GPA important for an engineer?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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If that's what's really happening, then you can understand why so many MIT engineering students would rather become consultants or bankers instead of engineers.

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<p>sakky.
are you saying that "MIT grad with 3.0 gets paid less than xxtech grad with 3.6"?
i'm saying this because i know alot of MIT (and other top tier school) engineering students do aim for financial service jobs.
that seems unfair and unproductive; the brightest engineers from MIT trade stock instead of building (probably what they like to do) something amazing haha.</p>

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sakky.
are you saying that "MIT grad with 3.0 gets paid less than xxtech grad with 3.6"?

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<p>I don't know about that. But I think there would be little disagreement that an MIT grad with a 3.590 GPA is probably better than a grad from a no-name school with a 3.600 GPA. Yet according to the grade brackets presented by davidng, the former guy would be paid less. Do you think that's fair to that guy? Somebody from MIT who barely misses the cutoff gets punished with a lower salary compared to somebody from an easier school who barely makes the cutoff? Is that fair? </p>

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i'm saying this because i know alot of MIT (and other top tier school) engineering students do aim for financial service jobs.
that seems unfair and unproductive; the brightest engineers from MIT trade stock instead of building (probably what they like to do) something amazing haha.

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<p>Yeah, but unfair and unproductive to whom? It all depends on what your definition of 'fairness' and 'productivity' is. </p>

<p>Let's not romanticize engineering jobs here. Let's face it. There are a lot of uninspiring engineering jobs out there where you are not really building much of anything. For example, a lot of engineers end up in jobs where all they are doing is maintaining existing production/industrial equipment. You're not really building or designing anything, you're just maintaining and testing a process that already exists. That's pretty boring (at least to me). Designing and building the process would have been very interesting. But just maintaining it? Personally speaking, I would be far more interested in a finance job than doing that, and I think a lot of other engineers would too. </p>

<p>Even if you do get to create new stuff, sometimes even that is quite boring. For example, think about a job where you work as a software engineer for EA, constantly updating Madden football. So basically, all you would get to be doing is, every year, adding in new players who entered the NFL that year, and adjusting the capabilities of the existing players. Not everybody gets to work on the cool job of actually changing the Madden football engine to input new game features. A lot of engineers get the (in my opinion, boring) job of just adding in player stats. Or searching for bugs. Or other tedious work. Again, I would personally be more interested in a finance job than in that. </p>

<p>I therefore put the onus on engineering companies. The truth is, a lot of them offer jobs that just aren't very interesting. I know former MIT grads who got to work on numerous cool and interesting research projects as students, but when they got real jobs, they were bored to tears. Couple that with the fact that these jobs also pay less than finance jobs too, and it's a no-brainer. Granted, sometimes a finance job is boring too. But at least it pays better.</p>

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<p>but I heard finance jobs' work hour is almost twice (60-80 hours/week) as much as engineering jobs. If that's true then even though finance jobs pay better, the per hour salary could be equal/less than engineering jobs.</p>

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<p>There are some very awesome research and development jobs that require engineers of all types. Discoveries and inventions that people are dreaming up everyday need engineers to design them and figure out how to make them better. Don't you guys read popular science??? If you love this stuff you become an engineer and go out there and find the people who are doing what you want to do and join them! The money will come.</p>

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but I heard finance jobs' work hour is almost twice (60-80 hours/week) as much as engineering jobs. If that's true then even though finance jobs pay better, the per hour salary could be equal/less than engineering jobs.

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<p>That depends on the engineering job in question. Working as an engineer at a high-tech company like Google, Microsoft, or Oracle also entails working at least 60 hours a week. Companies like Electronic Arts are notorious for working their engineers up to 80 hours a week. Hence, a lot of people figure, if you're going to be working like a dog anyway, might as well get the money.</p>

<p>Now of course it is true that there are easier engineering jobs that don't work people that hard, that may not pay that well and may not be very prestigious. But there are also easier finance jobs too. Wealth management associates/analysts get paid quite well, and usually don't have to work extreme hours. </p>

<p>But the REAL value of finance jobs is not the money you make right from the get-go, but rather potential later. The fact is, engineering salaries basically level off fairly quickly. It is very difficult to make, say, over 200k as an engineer (unless you get into management). However, finance has the very real potential to pay 7 or even 8 figures a year. Granted, most people will not make it to that level, but at least the potential is there. Even the greatest engineer in the world would be hard-pressed to achieve those kinds of pay scales. </p>

<p>Furthermore, the training of finance is excellent. With finance knowledge, you can slide into a nice management job. Finance (along with sales) is probably the fastest way to the top of any firm, even an engineering firm. There are a lot of top managers of technical companies who are not engineers. Instead, they are financiers. Oracle, for example, has nobody in top management who has a formal engineering background. Instead, co-Presidents Charles Phillips and Safra Katz are both former investment bankers (and CEO Larry Ellison is basically an entrepreneur who never even graduated from college). </p>

<p>Again, I would say that this is a problem with these companies. People see that engineering may not be the fastest way to the top, so they decide to take what seems to be the fastest path. What I think engineering firms should do is improve their opportunities by offering faster career tracks and more money for the best engineering students. Otherwise, they wil continue to turn down engineering jobs in favor of finance or consulting jobs.</p>

<p>Don't get me wrong. I still think engineering is an excellent choice for the vast majority of people. In particular, if you weren't that good in high school, and the best you can do is go to a no-name college, then getting an engineering degree and that relatively high starting salary is a sweet deal because, frankly, that's probably the best you're going to get. The problem is with those people who are good enough to get into the very top schools like MIT or Stanford. These people have the opportunity to enter consulting or banking. Engineering jobs have a hard time competing with jobs like that.</p>

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Furthermore, the training of finance is excellent. With finance knowledge, you can slide into a nice management job. Finance (along with sales) is probably the fastest way to the top of any firm, even an engineering firm. There are a lot of top managers of technical companies who are not engineers. Instead, they are financiers. Oracle, for example, has nobody in top management who has a formal engineering background. Instead, co-Presidents Charles Phillips and Safra Katz are both former investment bankers (and CEO Larry Ellison is basically an entrepreneur who never even graduated from college).

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Instead of looking at anecdotal evidences, why not look at some established stats? A fully 22% of Fortune 100 CEOs are engineering majors:</p>

<p><a href="http://content.spencerstuart.com/sswebsite/pdf/lib/2005_CEO_Study_JS.pdf#nameddest=edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://content.spencerstuart.com/sswebsite/pdf/lib/2005_CEO_Study_JS.pdf#nameddest=edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>In fact, the number of Fortune 100 CEOs who are engineering majors by far outstrip both Econ AND Accounting majors. You make it sound like engineering majors are doomed to the bottom, which is simply not true.</p>

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<p>do anyone know statistics on percentage of engineering major (in top school.. mit, stanford, duke, etc) going into finances?</p>

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Instead of looking at anecdotal evidences, why not look at some established stats? A fully 22% of Fortune 100 CEOs are engineering majors:</p>

<p><a href="http://content.spencerstuart.com/ssw...#nameddest=edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://content.spencerstuart.com/ssw...#nameddest=edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>In fact, the number of Fortune 100 CEOs who are engineering majors by far outstrip both Econ AND Accounting majors. You make it sound like engineering majors are doomed to the bottom, which is simply not true.

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<p>That's a non-sequitur. Nobody ever said that ust getting an engineering degree was a bad thing. The key is, what do you DO with an engineering degree? Like I have said many times here on CC, many people who get engineering degrees do not work as engineers, instead going to other fields (notably consulting and finance). </p>

<p>So the REAL question is, of those Fortune 100 CEO's who have engineering degrees, how many of them actually * worked * as engineers? Right now, it is quite common for many engineering students at, say, MIT and Stanford, to spurn engineering jobs for consulting or banking jobs. </p>

<p>And besides, what's so great about being a Fortune 100 CEO? The fact is, Fortune 100 CEO's don't make that much money, relative to what could be made in other fields. For example, the average Fortune 100 CEO probably makes in the 7 figures, perhaps low 8 figures. However, by definition, there are only 100 of them in the world. The best 100 investment bankers/financiers in the world clearly make far more than that, on average. For example, hedge fund guru James Simons is reported to have made $1.5 billion in 2005. T. Boone Pickens is reported to have made $1.4 billion in the same year. That's billion with a 'B'. And that's just in one year. How many CEO's can make that in 1 year? </p>

<p>The other way to make serious money quickly is to found a successful company. For example, Tom Anderson founded MySpace in 2003. 2 years later, he sold it to News Corp for $586 million. Obviously he didn't keep most of that money (a lot went to his investors) but he did keep a large chunk of it. Tom Anderson is not an engineer - his degrees are in English, Rhetoric, and Film Studies. Yet he became a millionaire for 2 years of work. Or take YouTube. It was founded in 2005, sold a year later for $1.65 billion. Of the 3 co-founders, 2 were CS majors, but one was not (Chad Hurley was a Fine Arts major). Or take Facebook. That company was founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room. It's now reportedly being shopped around for up to $2 billion. The founder, Mark Zuckerberg, does not even have a degree, having dropped out of Harvard. </p>

<p>To be an engineer and work your way up to become a Fortune 100 CEO will take you decades of moving up the chain. In contrast, guys like Anderson, Zuckerberg, etc. have become millionaires with only a few years of work. </p>

<p>Now, again, let me reiterate. Nobody is saying that getting an engineering degree is a bad thing. I still think it is arguably the most versatile bachelor's degree to have. It teaches you self-discipline and rigorous logic. It is also a very useful 'career insurance policy' - i.e. if nothing else works out, you can always just take an engineering job, which will give you a solid middle-class standard of living. That's a lot better than most other bachelor's degrees you can get, as most of them can't even deliver that kind of 'career insurance'. An engineering bachelor's is therefore a quite safe choice in terms of career marketability. </p>

<p>The REAL problem that I see, again, is the career track of the engineering job itself, as opposed to other available jobs out there, for people who have a lot of potential. Like I've said, sadly, a lot of engineering jobs out there don't provide as much opportunity for career advancement, relative to the fast track of other fields like consulting/banking. Sadly, there are a lot of screwed-up engineering companies out there where promotion is heavily based on seniority. Ford and GM, for example, are companies that are notorious for being particularly unmeritocratic, which is probably a big reason why they are hurting right now. But there are plenty of other engineering companies out there in which you can do good engineering work for decades, and still never have the opportunity to move up. </p>

<p>Now of course, that may be fine for people who have no interest in moving up. But for those who do want to move up, they have to go to where the track is fastest. Right or wrong, that track is nowadays viewed to be tracks like consulting or banking. Or possibly entrepreneurship. But not so much general engineering. </p>

<p>That's why I bang on the engineering companies. They have to realize that top-flight engineering students from top schools have other available opportunities. So if they want to hire these guys, then they are going to have to provide comparable opportunities. Otherwise, you are going to continue to see those people taking other jobs. It's a braindrain in the industry because of the difference in opportunities. </p>

<p>It's the same phenomenom that dictates why so many highly talented foreigners want to work in the US - because, frankly, there is more opportunity in the US. If those other countries want to keep their talent, they are going to have to provide more opportunity back home. Otherwise, you are going to continue to see your best minds leaving your country. For example, as recently as 10 years ago, most of the talented Indians wanted to leave India, because there just weren't many opportunities in India. Now that there is opportunity in India, less of them want to leave, and in fact, some Indians who had left are now going back. If engineering firms were to improve their opportunities for engineers, then you would see fewer engineering students spurning engineering jobs in favor of other jobs. If you don't want to improve your opportunities, well, then you have to keep expecting a braindrain.</p>

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do anyone know statistics on percentage of engineering major (in top school.. mit, stanford, duke, etc) going into finances?

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<p>Well, here is what MIT has to say about it, specifically with EECS (which is by far the largest major on campus).</p>

<p>"Recently, a quarter or more of students form or join start-ups or small companies, a quarter go on for PhDs, medical or law school, around a quarter go into investment banking and other financial or management consulting, and the rest get jobs in large and medium-sized technology companies. Our current top companies include: Oracle, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Goldman Sachs."</p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/firstyear/2010/choiceofmajor/courses/course6.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/firstyear/2010/choiceofmajor/courses/course6.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Hence, 25% of MIT EECS undergrads go on to consulting/banking. And, frankly, I am sure that the percentage who WANTED to go into consulting/banking is much higher, as many people who want to get in don't get an offer. While I am guessing, I would surmise that for every one person who got a consulting/banking offer, there is another person who wanted it but didn't get it. Hence, the percentage of MIT EECS undergrads who want to get into consulting/banking would therefore be about 50%. </p>

<p>I also find it very interesting that of the top 5 employers of MIT EECS students, while 4 of them are bonafide engineering companies, the other one is an investment bank (Goldman Sachs). </p>

<p>If you want to know about engineering fields other than EECS, you can also see the employers of MIT undergrads in 2006, on page 10-11. Notice how many of the employers of engineering students were consulting/banking firms. For example, I see that employers of MIT mechanical engineers (course 2) included such firms as Deutsche Bank, Bear Stearns, Booz Allen Hamilton, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley. Employers of chemical engineering students (course 10) included Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan, BNP Paribas, PA Consulting, Hudson River Group, and Accenture. I see that materials science (course 3) employers include Bain, Inductis, Cushman & Wakefield, and Morgan Stanley. Employers of aero/astro (course 16) include Booz Allen Hamilton, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Monitor, Moody's, Stroud Consulting, and McKinsey. </p>

<p>But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.</p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation06.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation06.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Hence, I find it extremely ironic that engineering firms complain that they can't find strong engineering students to hire, and yet evidently many MIT engineering students end up going to other fields like consulting or banking.</p>

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The issue, at least in this thread, is that some schools are harder than others. For example, a guy who pulls top grades, or even average grades at, say, MIT, is probably better than somebody who pulls top grades at a low-tier school. So if salary was determined purely by salary, the former guy would be getting offered the same or less than the latter guy. Why is that fair? If that's what's really happening, then you can understand why so many MIT engineering students would rather become consultants or bankers instead of engineers. Why work hard to get into and get good grades at MIT if you just end up with the same salary as somebody who went to a low-tier school?

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<p>it depends on the company too
if you go to MIT, more of the top companies will visit the school and interview people. And top companies pay higher for starting salary compared to less famous ones. For example: an MIT engineering grad with 3.2 gpa gets a job at google He will probably get paid 60k / year. Someone with a 3.8 from other schools who gets in google (assuming s/he's good enough) will get paid higher. Also, if someone with a 4.0 from some unknown school got accepted to less famous companies, their starting salary is limited to below 60k, so that person with a 4.0 will get like $5x,000 eventho he gets a 4.0</p>

<p>i know some companies DO pay based on GPA, otherwise they can't assign salaries to the ones accepted. There's no guidelines how much to pay. GPA is pretty much the only thing if two people are accepted at entry level</p>

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it depends on the company too
if you go to MIT, more of the top companies will visit the school and interview people. And top companies pay higher for starting salary compared to less famous ones. For example: an MIT engineering grad with 3.2 gpa gets a job at google He will probably get paid 60k / year. Someone with a 3.8 from other schools who gets in google (assuming s/he's good enough) will get paid higher. Also, if someone with a 4.0 from some unknown school got accepted to less famous companies, their starting salary is limited to below 60k, so that person with a 4.0 will get like $5x,000 eventho he gets a 4.0

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<p>And frankly, in my opinion, that's exactly the way it should be. After all, what's the incentive of going to a top school if you are going to end up with the same salary and same opportunities as everybody else? The whole point of working hard in high school to go to a top college is precisely to give you better opportunities.</p>

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i know some companies DO pay based on GPA, otherwise they can't assign salaries to the ones accepted. There's no guidelines how much to pay. GPA is pretty much the only thing if two people are accepted at entry level

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<p>I understand, but the problem with this, again, is that GPA's are difficult to compare from school to school. Some schools are more difficult than others. However, assigning pay based purely on GPA basically discriminates against those people who went to difficult schools.</p>

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<p>The salaries I'm seeing my classmates get are pretty good. Oil & Gas is pretty ridiculous right now. Huge room for advancement, extremely generous starting salaries (and benefits) and per hour compensation better than any other undergraduate offers.</p>

<p>This is on-shore.</p>

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<p>Wow!
Thanks for posting the links Sakky. The MIT career offices pdf is packed with great information!</p>

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<p>bumping this thread up</p>

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<p>Speaking of one who has been on the other side of the table (the one making you sweat out the interview), the GPA is somewhat important in deciding on who to hire for a position. I'm more more impressed by someone who has the ability to think on their feet rather than have a 4.0.</p>

<p>This thinking on your feet can be expressed in a number of ways. It can be expressed by the ability to have landed an internship and having done a good job. It can be expressed by finding jobs during the school year or summer that are peripherally related to your intended position. It can also be expressed by having a problem dumped in front of you in the interview and listening to your thought process as you define the problem and sketch out a plan of attack on how to fix the problem and test your fix. I like the latter solution the best - it's more entertaining.</p>

<p>That being said, you probably won't get past HR gatekeepers without around a 3.0+ GPA. Again, if you can think on your feet and get your resume routed internally without going through HR, I'll probably look over your resume even if you don't have a stellar GPA, but you'd better have something else on that resume besides your class work to show me what you can do for me.</p>

<p>Doing poorly on your GPA to attempt to get experence is a poorly planned strategy. Doing nothing for experience while doing everything possible to maintaina 4.0 GPA is probably also a poor strategy (though not as poor as the former case).</p>

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<p>I will echo Scrubs post from a former recruiter/interviewer. Once you get through the first door (3.0+ GPA), I am more interested at the individual grades of specific courses rather than the overall GPA. Nonetheless, fit, interest and attitude are probably the most important factors.</p>

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<p>All that talk about hiring only on GPA is definitely wrong. That's why they interview you, ask for references, check your entire transcript, see what you've done in the past, see what school you've gone too. To tell an MIT engineer with a 3.2 that he'll be starting at the same salary as the Coppin State engineer with a 3.2 would be crazy - the MIT guy will simply move on to the next company.</p>

<p>That said, GPA must matter even if you are going to industry. I mean we have a whole big discussion on it but it seems rather obvious. Obviously you'll check out all those other factors listed above, and things WILL even out in the end, but if you are coming to interview people from company X at school Y, someone with a 3.8 will certainly look much more attractive than someone with a 3.1. Of course, maybe that 3.1 has a lower GPA because he spent tons of free time working on a project team or doing research or because he didn't focus on classes he found uninteresting but is an absolute genius in what he enjoys. But if everything else appeared pretty equal, the 3.8 will get the job. In a sense, grad schools ARE employers - it costs them probably as much as your potential industry employer each year to put you through grad school, assuming you are a PhD student. They're looking for people who have shown the ability to succeed in whatever they intend to do at the graduate level - just like employers are looking for people who have shown that they will succeed in a real job.</p>

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<p>Hate to state the obvious here, folks. The person who had the 3.8 will generally be smarter, more organized, more motivated, and have a higher intellectual acumen than the person with the 3.1.</p>

<p>In life, results matter. PERIOD. I am not saying that the person with the lower GPA won't do well, but, for the most part, the person who got the 3.8 didn't get it as a fluke. The same people who were standouts as undergrads(or graduate students, for that matter) are usually the ones who end up running departments, then divisions, then companies.</p>

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In life, results matter. PERIOD. I am not saying that the person with the lower GPA won't do well, but, for the most part, the person who got the 3.8 didn't get it as a fluke. The same people who were standouts as undergrads(or graduate students, for that matter) are usually the ones who end up running departments, then divisions, then companies.

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The correlation between success and grades is actually pretty weak in the working (ie: non-academic) world.</p>

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<p>Yea, I would love to see a study that shows such correlation. If that's true, we can just reduce to whole recruiting/promotion process to comparing GPA numbers. Life will be so much easier. :)</p>

<p>Grad schools (especially professional schools) care a lot about GPA and other quantitative aspects that are used in ranking. They do use GPA as a tiebreaker. For corporations/firms, <em>final hiring decision</em> rarely involves GPA. I have never personally involved in one (from couple of dozens cases) that picked candidate A over B because A has a higher GPA. Never! I would love to learn any company out there that hires based on GPA. Any name to share?</p>

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Grad schools (especially professional schools) care a lot about GPA and other quantitative aspects that are used in ranking. They do use GPA as a tiebreaker. For corporations/firms, <em>final hiring decision</em> rarely involves GPA. I have never personally involved in one (from couple of dozens cases) that picked candidate A over B because A has a higher GPA. Never! I would love to learn any company out there that hires based on GPA. Any name to share?

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GPA, in many situations acts as a gatekeeper. But when the standards are merely a 3.5+ I think it means very little. What people don't tell you is that IQ has a very weak correlation with success within a certain field. So basically IQ is of reduced importance when the IQs are very similar is often the case within law firms or engineering firms or upper management or wall street.</p>