I’m already committed to attending Princeton for BSE Computer Science. But I’ve been reading stuff and just had some thoughts that bothered me. It seems like Princeton’s engineering is just as rigorous as top engineering schools like MIT and Berkeley. But then Princeton isn’t regarded with the same prestige in the engineering job market which kinda sucks 
So essentially Princeton students are working harder for less? And based on the overall impression that ivies and privates inflate grades, would it cause employers/graduate school admissions to misinterpret the rigor of Princeton? Just some thoughts I had, maybe I’m just reading a bunch of rumors though lol.
Most students at other schools would say that about Princeton-that they work as hard but it is not regarded with the same prestige. What makes you think Princeton’s engineering is not as well regarded?
@lostaccount it was just the impression I got when reading stuff. I know Princeton is pretty good but it’s not the school you think of when you hear engineering.
Princeton is an outstanding school. You must think so too as you chose to attend. I’m sure you chose Princeton over other schools. I doubt that would have happened if you did not also think it is an outstanding school.
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Companies don’t hire engineers for prestige. They hire them (and pay them) for capability.
WSJ ranking of top colleges, by job recruiters
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060
Big State U’s dominate the top 25 list. MIT and Berkeley are on it. Princeton didn’t make the cut, but oft-villified Rutgers did. Job recruiters get much more bang-for-the-buck visiting Rutgers which will have a large hiring pool. ABET certified is ABET certified.
From the accompanying WSJ article:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704358904575477643369663352
My son is a graduating BSE senior (Civil) who is going to grad school in the fall (top 5 school) and had 4 offers of internships from mostly high profile engineering firms for the summer. He also had an offer of full time employment before he heard back about grad school, and another before starting his senior year. All were impressed with his resume and educational background. His room mate is not going to grad school (BSE Computer) and has had an excellent offer for fulltime employment since the spring of his junior year.
@Cantiger Oh that sounds very exciting! Does a high gpa play a big role for job recruitment? Also did your son or his roommate participate in extracurriulars/research heavily?
I don’t think that having a high GPA was a factor for either of them for employment, although my son did include his GPA on his resume. I do know for my son that one employer expected a certain minimum (it was a very average number). For grad school, however, GPA was certainly much more important, although mostly by department as opposed to overall GPA. My son did research for his junior paper and senior thesis but nothing beyond that (he is also a varsity athlete). He received excellent tips from his advisor - both in the research work itself but also in organizing and presenting his findings. He also said one of the profs who oversees grad admissions at the school he will be attending this fall told him that their experience is that Princeton students tend to be excellent researchers. I believe this is largely due to the junior/senior guided research that is a significant part of their coursework those years.
My son’s room mate is going to work for a very strong company that he interned for after his sophomore and junior years. I don’t know how much research beyond the junior independent work and senior thesis he did but he is certainly extremely capable in his field. Both of his internships were paid R&D positions so I would suggest he must have had at least some research background to attain that level of proficiency.
yes…places like Berkeley, Caltech. Stanford, MIT are going to carry more prestige in engineering circles than an ivy league school… (a lot of folks don’t even know that Princeton has engineering… believe it or not) but it doesn’t matter… seriously. and GPA is not a big deal either. Silicon Valley is a brutal meritocracy… as long as your’re good it won’t matter… So don’t fret about prestige… there are tons of folks in Silicon Valley from no name schools who are in very high demand and command ridiculous valuations for their startups.
if you’re into CS the most important thing is your Github…and the startups you have been involved in… folks want to see how you think about and design code. that’s your resume.
Current Princeton student here studying EE with CS minor. Companies don’t care as long as you
- Have a good resume with solid past experiences to get the interview (GPA actually doesn’t matter much here)
- Have solid interviewing skills (good on algorithms, structures, systems design)
If you crush those 2, you’ll get any job, regardless of who your competition is. Most of my friends easily grab jobs from Google/Facebook/Microsoft and many choose to go to startups instead (from Palantir to Wealthfront to much smaller ones). Offers are not hard to come by once you have a Github, personal projects, and can interview well.
Yes, I agree that the college you attend for engineering is not going to be a significant factor in your earnings potential. Get good internships and experience, always look to broaden your skillset, have a great work ethic, show entrepreneurship and drive, and bring value to the company you work for. Anyone who does all of this will do fine. If you don’t do this, it won’t matter if you have 3 degrees from MIT/Caltech… you’ll not do well in industry.
Do CS classes at Princeton give project assignments? Or do we have to do it all personally on our own time? I heard the classes are more theoretical so I’m afraid we won’t have many opportunities to create big projects without using outside time.
When you say “outside time” do you mean homework? I’m not sure I understand the question.
@Cantiger I mean like your own time, not homework time or class time, your own free time. I know a person from Brown who does pretty cool class projects for programming and they make games and voice recognition programs and cool stuff like that. I was wondering if Princeton classes have students create projects like that or if it’s just understanding concepts and taking tests about them.
Princeton is a top notch school. Don’t have any second thoughts about it. I have heard about its engineering excellence. I think overall you picked the best school to study engineering. Grades are not that important when getting internships. What classes you have taken is more important than anything else