<p>For a undergrad in ECE, electrical and computer engineering, how necessary is graduate school? Is it easy to get a good job right after 4 years of undergrad, say, from CMU, or do I still need to go to grad school? how much help would it give me in the future? if I dont go into research.</p>
<p>It is not necessary to go to graduate school in engineering, for the most part. I would not say it is “easy”, but with hard work and good grades, plus some outside experiences, you should be able to find a well-paying job in engineering.</p>
<p>The best thing I would say to those considering graduate school as freshman in college or before – wait. Get the kinds of experiences that would help you gain admissions to grad school because they are useful anyway – an employer would like to see you do a REU just like a grad school would. Researchers have marketable skills, and employers like that. However, don’t focus too hard on graduate school until I’d say around the end of your sophomore year/beginning of your junior year. At that time, I’d start thinking about whether you need to go, want to go, and ask your professors and advisors for their advice.</p>
<p>I have been a working EE for a few years now. You do not need a masters to get a good job, but in my field it really helps to get a masters at some point if you want to continue to advance. The vast majority of senior-level engineers here have a masters or PhD.</p>
<p>The issue is that your BS is really just providing a foundation, but does not give you enough education to really go after an inevitable specialization. That is what the higher degrees do in engineering, deeply educate you in a specific area. I arrived with my BS and used my tuition reimbursement to pay for my masters, which helped to ensure that I was specializing in something I had a future in.</p>
<p>With just a BS you tend to get pushed in to jobs requiring little actual engineering, like peripheral systems and support roles. If this is what you want to do (and these jobs are liked by many and needed by all), a BS is fine - if you want to design antennas or MMIC’s, get ready for grad study.</p>
<p>Is it EASY to get a good job? I would say “no” in this economy, however I do know BA’s in cs engineering that do have jobs making 80k. But these people have mad skills, right?</p>
<p>yeah thanks guys! that really helped ~</p>
<p>I think the “necessity” of grad school is overrated in some instances. Grad school is essential for certain types of jobs and it is true that in many domains (specifically the humanities and social sciences) a simple BA might not give you the expertise needed to land a truly interesting job. It depends on what you want to do and what field youre in. I’m sick of the whole “The Bachelors is the new high school degree and the MA is the new Bachelors” thing that people seem to be parroting around these days. It’s a pretty misleading maxim.</p>
<p>If you take a look at ECE’s stats at CMU, only a handful of people wind up going on for their PhD at another school. Most wind up going into industry, though I think around 50 a year will stick around to get their MS from CMU.</p>