<p>I'm an engineer. I have a sub 3. I'm working at a top ten bank. However, despite my GPA, my entire ECs are phenomenal and not normal.... not to mention, I go to princeton.</p>
<p>Engineers are scarce because of how hard the work load is... </p>
<p>But, connections > anything</p>
<p>So, yes, the talk about crap with "a sub 3 won't get you elsewhere" is really weak and unjustified...</p>
<p>youknowme, without naming specific schools, "A&M, Rice and UT" (in no specific order) have been the top choices in TX for my former employer based on historical yield and successes of their graduates in the company. To piggyback amnesia's point, i.e. connections > anything, which I agree, gradudates with lower GPAs and those from other TX schools still manage to get in through various means. </p>
<p>Bottom line, if something stops you from getting that campus interview, use your engineer's imagination to do something! Crying wolf won't get you anywhere.</p>
<p>I think I asked what are the second tier engineering schools. Those in mid 50s in usnews? Right now I m trying to decide between two schools, WPI and rose Hulman. Both are fine schools, but I don't know which one has a better reputation in engineering world.</p>
<p>I know Rose Hulman by reputation only. They also seem fairly well recruited. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.rose-hulman.edu/careerservices/FallFair2006Companies-list.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.rose-hulman.edu/careerservices/FallFair2006Companies-list.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.rose-hulman.edu/careerservices/2007SpringFairCompanies.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.rose-hulman.edu/careerservices/2007SpringFairCompanies.htm</a></p>
<p>But my personal vote goes to WPI. Having that said, I don't think you should pick the college based on reputation alone. You may want to start a new thread on this one...</p>
<p>WPI. No offense but I have not heard of Rose Hulman.</p>
<p>Rose in very well respected in the industry....</p>
<p>bumping this thread up</p>
<p>
I think 1 of the links say ~11%? Of course, many Fortune 100's have nothing to do with engineering so it's a conclusion based on that stat is incomplete. While it is true that CEO's can hop from industry to industry, ie from Marlboro to IBM, a silicon valley manager said at a conference that not only CEOs but the upper management ranks in technology are more commonly engineering PhDs with engineering experience.</p>
<p>As for the salaries, I doubt an employer would hire a 3.6 grad from ___ school over a 3.59 MIT grad. They might not even visit ___ school to recruit.</p>
<p>Sakky, are you an engineering major? What kind? I know you're concerned about your privacy but this is the most generic question. We want to know the background to your posts.</p>
<p>I know a few successful engineers who are very good friends of our family, who work for Cisco, they never even went to college nor graduated from HS.</p>
<p>School is no the most important thing and nor is gpa. </p>
<p>If you do the best you can nobody can ask for more. that is what I live by.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Originally Posted by Sakky
So the REAL question is, of those Fortune 100 CEO's who have engineering degrees, how many of them actually worked as engineers? </p>
<p>I think 1 of the links say ~11%?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Uh, no, you misinterpreted what I said. At least, I think so. So allow me to explicate.</p>
<p>What I am saying is that there are a lot of people out there who get engineering degrees, but never actually work as engineers, instead preferring to work as consultants or bankers. It's become something of a running joke at MIT that many of the best engineering students will never work as engineers, instead opting for consulting or banking. The sad truth is, a lot of engineering jobs just don't pay that well, or offer particularly strong career opportunities, relative to what is available from consulting or banking. That's why many of the elite engineering students don't really want to work as engineers. </p>
<p>Consider this quote from Time Magazine:</p>
<p>'Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: "It's marketed as--I don't want to say dead end but sort of 'O.K., here's your role, here's your lab, here's what you're going to be working on.' Even if it's a really cool product, you're locked into it." Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. "If you're an M.I.T. grad and you're going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day--as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that--it seems like a no-brainer.""</p>
<p>
[quote]
a silicon valley manager said at a conference that not only CEOs but the upper management ranks in technology are more commonly engineering PhDs with engineering experience.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And I would very much like to see such data, because that clearly doesn't square with what I know about Silicon Valley or the tech industry in general.</p>
<p>Let's just take a gander at the backgrounds of the CEO's of some of the largest Silicon Valley tech companies:</p>
<p>Intel - Paul Otellini, bachelor's in economics from USF, MBA from Berkeley (Haas)
Cisco - John Chambers, bachelors in business from WVU, MBA from Indiana
Ebay - Meg Whitman - bachelor's in economics from Princeton, MBA Harvard
Oracle - Larry Ellison - never even graduated from college at all
Apple - Steve Jobs - never even graduated from college at all
Sun Microsystems - Jonathan Schwartz - bachelor's in math/economics from Wesleyan
HP - Mark Hurd - bachelor's in business from Baylor
Electronic Arts - Mark Probst - bachelor's in business from Delaware
Yahoo - Terry Semel - BS in accounting from Long Island University
Symantec - John Thompson - BS in business from Florida A&M, Master's in management from MIT
Intuit - Steve Bennett - bachelor's in finance/real estate from Wisconsin</p>
<p>In fact, the only 2 rather prominent Silicon Valley tech firms whose CEO's do hold technical PhD's that come to mind are Google (Eric Schmidt has a PhD in CS from Berkeley), and AMD (Hector Ruiz holds a PhD in physics from Rice). And even Google is a dubious case for while Schmidt is nominally the CEO, the truth is, the real power of the company is still in the hands of the founders (Brin and Page) who dropped out of their Stanford PhD programs to found Google.</p>
<p>The point is, frankly, there aren't that many people with PhD's in engineering who end up leading tech companies, even in Silicon Valley. Heck, I don't think this should be surprising in the least because the tech culture has always had very little respect for degrees and formal education anyway. It is one of the few industries in which, as Zorz pointed out, you can do exceedingly well without even having a degree at all. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Ellison, Jobs, Michael Dell - all exceedingly successful with no degree. Heck, the long-time Vice President of Engineering at Google was none other than Wayne Rosing, a college dropout who became a legend in the computer industry for developing the Apple Lisa (forerunner to the Mac) and then heading the launch of Java while working at Sun.</p>
<p>Sakky...Did you just make a word document with your perspective on engineers at MIT going into banking because lots of engineering jobs are boring and then copy and paste it into every semi-relevant thread? Cause I've seen it in like 10 different places. Do you say anything else?</p>
<p>GPA does matter. Ideally, if you're worried about job placement, you should go to the best school possible where you can still pull off a high gpa. All a 2.5 from MIT, Berkely, etc. shows employers is that you got good SAT grades and went to Berkely for name recognition, and couldn't cut the mustard.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky...Did you just make a word document with your perspective on engineers at MIT going into banking because lots of engineering jobs are boring and then copy and paste it into every semi-relevant thread? Cause I've seen it in like 10 different places. Do you say anything else?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No...he doesn't.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky...Did you just make a word document with your perspective on engineers at MIT going into banking because lots of engineering jobs are boring and then copy and paste it into every semi-relevant thread? Cause I've seen it in like 10 different places. Do you say anything else?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Would you rather that I provide different answers to the same questions? How useful would that be? When people ask me the same questions, I should be providing them the same answers, right? Why should I say anything else? Ask an honest question, get an honest answer. </p>
<p>Look, if you don't like my posts, fine, don't read them. Since you think my answers are predictable, then there is no need for you to read any of my responses. Nobody has a gun to your head.</p>