<p>Fact: As long as you get good grades, it isn’t going to matter at all when it comes to graduate school. If you plan to do graduate school, then there shouldn’t be a need to transfer unless you just don’t like where you are. The good grad schools take people from small schools all the time as long as they are outstanding students, so coming from a school ranked in the area that UPenn is will not hurt those chances at all.</p>
<p>However, if you are looking for jobs that are technical in nature, you may be better off somewhere else simply because of the types of companies that recruit there. The name of the school certainly isn’t going to hurt, but when applying for a technical position, the name “UPenn” is not going to carry the same weight as “MIT”, “UIUC”, “Georgia Tech”, “UT-Austin”, “UCLA” and a lot of other similar schools. However, with a job, it really comes down to the interview, so as long as you can get an interview with a company, you can demonstrate that you are worthy of the job. Getting the interview is the hard part since some of the more technical companies may not typically recruit directly at Penn. As G.P. suggested, look at the career center’s website and see what kind of companies typically show up. That will tell you more about your opportunities.</p>
<p>That’s not true. Even if you assume that schools ignore the ranking of your U/G school in applications (they don’t), you have to consider that top engineering schools have more top-notch research. An undergraduate research experience in a well known lab or a reference from a well-known research professor will provide a tremendous boost to your application. </p>
<p>With the level of competition at top engineering grad schools these days, even a 4.0 from Dartmouth would not guarantee admission at a top program. On the other hand, a publication plus a reference from a very well known researcher will get you even, even with a 3.0-3.2 GPA. Comparing Dartmouth to UIUC, which would give you the opportunity at research / publication / working with the top researchers in the field?</p>
<p>If the company does not come to your college, it’s a good big harder and possibly impossible. </p>
<p>Some companies only accept applications from pre-screened universities (target schools). The reason is that they understand the classes offered, have experience working with graduates to know their capabilities, and can translate GPAs to performance (a 3.5 implies a different level of performance, depending on the school - at some school the Top 50% have GPA’s greater than 3.5, at some school only the Top 1% are above 3.5).</p>
<p>Even if the company will hire from a non-target school, things are still difficult. Students at the target schools will have their resumes reviewed and will be interviewed. Students at non-target school will submit their application online. Well known companies that take online applications usually get tens of thousands of submissions. An HR rep will browse the resumes and select yours only if it stands out. The “Penn” name helps, but is not enough. In that case, you would probably need an internship or two in the intended field (preferably with a big name company), some related research, a very high GPA, and/or something else to show competency.</p>
<p>But all of this might be a moot point. Call your career services department and ask who came on campus last year. If your goal is to work at Exxon, and Exxon was on campus last year, then there’s really not a problem. But if your goal is to work in oil/gas and none of the major oil/gas producers were on campus last year, you have a big problem.</p>
<p>I think that is the point I was trying to get at. Going to a top UG school will give you opportunities to make up for an otherwise subpar GPA (to a certain extent). I am living proof of that. I got into some top schools with a 3.3 GPA overall in undergrad because I had the research experience from UIUC and the GREs to back it up.</p>
<p>I would be willing to bet that if you had a 4.0 at Penn and applied to each of the top 5 schools in your area, you would get into at least one of them if not more as long as your GRE is competitive. Do I have concrete sources to back that up? No I suppose not, but I see people from non-prestigious undergraduate schools frequently at more prestigious grad schools, so it doesn’t seem to be out of the realm of possibility.</p>
<p>I totally agree and related to that is the size of your program. You should be able to find what and how many biotech, pharma, food processing, petro, consumer goods companies go to your campus.</p>
<p>Based on the posts, he either wants to transfer and is looking to validate that opinion or he doesn’t want to transfer, and was hoping all the posts would be “Are you kidding? Penn is awesome!”</p>
<p>Not that hard… Here’s the list of companies that recruit at Penn’s engineering fair :</p>
<p>Accenture<br>
AGA Medical Corporation INT<br>
Air Liquide INT<br>
Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) INT<br>
Barclays Capital INT<br>
BBN Technologies Will also be conducting interviews on campus Friday, September 18th
Bloomberg INT<br>
Capital IQ<br>
Citadel Investment Group INT<br>
Citi<br>
Comcast Interactive Media INT<br>
comScore, Inc.<br>
Cvent, Inc. Will also be conducting interviews on campus Friday, September 18th
Diamond Management & Technology Consultants<br>
DRW Trading Group INT<br>
Environmental Protection Agency<br>
ERIN Engineering and Research, Inc. INT<br>
ExxonMobil INT<br>
FOXCONN<br>
GAI Consultants, Inc.<br>
GlaxoSmithKline Will also be conducting interviews on campus Friday, September 18th
Goldman Sachs INT<br>
IBM Global Business Services<br>
Jane Street Capital, LLC INT<br>
Johnson & Johnson<br>
Judlau Contracting INT<br>
L-3 Communication Systems-East<br>
Lockheed Martin Corporation (University Relations)<br>
Logos Technologies, Inc.<br>
L’Oreal USA R&D Will also be conducting interviews on campus Friday, September 18th
LTK Engineering Services INT<br>
Maximus<br>
Medtronic, Inc. INT<br>
Merck & Co., Inc.<br>
Microsoft Corporation INT<br>
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency<br>
Naval Surface Warfare Center,
Pharma-Bio Serv INT<br>
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute INT<br>
SCA Tissue North America<br>
Schlumberger<br>
Sensitron Semiconductor INT<br>
SMART Scholarship Program<br>
SocialReach, LP<br>
Sunoco, Inc.<br>
Susquehanna International Group LLP INT<br>
Synthes INT
Teletronics Technology Corporation<br>
The Wistar Institute INT<br>
Two Sigma Investments INT<br>
Tyco Thermal Controls<br>
Unilever INT<br>
USMC Officer Selection Station<br>
U.S. Navy Officer Recruiting<br>
Vanguard<br>
Verizon<br>
WANDL, Inc. - Wide Area Network Design Laboratory INT<br>
Wharton Computing INT<br>
ZS Associates INT</p>
<p>There are a few manufacturing companies in that bunch. There’s good representation from Pharma, and a decent number of oil/gas/intermediate chemicals as well.</p>
<p>The question for the OP, now, is which field do you want to go into?</p>
<p>i was a chemE at northwestern and many of us were in the co-op program (not internship; you alternate between academic and work terms; you can do 6 quarters of work terms and graduate in 5 years). some of them were “weaker” students and you don’t have to finish at the top of the class to get it. according to their statistics, 30% of the students are enrolled in co-opnote; that not everyone wants to do co-op; some want internships while others want academic research. i’d take a look if you are looking to transfer to other schools as a sophomore since the first work-term usually starts in the summer quarter after sophomore year (so it’s not too late).</p>
<p>fyi, here are the differences between co-op and internships according to NU’s co-op website:
INTERNSHIP
Career-related work experiences that often takes place during the summer but may occur in another quarter
There is no expectation from the employer or the office that a student will return to an Internship
Maybe paid or unpaid
Level of involvement in project depends on the length of the internship
Graduate in 4 years</p>
<p>CO-OP
Structured and supervised academic work program lasting multiple quarters
Always paid
Projects/assignments are more involved because you are working for the same employer for a longer time period
A Co-op certificate at time of graduation
12-18 months of full-time engineering experience by graduation</p>
<p>My school offfered a coop program as well, I didn’t do it (since I wasn’t an engneering major at the time, for one thing), but I think it can be a valuable option for many feldgling engineers-to-be, for several reasons.</p>
<p>As for what field I want to go to, I haven’t decided very specifically yet; what I do know, though, is I’ll probably want to do something in chemical engineering.</p>
<p>G.P.Burdell, sorry to get the topic off-track a little, but I’m wondering about these non-engineering positions. I’ve been doing a little bit of reading on CC today, and I’ve found that not everyone who majors in engineering wants to work in engineering, which was a little surprising to me. How can I find out more about these non-engineering positions? I hadn’t even considered not working in engineering.</p>
<p>Just a note on what Sam Lee posted; I’ve never seen an engineering internship for college students that wasn’t paid (with the exception of the whitehouse summer thing that isn’t even actually engineering.) I wouldn’t even consider an unpaid internship, and you shouldn’t think that going the internship route is going to mean you have to do a bunch of free work. Companies vary WIDELY as to how they do summer internships. Some have a set project that they give you to do, some just have you do busy work, and everything in between. You’ll generally be less involved than if you were on a co-op due to the timing, but there are companies that give you real, interesting, challenging work to do as an intern. </p>
<p>Ipopova, some people do engineering and then do med or law school, for a variety of reasons. Others decide that they want to work for consulting, financial institutions, and places like that. Those types of companies will show up at engineering career fairs alongside the more traditional engineering jobs, at least where I go to school. For example, a huge food company came to my engineering career fair looking for people to enter their management training program. They hired two people in the US, and both are engineers, no business or food science majors. Many companies just like what an engineer can bring to the table in the form of problem solving ability and other things, so they hire engineers to do non-engineering work.</p>
<p>edit: Chucknorris: There looks to be a pretty good spread of companies listed, so if you do stick in Chemical engineering you should have options for several possible career paths. You really don’t need to know what you want to do yet though, since you don’t have the experience to make that sort of decision yet. If you ask 10 engineering freshman what type of job they want when they graduate maybe 4 will give you an answer and 1 won’t change it by senior year (made up numbers alert) but from that list you should be pretty well off.</p>
<p>Depending on who you ask, anywhere from 75-80% of engineers do not work in traditional engineering after 10 years. Most go into management (especially via an MBA), many go into law, some go into medicine, some go into non-engineering consulting, etc. There are many companies that want the “engineer’s intuition” solving non-engineering problems. </p>
<p>To find out more, look through your school’s clubs and organizations. Usually, there’s a “consulting club” or a “banking club” or other clubs for non-traditional positions. You can do a little reading, go to some meetings, and get a good idea of the potential career paths out there.</p>