<p>After three years in his college, son has come to the realization that although supposedly, where you get your undergraduate degree doesn't matter, he's also learned that where you go to undergrad can strongly impact whether you get internships.</p>
<p>Since son's school does not recruit many industries outside of power and automotive, two fields he has no interest in, he's been hard pressed to find an internship outside of those fields.</p>
<p>As he's in his third year, he's starting to look at grad schools, and his number one priority is finding a school where companies recruit at, as he intends to go into industry, not academia. He'll probably finish with a master's, and would prefer to do a nonthesis option.</p>
<p>So, how does one find out where companies recruit on campus?</p>
<p>He's hoping to specialize in biomedical engineering, with an emphasis on mechanical engineering, not the biology part of that field. He'd like to build medical devices and design medical equipment.</p>
<p>He'd like to find a professor at a school that he can work with and is doing research he's interested in, but if that school is off the radar for companies recruiting, he feels like he'd be back at square one and in the same place he's at with a BS in mechanical engineering with no job prospects on the horizon in his field of interest.</p>
<p>His best bet is probably to pick a few companies he wants to work for. Go on their website and look at recruiting information. Many times they will offer a list of dates they are at each school. This can give a good idea of which schools they recruit at. Also, they sometimes will have job listings tailored specifically for the schools they recruit from. Many schools also post information about who recruits at their career fairs.</p>
<p>As noted above look at career placement centers on campus for a list of who recruits their graduates and/or check out websites of specific emplyers, if he has some in mind. Xtreme power has it right- I have/had kids at one of the schools you mention and the on campus recruitment was one of the big draws for attending (undergrad)…we attended an accepted student preview day and the dean of the school child was admitted to said, “We get people jobs”. And he was right!</p>
<p>Your son seems to have competing priorities here. He wants a non-thesis option (which is usually a bad idea if you aren’t getting it paid for by your company) but also wants to work on research with a professor? You won’t find a lot of places that will let you do that. Either you do research and write a thesis and sometimes get paid to go to school since you are working as a research assistant, or else you do non-thesis and just take classes and pay.</p>
<p>Anyway, to figure out which companies recruit at a school, just Google that school name along with “engineering career fair” and see what pops up. Most schools post that stuff publicly. Larger programs will have engineering-specific career fairs while smaller schools will usually roll it into the overall career fair.</p>
<p>The best bet is to look at schools with research and/or focus areas and classes that are of interest. Narrow it down to a list of 4 or 5 or however many you seem to like and then go look at the companies that recruit there. Also, don’t limit yourself to BME departments. Mechanical engineering departments often do a lot of the medical equipment and biomechanics type of stuff as well. I know of several professors who did that back at UIUC when I was there.</p>
<p>Oh wow, come to Penn State! Two career/internship fairs a year (one in fall, one in spring – it was just last week) and LOTS of employer interest. And a thriving biobehavioral engineering program</p>
<p>I don’t think the nonthesis option is set in stone. He just was surprised to find that some colleges do offer that option and it was one he thought he’d explore. He thought he’d have to do a thesis to get a master’s.</p>
<p>As for research with a professor, I don’t know that actually working with one is as important as the school having faculty that do research in the field he’s interested in.
For example, the school he’s currently at has a strong emphasis on automotive. He finds that most of the class is spent applying principles to automotive applications, with the follow up, Here, you can coop at Car Company A with the knowledge you gain here. </p>
<p>He’d like to go somewhere that the professors have actually worked in the biomedical industry.</p>
<p>I agree with the broader investigation of not just biomedical engineering programs, but also, mechanical engineering programs where the professors have a biomedical interest. He has found one such professor at his present college and has done research with him. But, because of his school’s location and lack of wide range recruiting, he’s off the radar of biomedical engineering companies despite the fact that he’s not only done research in the field, but has done presentations on the subject matter. </p>
<p>As for being paid to go to grad school by an employer or as part of a thesis program, we had a long talk about that last night. I told him to not rule out a school because of cost this time. We made that mistake for undergrad. Although he’ll graduate debt free with his BS, he lacks job prospects, so I wonder if it would have been worth it to take on that 120K debt for him to be in the thick of the industry.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your suggestions. We will definitely put them to use!</p>
<p>Recruiting is often local or regional, especially for smaller companies (bigger companies have more recruiting resources to recruit widely).</p>
<p>Nothing prevents a student from applying widely to companies that are not visiting the career center. But it takes extra work to find and apply to those companies. Also, he should not rule out jobs in his major that are not in the exact industry – not everyone gets his/her dream job right out of college, and people do change industries in mid-career.</p>
<p>$120,000 is an unreasonable amount of debt for most students. Also be aware that the biomedical engineering job market is weaker than most other engineering job markets, based on career surveys.</p>
<p>Hey, it is much better to study mech eng if your son wants to make medical devices. Usually a Bme degree does not teach you to think like an engineer. Instead it teaches you to think like a scientist. Which companies dont like. In an interview, you will not be asked about the human body, they will ask you about the components that make up a device and how they interact. Basically what a good me knows. As far as schools that are medical device companies heavy. </p>
<p>I know many people suggested looking at some very prestigious schools. That being said, my son is a junior computer engineering major at University of MD -College Park and he (and his parents!) is thrilled with the internship opportunities. He had internships lined up since the completion of his freshman year. His internship also offered to have him work part-time while finishing up his degree and there is some beginning talk about him signing on to work full time when he greaduates. I have heard him talk about some of his peers who also have paid internships that have turned into or are in the works of turning into job offers. Additionally, he has an interesting research opportunity with one of the professors. One of the things I like about Maryland is the proximity to D.C. and the opportunities that provides (Hopkins Hospital, government jobs, NIH,…). He has been so pleased with the computer engineering program at Md. that he is considering taking the 5th year to get his masters, but is weighing his options.</p>
<p>@phasor My kid is still in HS but is seriously thinking about physics and or Mechanical Engineering in college. When you said they teach you to think like a scientist, would you elaborate? I am not so familiar with this area. But I did read that different schools have different philosophies, much as you described. But the top tier schools seem to focus on more practical uses of the Mech Eng degree, and others more on kind of like the philosophy of the area. Does that sound right? Still learning :-)</p>
<p>Cirques, you have it backwards there. The prestigious or top tier schools often focus on the theoretical aspects of engineering while lower ranked schools focus more on the practical aspects. Many engineering graduates from the top schools (aka Ivies) do not even practice engineering, instead choosing a route in finance or something else.</p>
<p>The “top schools” for engineering are not necessarily the schools with the most general prestige. Only a few of the Ivy League are considered among the “top schools” for engineering.</p>
<p>Phasor-OSU, is that Oregon State University or Oklahoma State University or Ohio State University?</p>
<p>We did have a friend who wanted to do engineering, but was offered an athletic scholarship at a school that lacked an engineering program. So he majored in physics. He’s finishing his degree in three years. Child is a genius and could have gone anywhere, but he wanted to play his sport. But, I digress. He’s gotten into some very good grad schools and is going to study chaos, so definitely a more theoretical approach than what my son has done as a mech eng major.</p>
<p>I think son is concerned that he will lessen his chances even more of getting into the bme field if he doesn’t do his masters in bme.</p>
<p>But I agree with the above posters. Get the ms in mech eng, get a good job as a stepping stone, and then try to work your way into bme if you’re still interested in it.</p>
<p>Still, he would like to get some bme coursework at the grad level so he can have some background in it to enter the job market.</p>
<p>I do find that many bme programs are about drug delivery, molecular engineering, and the like, and he is really interested in the nuts and bolts of making devices.</p>
<p>If your son is interested in the nuts and bolts of developing medical devices then that pretty much means ME is almost certainly the best option. Find a department that has some faculty that focus on biomechanics if his interest is in developing things like artificial joints or anything along those lines.</p>
<p>If, to him, medical devices means things more like MRI machines and x-ray machines, that is probably more in line with nuclear engineering.</p>
<p>There are also things like microfluidics, which is use for a lot of small biomedical devices like lab-on-a-chip systems or drug delivery. That is typically in some ME and some BME departments.</p>
<p>When it comes to getting jobs, the department is going to matter since all those hiring companies are certainly going to know that the ME guys are equally competent. If the company doesn’t know that then you probably don’t want to work for them anyway.</p>
<p>I have stressed in the past the importance of visiting the career center before enrolling in a particular college/uni. SO very valuable to know what that career center can do for the student when needing assistance with employment!</p>
<p>If he gets a good ME job (does not necessarily have to be at a medical device company) at the bachelor’s degree level, that may be better than spending a lot of money on a master’s degree, in terms of providing a stepping stone to an ME job in medical devices.</p>
<p>Note that the automotive industry does have need for design of adaptive devices for drivers and passengers with disabilities, so he may not want to rule out the automotive industry jobs.</p>