<p>I'm currently an undergrad attending a mid-tier UC school. I want to go to grad school, but there's no way I can afford it. So the only way I can pay for grad school is if my employer pays for it. The thing is, I would only be able to attend the schools that are near the place of my employment and they might not be high ranked. Is that going to look bad on my resume going from a UC to a low ranked state school? Does prestige of grad school even matter for engineering jobs as long as its ABET accredited?</p>
<p>Prestige doesn’t hurt, but what are your alternatives? Turn down a free masters degree? What are your local options?</p>
<p>Well if you get good grades, and have a few internships right now you could get a fellowship that can potentially pay for all schooling. However, you’re still in school, how do you know where you’ll be employed? You might be employed near la or the bay area.
As for prestige, it does help some; however, the quality of the program is weighed higher than the school name itself. If your employers do pay for grad school, its a safe bet the program is good. After all they are investing in you, so they are going to make step to assure their investment pays off. </p>
<p>
Unless you are doing research, why do you need a graduate degree as an engineer? </p>
<p>
Tuition is often free for graduate students (at least it often is for STEM fields). Plus, the schools offer teaching assistantships, research assistantships, and fellowships which pay you a stipend to live on, i.e you get paid by the university to go to grad school.</p>
<p>
I’m not yet employed, but I’ll likely be employed in California. So the my options would probably be schools around bay area or silicone valley.</p>
<p>
I thought a graduate degree is ideal for career advancement?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are the teaching assistantships and research assistantships granted to every grad student or they granted based on undergraduate academic performance?</p>
<p>
A graduate degree is only needed if you want a research career. If you want career advancement up the managerial ladder of a company, then an MBA would suit you better. But even an MBA is not required to do that.</p>
<p>To work as an engineer, spending the add’l years to get a masters or PhD is years of lost income.</p>
<p>
It varies by school and by major. When I was a grad student (back in the Jurassic), all of us in the department were on full scholarships w some kind of assistantship or fellowship.</p>
<p>
silicon (no “e”)
silicone = the stuff they inject in fake boobs 
</p>
<p>
I see, but I’ve looked at a few job postings from companies I’d like to work in where Bachelor’s degree is required but they prefer Master’s. So to be competitive, shouldn’t I have a Master’s as well?</p>
<p>
oops my mistake 
</p>
<p>
What kind of engineering discipline is that? Biomedical? </p>
<p>It can work against you too. </p>
<p>I pay for people to get their Masters so that they can gain deep expertise in my particular field. The degree itself is not so valuable, it’s the knowledge and skills that are valuable. </p>
<p>People who get Masters degrees but didn’t learn what I need are less valuable to me than Bachelors grads who I can send to graduate school. I would have to pay them more, but they don’t have the capabilities I need, and since they already have an MS, I no longer have any mechanism to send them to get the expertise. </p>
<p>So if you are going to get your MS, make sure the specialty is in an area that you want to work in and is one that there are opportunities. </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Not exactly true. For Ph.D. yes … MS not necessarily the case.</p>
<p>My boy will be graduating from a highly ranked Midwestern Big10 engineering school next spring in Computer Engineering and is planning to attend graduate school (MS degree) to gain further understanding of the hardware aspects of Computer engineering (software+ hardware). Money down a rathole? — who knows</p>
<p>I am under the impression that PhD is for research, not MS. I speak as someone with (little to) no knowledge about engineering though. </p>
<p>How I understand it, you can do research as an MS; however your role is essentially a glorified lab tech. If you want to do your own labs, have autonomy and agency PhD is the end point. </p>
<p>What matters more in engineering are the projects you get to work on.</p>
<p>A masters degree has value even if you do not do research - it is extra education in your field, and that always has value. It does not pay directly, but you are generally able to parlay that knowledge into more and better promotions. Still, as ClassicRockerDad noted, this all assumes that your increased knowledge is actually useful to your employer - an unrelated masters is useless at best, and an obstruction to further education at worst.</p>
<p>I would estimate that about 70% of the engineers at my company with more than 5 years of experience have masters degrees (or higher), and that proportion increases as you look at higher ranks. Among people in genuine leadership positions, a lack of a graduate degree is unusual enough to be conspicuous.</p>
<p>A PhD is really about research, although PhD’s can and do hold other positions. Still, don’t get a PhD unless you want to do research.</p>
<p>As to funding, most (but not all) engineering employers see value in continuing education and will pay for a masters… but often limit you to a coursework-only degree, which is less valuable in just about every way. Still, even if it is corusework-only and/or from a no-name school, it still helps your performance and career. As to assistantships, they are more easily obtained as a PhD candidate, but there are usually some available to masters students as well - the maxim is that the better the program, the more masters candidates funded.</p>
<p>So OP, I would suggest applying to some grad programs your senior year. In the spring, weigh your funded masters options (if any) against your employment options (and their educational funding) and see what looks better!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I can’t say I’ve seen this in my career experience so far. </p>
<p>A Master’s is hardly seen as a research degree by most companies/organizations. It’s more of a stepping stone degree for one of two paths: specialized technical position, or technical management.</p>
<p>To answer the original question, the prestige of your graduate institution has a varying degree of importance depending on your career goals. If your employer is funding your master’s degree then the prestige matters almost exactly none. If they didn’t think that school was good enough to make you a more valuable employee, they wouldn’t be sending you there to get a degree.</p>
<p>If you are a full-time student who went into a master’s program straight into it after getting a bachelor’s degree, then it will matter in many of the same ways that undergraduate prestige matters, namely that schools with higher prestige tend to have more “prestigious” companies recruiting their graduate students. You do have the added benefit of working directly with a professor (or several) who almost certainly have industry connections, so that can be a large part of the equation as well. If your professor is well-known, he or she is more likely to be able to help you get a job doing a very relevant job. Getting a non-tenure-track job as a PhD is similar, where school connections and advisor connections matter more than just the name on the degree, though again, big name schools tend to attract more big name employers.</p>
<p>If you are in a PhD program and looking to get a tenure-track professorship after graduation, then it definitely matters. You can argue all day about the merits, but most hiring committees at universities weigh your pedigree rather heavily. A large part of your pedigree is the school you attend, although having a famous advisor can outweigh the effects of the school’s level of clout. If you get your PhD from an advisor who is NAE, for example, it will matter much less that you came from South Central Baptist College since that advisor is already nationally and probably internationally renowned in the field and carries a lot of weight with their reputation. Of course, those types of professors tend to congregate at the more prestigious schools, though there are definitely some rogues, so to speak.</p>