<p>But to be fair, if you look at that link, you will see that the difference in starting salaries between BS and MS is not particularly high for any engineering discipline.</p>
<p>What you can do with a MSE degree versus what you can do with a ChemE one totally depends on what sort of field you want to go into. If you're looking at polymer related stuff, I imagine it won't be a whole lot different. However, if you're looking at metals, ceramics, or many nano-devices, I think there would be different kinds of companies that would look at you.</p>
<p>wow ChemEs at CMU don't like to goto grad school huh? I count 3 PhD seekers from the CMU class of ChemEs and a ton for MatSci. I think I saw this trend at my undergrad too. I was 1 of 3 in a class of ~60-70 who continued for a PhD.</p>
<p>I don't see a tremendous gap in average earnings $57.3k (BS -MatSci) versus $61.5k (BS - ChemE) to incite students to pursue work instead of school.. Do you know the reason RacinReaver? My impression when I was doing ChemE at my old school was the money factor. But the pure MatSci grads weren't poor coming out for their first job either.</p>
<p>I think both sets of companies are pretty comparable, I see more chemicals/food based companies for ChemEs and more materials based companies for MatSci which is expected. But it is interesting to see a small amount of matsci working in EJ Gallo and L'Oreal (??? lol what's that about) for traditionally chemE type positions. A bit of ChemEs that also work in traditional materials processing stuff like Mittal Steel and a "coatings engineer." Seems like CMU does a good job in their placement.</p>
<p>For ChemE BS students they only list information from 2007, while for MSE it's listed for the past five years. This was done because our department was considerably smaller than all the other engineering departments, and they weren't able to release salary information since often there would be fewer than 3 people going into industry each year.</p>
<p>I think MSE tends to require a graduate degree more than ChemE does due to the nature of the research. Many companies that hire ChemEs use them as some sort of process engineers where they manage a certain facility. Often in MSE you can't get beyond a technician level without having at least a MS. I think many more MSE jobs are fundamentally based in research and not so much in production, as we're more long-term product development than scaling laboratory sized instructions up to full-scale production.</p>
<p>In my year of MSE there were 16 of us that graduated. Six went to grad school, one went to med school, and the rest went off to get jobs. One of my friends was actually the one that's working at L'Oreal, and she's doing a mix of engineering & public policy, environmental engineering, and stuff like that. It's not so much working on the production lines as finding where they could be doing production better. She was also offered a position in their R&D department, but she chose this that one instead.</p>
<p>Like, I can't imagine the guy that's at Intel is doing chip/facility design or anything like that, he's probably involved in quality control or one of their "lower level" tasks.</p>
<p>@bump and a quick question. Will the "brand" or prestige of my undergrad school significantly affect my grad school admissions? Moreover, my school grades 4-A, 3-B, 2-C, 1-D with no "intermediate" grade (like B+ or C-). </p>
<p>My school didn't give +/- grades, and I actually liked that since it was so hard to get a real A and not an A-, while getting a B is a bit more of a clear cut case.</p>
<p>Anyway, your choice for undergraduate school shouldn't matter a whole ton as long as you excel in your program, and make the most of all the opportunities you have. At a first-rate private institution, you'll practically have research and good contacts given to you, while at larger schools or one without as influential of a program, you'll have to do a bit more legwork to get the same experiences out of college.</p>
<p>Ok... Its been a while since I last wrote.. am doing some research now and kinda thinking about a PhD instead. I've talked to many PhD candidates here and they would all say that a PhD would be better than going for a masters. Talked to a couple of professors in my department, some encourage PhD only and some would not even take a masters student (I guess jmilton90 really meant it =P).</p>
<p>I am going to take the GRE soon and by that time I should take into serious consideration for either a masters or a Phd. I definitely lack the confidence, to be honest. I want to get a PhD but I thought getting into grad school would be hard. My CGPA now is about 3.45. My professors told me to bust my guts out next semester to make it 3.5 at least. </p>
<p>Need some advice, real bad.... I've already considered the pros and cons of a masters and a Phd and I am really worried whether or not I qualify. I've heard its harder to get a PhD position compared to a masters. I definitely want to do a PhD.. but with my track record... do you guys I should go for it?</p>