<p>I think this is quite a humorous thread. My school, Cal Poly San Luis, might not have the name recognition nationally as many others, but I'm quite sure that it is superior if I want to stay in CA for my first job. After that point, the work experience most likely becomes the basis for the next job and the next one and the next one.</p>
<p>A lot of good info has been said already, but I will throw in my two cents.</p>
<p>Experience definitely matters more than where you got your degrees from. With that said, if you go to a small unknown school, you must be brilliant to distinguish yourself from the applicant pool than someone that goes to a top school. One thing that is also very important is, a top program will open you up to much much more opportunities in your field than an unknown school. That, I believe, is the single most compelling reason to go to a top school. You can submit resumes all you want, it will just go to the corner of a database along with thousands of other applicants. Nothing beats being able to actually talk to a recruiter at an on campus recruiting event. </p>
<p>While I am not familiar with Civil Engineering firms, I will instead use an example in my own field. AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is the 2nd largest manufactuer of microprocessors in the world, and they recruit at these schools:</p>
<p>Stanford
Berkeley
Georgia Tech
UIUC
Purdue
CMU
UMich
UT Austin
Univ of Wisconsin
Texas A&M
RPI
RIT</p>
<p>Out of those 12 schools, 7 of them are in the Top 10 of US News engineering grad school rankings. An additional 3 are in the top 15. The other two, RPI is ranked #37; and RIT is ranked #4 for non-doctoral granting engineering schools.</p>
<p>Of course, a lot large companies also recruits from schools in the same state. As a few posters have pointed out.</p>
<p>RIT - Rochester Institute of Technology or Rose Hulman? If its rochester, isnt it somewhere in the 50's in phd-granting institutions ?</p>
<p>
Rochester Institute of Technology. The only PhD program it has in engineering is Microsystems Engineering. EE, CpE, ME all only have MS.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you have two nearly identical applicants, one from MIT and one from Kansas State... The one from MIT will win everytime.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>wait why is that??
I would personally wanna hire the Kansas student then the MIT student, because it shows that person is capabale of achieving the same things as a MIT student though with less resources. but I could be wrong.</p>
<p>school's name is so important. thats why people go to harvard for engineering, for example.</p>
<p>I agree for the most part, school name is important. Very important. However, for students such as myself top tier schools are just not unpractical (be it financial situation or what not.) Plus, not every student is fit for top notch schools with big classes and excessive work. I'm pretty sure that being ranked #2 at Montana Tech with a GPA of 3.8 would be just as impressive as your run of the mill Fu Foundation graduate. </p>
<p>Something a lot of people failed to mention. There are CE jobs out there. Keep in mind that a lot of smaller construction companies in NYC, for example, Hire CE for smaller projects in Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens. If anyone is familiar with these areas you
would know that there is so much construction and structural engineering work going on that it would be difficult not to be able to find a job at all having decent grades and good research. Take a look at market analysis for Civil Engineers. The future looks pretty bright. In many areas Civil Engineers are in high demand due to overcrowding and that fact that land is scarce and expensive. The only place to build is up, which requires a crack team of solid engineers. </p>
<p>Entry level jobs and school you graduate from are only important for the big names. Don't count the smaller companies out. plenty of times the jobs for the smaller guys can be less stressful and more fun than the big corporate environment.
In the U.S.A. there are plenty enough degenerate illiterate millionaires that there is definitely hope for us all.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I agree for the most part, school name is important. Very important.
[/quote]
For engineering, it is not. Perhaps it's moderately important for your first job. Locality is very important.</p>
<p>All depends on who you want to work for.</p>
<p>Payne - Bigger schools have arguable better professors with more knowledge. More resources for research and projects. While there are exceptions for the most part the typical student is paying the hefty Fu Foundation and Cornell Engineering tuition for a reason. If program name held no value why would anyone in their right mind pay an MIT tuition or a Harvard tuition rate and go through all the torture and competition?</p>
<p>
[quote]
All depends on who you want to work for.
[/quote]
Well, if you want to work with the vast majority of engineering companies, name is not very important.</p>
<p>*arguably...</p>
<p>So, apparently name only matters if you're trying to get into a big firm? Big deal, why is working at intel or microsoft so amazing?</p>
<p>
[quote]
So, apparently name only matters if you're trying to get into a big firm? Big deal, why is working at intel or microsoft so amazing?
[/quote]
Intel and Microsoft are huge companies and take a boatload of people every year. They have a wide net.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So, apparently name only matters if you're trying to get into a big firm? Big deal, why is working at intel or microsoft so amazing?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, it depends on what you mean by "big". If you mean "big" in the sense that the company is famous and/or hires a lot of people, that doesn't necessarily mean that the company is hard to get into. Plenty of famous and populous companies are, frankly, not that hard to get into, nor are they exactly the most desirabe employers. Consider the big famous American automobile manufacturers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) and their financial travails of late. Honestly, does anybody really want to work for them? Heck, even a lot of their current employees don't really want to work for them, as evidenced by the fact that when Ford offered employment contract buyouts to their US unionized workforce, more than half of them took it. {Now, of course, it could be argued that they agreed to the buyout now because they didn't want to risk being laid off later, but that highlights the point that if even current employees want to leave because they fear pending layoffs, why would any new employees want to join the company?}</p>
<p>Intel too, is not a particularly desirable employer, relative to competing tech firms. There are plenty of not-so-desirable jobs at Intel that are not that hard to get, relatively speaking. Now, I agree that certain jobs exist that are very desirable and hence very competitive (i.e. something in Intel Labs or, especially, Intel Capital). But if you just want to get a regular manufacturing/ops fab engineering position at Intel, it frankly isn't that hard to do. </p>
<p>What's hard to get are jobs at the highly desirable employers. Some of them are big, others are small. Google is arguably the hottest employer in the world right now, not just for engineers but for everybody else. Yet Google, its recent hypergrowth notwithstanding, still isn't that big. Google has about 10k employees right now, which is miniscule compared to Intel's 95k, and certainly compared to Ford's 280k. But frankly, I'd far prefer to work for Google than for Ford right now.</p>
<p>Look, the truth of the matter is, most companies out there are just "average" companies that will just recruit locally. So if you're satisfied with working as an engineer for one of these average companies, then you don't really need to go to a top school. Top schools become important if you want to take a shot at working for one of the primo companies. Or if you plan to work for a tech startup (because most tech startups hire through friends, which places networking at a premium). Or if you want to change careers entirely, i.e. to go to banking or consulting.</p>
<p>School name is important only in the sense that a better school will provide better networking opportunities. </p>
<p>I've read that Microsoft actually doesn't care much about which school you went to. The recruitment process there is heavily weighted towards the rigorous interviews.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've read that Microsoft actually doesn't care much about which school you went to. The recruitment process there is heavily weighted towards the rigorous interviews.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, Microsoft only recruits at certain schools, generally the top ones. Granted, you can still get into Microsoft if you don't go to one of these schools, but it's significantly harder to do so. </p>
<p>To be fair, it should be said that if you want just any job at Microsoft, you can go to any school and still have a shot. Microsoft is so large that there are plenty of not-so-desirable jobs at the company. But if you actually want one of the better jobs at Microsoft, it's hard to get one if you don't go through campus recruiting (or have a connection on the inside).</p>
<p>the school name will defintely help to a good start...but after that it all depends on you....on the other hand i know a dude..who went to some public school in egypt but got some good internships, amazing grades and stuff and is now working in one of the biggest companies in the middle east..</p>
<p>As a former software engineering manager, I would say that the school you attend might play a role in getting an interview (for various reasons), but it will have close to nothing to do with landing the job. Ken is right; interview is almost all of it.</p>
<p>in the long run,what you learned in college is the key.A nice engineering school(I'm not saying top-ranked but one can teaches you a lot)is certainly very very important.</p>