People would rather hire grads from a state flagship.

Yes the more compliant engineers who do the grunt work, you definitely need them too. ABET is important for civil engineers and others who work on infrastructure (some EE’s with the power grid, maybe MechE’s) otherwise it is entirely unimportant if you attend a tier 1 school.

BTW most state flagships are tier 1 engineering schools, for me ABET accreditation has nothing to do with the overall quality of the school.

After browsing LinkedIn large multi-national tech companies (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) for a while (focus on CS) a couple of things pop up:

If you look company-wide certain schools always appear in the top 10: Georgia Tech, USC, UIUC, CMU, Stanford, and Cal. Probs no big surprise here.

A few colleges regularly in the top 10 may indicate a geographical or historical bias (founders); Top school at Microsoft is UWashington at 1k followed by GTech at 510. At Google Stanford (1.3k), Cal (1.2k) and CMU (1k) are at the top followed bu MIT at 758. Apple and Facebook show a slightly more uniform distribution in the top 4 consisting of Stanford, Cal, USC, and CMU.

If you look at the largest work sites away from corporate HQ, geography appears a stronger influence, Google NY largest group is from Columbia (182 out of 2,500), Facebook in Seattle has U Washington 125/1,300, Microsoft San Francisco has Cal 100/1,082, and Apple in Austin has 57/304 from UT Austin. Is this employee preference or corporate recruiting?

School obviously matters, but the student himself or herself matters more.

DH got his PhD in Engineering from UIUC, turning down MIT because of money. Years later, D17 made the same decision. She turned down MIT, Duke, GT to go to Vandy for full tuition scholarship. She wanted work life balance, working psets until 3 am is not her idea of fun. Instead, she attends in a school she excels (3.92 on CS premed). She just received the Grace Hooper Scholarship, and will be attending the conference later this year.

When DH and I tried to convince D to pick MIT, she joked about “reverse discrimination…people would expect you to be brilliant, and what if you are not.” And most of all, she believes “if I can get to the same place, why do I want to spend $200k more?”

I’m noticing that the top tier for engineering does include flagships and major public U’s but, yes, there is a big difference in them versus the lesser state schools that offer engineering. Mich Tech is top tier while UW-Platteville is not. That post about calculus fits what I have heard and know. Regions vary in their knowledge of schools and what firms are looking for. Many will stick close to home and take the positions commensurate with their education but will not be in the running for those jobs their counterparts from better engineering programs will get.

I do not think it is the same as business where the name/prestige factor counts most. I am biased against the superficial aspects of the business world- where how you dress matters and bet engineering is more based on actual ability. I can believe a bias against MIT because of theory versus practicality- engineers solve problems, not just identify them. Schools like MIT tend to be for those going on to grad school, not doing the work needed here and now, in the real world. Most top students will not get admitted to MIT so it has no role for them in the ease of grad school.

CC’ers- you have to think regionally. What matters to people is what is where they live. You’re on the east coast, you know your area colleges. Many colleges unheard of elsewhere come up as top tier here while those in the Midwest don’t need to bother with them as we have better public U’s that are much closer and more cost effective. Post # 7 points out how where you are matters for employment.

I believe it matters, for some very small subset of the students who take advantage of the relatively unique opportunities that are available at the elite schools.

But wait, many people say that the person in the next cube/office graduating from Prestige Tech isn’t all that great and they make the same money as everyone else. But this perspective is a bit like a person feeling one part of an elephant and saying that they know what the entire situation looks like. They are seeing the students from Prestige Tech that ended up at the same company they did. They are not seeing the students from Prestige Tech that took other jobs that they found more interesting or lucrative.

To be clear, I am not talking about the typical jobs that many consider desirable, like Google et al, where the company is looking for thousands of new employees each year. Those are mainstream jobs, available for high quality applicants across many different colleges. I am talking about companies that may hire anywhere from a few to a few dozen graduates at most, but are willing to pay top dollar for talent.

The last time this type of thread came around about a year ago, a poster said that there were a small number of students coming out of MIT undergrad and starting out over $200K per year, with a few around $300K per year. Many doubted that poster, but I queried the poster via PM about the companies involved (they were in my area of finance) and it made sense.

Her experience, which she’s posted about multiple times, indicates why it’s so important to go to a highly ranked program for CS. If most of the people you work with on your FAANG internship come from top 20 schools, then school prestige is highly valued by those companies for CS roles. An exception, from a student below the top 100 schools, doesn’t demonstrate the opposite, anymore than Zuckerberg proves you don’t need a degree at all.

@roethlisburger - my son graduated on a Sunday from a local regional college and Google flew him to California the next Thursday, he interviewed all day Friday and flew home Saturday - this all may be moot because he wasn’t offered the job (although he really thought he nailed the interview stuff) - he did do phone interviews and skype testing for a month before graduation but still, literally a local regional college. He was contacted from his Linked In profile - and said they didn’t care where he got his degree as long as he knew how to do the work. They have contacted him twice since then (that was 3 or 4 years ago) but he’s not sure he wants to put his current job in jeapardy while going thru the very lengthy interviewing/testing process. It was quite frustrating not to get that job.

The Journal has a story on this last year:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-experience-no-problem-private-equity-lures-newbie-bankers-with-300-000-offers-1540998554

These days half of the recruiters at the top tech schools are in financial services. They’re competing with tech firms for top talents in some of the same fields.

@OhiBro

Thank you for your careful reading!

Even with this 1/3 salary sample, it is a great way to compare majors in terms of employment and grad school options. When comparing ME majors to Robotics majors, I was surprised to see an $11,663 difference. These are students from the same university at the same location. I guess not all the robotics action is out west.

The key point here is that is explicitly not the case. Interns for these companies come from all over. Facebook in particular tends to be a bit more prestige driven, but even there, a sizable portion comes from non “top” CS programs or T-X schools. Yes, a higher concentration will be present for the top schools for CS. No, it does not make it essential or highly important.

It is generally easier for job applicants and employers to know about each other and do interviews and visits when they are local to each other. If you need to take an airline flight and stay in a hotel, the cost (in both time and money) gets much larger than if you can do a day trip without flight or hotel.

These discussions could be a lot more useful if folks would admit that most of the time, we’re all setting up straw man arguments.

No, most kids are not deciding between MIT and Unknown regional U that nobody has ever heard of and isn’t ABET accredited. There is TONS of cross admit data- when MIT loses a kid it’s to Stanford, Harvard, Cal Tech (i.e. peer institutions) and it’s NOT to an unknown college because the kid has decided “it doesn’t matter where you go, so I’ll go to the college nobody has ever heard of”.

In real life, when I hear these arguments, it’s typically from parents whose kids are not contenders, in any way, shape or form for one of the top tier programs. And they are looking for reassurance that it’s OK to be full pay at at a private, third tier college for engineering, even though your kid struggled through HS calculus. Or that it’s OK to take out Parent Plus loans and a HELOC to pay for your kid to study engineering at a local college which has terrible graduation rates and abysmal recruiting results.

These are real people with a real decision to make. It’s their money, they should spend it however they want. And in some cases, the kid really is not cut out for engineering, and it will only take Freshman year to convince the parents of that. (the 1.9 GPA is a dead giveaway).

So folks here are being somewhat facile in saying “it doesn’t matter”. If your kid CAN get into Cal Tech, but chooses to go somewhere else (finances, hates California, needs to be near her oncologist) then YOUR kid will be fine, and it doesn’t matter. A top kid at a well regarded program is going to be fine. A kid who has shaky math prep, who thinks engineering is the golden ticket to a well paid job, and can’t get into a highly regarded program but can squeak into a program with low admissions standards-- well, that kid STILL needs to take physics, and still needs to take all the other pre-req’s, and then the real fun starts- the actual engineering classes.

I don’t know why the OP was asking the question- but if the REAL question is “My kid can’t get into our state flagship’s engineering school (and neighboring states) but can get into a program nobody has ever heard of-- will it be ok?” my answer would be “it depends”. I would not say “it doesn’t matter”.

And a quick note on Missouri M&T- a poster cited it as evidence that “you can go anywhere and do well”. Missouri’s program is HIGHLY rated by recruiters; is considered a top program in most of the engineering disciplines, and is HARDLY evidence that it “doesn’t matter” where you go. In fact- it sort of proves that it does matter. Go to Missouri instead of your local private U that has a low end engineering program. period full stop. When I hired for aerospace, we shlepped to Rollo, Missouri to hire mechanical engineers (as many as we could).

So don’t put M&T in the same bucket as the “unknown” programs- for people who hire, it is absolutely well known and well regarded. Even for employers who don’t have a facility within 500 miles of Missouri.

Good point Blossom. But many of the choices are as an example, CMU for CS full pay or UMD or UMass Amherst for instate costs and the money matters.

I certainly agree that MIT and CalTech offer great opportunity and cache. But if you get into gt or Perdue and it makes sense for your family situation to say no to hpysm or cal etc. No it doesn’t matter.

People are mortgaging their homes and emptying 401ks with the misguided belief that mit and CalTech types are golden tickets of happiness and success. And other close cousins can’t produce remarkable and noteworthy outcomes as well.

There are likely many strong students who go to the “unknown regional university” because that is all that (they believe that) they can afford due to parental money constraints, so they never apply to anywhere “prestigious” (or they do, but then get the bad news on FA from the “prestigious” school, whether it is a state flagship with poor in-state FA, or a private that requires their uncooperative NCP financials).

Some states do a better job at offering engineering at affordable “unknown regional universities” than others. Pennsylvania is one of the worse states for this, since there is very little engineering offered at its PASSHE schools, and they are less likely to be affordable for in-state residents than comparable schools in other states for their in-state residents.

Privatebanker- if you’re talking about a kid who HAS gotten into their in-state flagship, and the family can’t afford the “CMU” type college, then it’s clear (at least to me). Go to the flagship.

The folks I know in real life who are agonizing over this (AND emptying the 401K) are doing it to send their kids to programs which are NOT the state flagship (or equivalent). And there’s a reason why the kid didn’t get in to the flagship- maybe there was an upward tick in grades but it happened late (second semester junior year) so when put on a grid, the kids stats are below the “admittable” rate. Maybe the GPA is solid- but that’s because the A’s in English and History compensated for the B in Honors Chem (not AP) and the C in AP Physics. And really- can you argue with the Adcom’s over these decisions- not to admit a kid into a rigorous engineering program if the kid doesn’t seem to have what it takes? Or the kid who did not take calculus at a HS which offered it? So the kid took Band and Chorus senior year instead of Calc?

We had a parent on CC a few years ago outraged that her son was admitted to their state flagship but not to the engineering school. So in true CC fashion we all went to work to try and figure out what happened.

Well- after hundreds of posts it became clear- the engineering program required 3 SAT 2 tests. This kid had not taken 3 SAT 2 tests. (Just hadn’t taken them). And the kid had squeaked through chemistry.

So the real question should have been “why the heck does your kid want to be an engineer? and if so, is your kid prepared to do what it takes to get admitted to engineering school”. The outrage over not getting admitted was a typical CC red herring.

Most of the people I know contemplating emptying out their 401K’s to pay for the non-elite engineering schools do not understand what engineering is or what engineers do. And I bet some of them are reading this thread and are thrilled to read the posts which say “it doesn’t matter where you go”. But that means that a kid who is in-state for Michigan and opts for U Michigan engineering is going to be fine-- great, in fact. And that goes for dozens of other U’s with rigorous programs which turn out fantastically educated kids. That doesn’t mean you should forfeit your retirement for a kid with weak stats from HS, who wants a well paying career and knows that med school is lengthy and expensive, but hasn’t done well enough in the core math and science disciplines to even know what engineering is.

The non qualified student is totally different take on the thread. Interesting point.

My responses and several others here, who I know, are discussing fully qualified and ambitious students and their options. Perhaps not accepted to hpysmc but well within their acceptance standards, statistically.

No one mentioned anything about happiness, most kids at MIT and CT are stressed. Most kids at flagships majoring in engineering are stressed. Happy student engineers is almost on oxymoron.

Not necessarily. Strong students who really enjoy the engineering design process may find that no other academic major would make them happier in school than their engineering majors, and may not find it excessively stressful.