Cross posted – probably the same table, but a more direct link?
** yup-- same table. 
Yes, same table.
OSU Sal range for Industrial and Systems Engineering in 2014: 25th to 75th percentile: $56,000-65,000 (avg $60,472; median $60,000)
Va Tech 2014 Industrial Engineering sal range: 25th to 75th percentile: $55,750-72,075 (median- $64k)
Ga Tech 2014 Salary range Industrial Engineering: lowest to highest salary offer: $40- $77,000 plus avg $5k signing bonus (median salary $63,500)
So we arent completely comparing apples to apples-- some give avgs, some median salaries; some top/bottom 25%iles, some low/high salaries.
Well, VT at $64,000 is currently the highest median for 2014 so if people want to go by median reported salaries, they should send their kids to Virginia Tech!
Seriously, IE is still going to be one of those majors that you’re probably not going to get a premium salary wise from going to one school over the other. You will get different recruiters on campus, etc. but salaries should not be that far apart , if at all, for the same job or location. I would go primarily with fit and price .
Doesn’t 50th percentile equal median?
Some are reporting mean (avg) scores and some median (middle number of a sequence) scores.
Given the very small differences in the medians, it’s very unlikely that outcomes in IE will be dependent on what school you go to.
GTech has a higher-ranked IE program and may have more kids going in to consulting, but they almost certainly attract more high-caliber kids as well, so for any given kid, it’s hard to say that one school has an advantage over the other.
" OSU reports a median salary of $57,500, while GT reports $63,500" - To me they are close enough to not fret over it. Yes… I realize it is about 10% difference. But it’s really hard to determine what is due to school vs job location etc etc.
The actual difference in reported median was $60,000 (OSU) to $63,500 for GT, so an even smaller difference,some of which is influenced by who reports, location of job, job itself. GT has a lot of kids going into consulting as well which skews things. jym in #62 notes the average $5,000 signing bonus at GT but that I believe is typical with IE, just not listed in the OSU info. That is in line with what my VT kid got in 2013. I would be surprised if Ohio State kids are not getting good bonuses as well.
I posted the GT signing bonus b/c it was listed on their table. Agree that the signing bonus is probably pretty standard for many engineering jobs at most schools.
Another vote for Ohio State. My son was accepted at GT but followed the money to another very good school, and the difference wasn’t close to even 100K. Please let us know the final decision…
@1214mom, I will
Earlier someone brought up an important point that’s worth mentioning again. If you can afford GT or it will only require a reasonable amount of loan $s, the decision to go to GT may be different than if the $s involved will require significant loans. My son’s early top choice was a $60k+ school where he would not receive any scholarship. I told him flat out that we could not afford it and I would not sign for loans. He did not choose the least expensive school, but we could afford his choice. 18 year olds don’t understand the impact of huge loans on their lives. I think it’s important that parents don’t let thei kids make bad financial decisions.
OP is there any chance at all that your kid could get to college and decide engineering is not the right major? Look at OSU and GT and think, if I change my major would I still be happy at the school.
@scmom12, it can happen to any student, my daughter included, regardless of whether she’s at OSU or GT. She has a huge spreadsheet of all the advantages and disadvantages, the merits of one school over the other, the cost, ROI, difficulty of maintaining grades, distance from home, internship availabilities, number of years to graduate. Her spreadsheet is growing. She’ll probably add a column about the probability of shifting majors as you mentioned.
Yes students change majors, but do most stray that far from the original major? I’d think that if someone decided not to be an engineer, a likely alternative would be chemistry or physics. My daughter will never be an English or history or journalism major. She doesn’t even want to take a class in those subjects! At her current tech school, her options in other majors is limited as most students in her school are in engineering, science or math. There is business (which could be a possibility for her) or communications or psychology. She’d be fine remaining at the school without being in engineering.
My other daughter wishes the math department at her university would be sucked into an alternative universe and she never had to take another math class. She’s in theater, but is she changes (likely) it will be to history or art or religion. It doesn’t matter to her if the school has an engineering school or a business school. No need for that!
Many kids who drop out of engineering end up in economics, urban planning, or another social science discipline. Agree that most humanities-oriented kids who switch majors end up in something within shouting distance of where they started.
DS is at GT it seems that there are kids who think they want to be engineers until they start taking the classes. They call it hopping on the M-train. In other words they end up getting a management degree instead. Nothing wrong with that. GT has a good Business school but if your D may end up wanting something other than STEM or Business the choices are more limited than OSU.
Saw this on the GT website today.“Georgia Tech has awarded more engineering degrees to women than any other school since 2007.”
wow, this is a much more interesting thread that i would have expected from a “tech vs ohio” subject header
in general, i see many conversations like this…contrasting a very low-cost school against one that is pricey…and then parents asking if it’s “worth it.” We’re facing this right now with D…though we’re waiting for the march/april decisions before finalizing.
Based on what i’ve read here, sounds like both schools are great. I will mention, though, that the buzz on georgia tech has been growing over the past few years…I hear its research cited more and more in national stories…and as another poster remarked, the new At&T technology square is quite extraordinary…plus, on our visit, I was amazed by the physical beauty of the school…a surprise (to me) for an urban campus…
Don’t forget the radar “gun” that sees thru walls…also developed at GT! Sorry if I mentioned that already, but I thought it was the neatest thing…civil liberties aside…