<p>Hi I'm currently a high school student looking at college options. I have noticed while reading the posts on here that a lot of times the geographical location of the school you go to matters, for example if your going to major in petroleum engineering the best school is probably Rice or any other U of Texas. I say this because I assume recruiters go to schools near the location of their company. My question is if this is true? And if so what locations would be best for the following majors: Computer Science, Economics, Materials Science and Engineering, and which of these have the best prospects. I am highly interested in the three of them. I am looking at options as an undergrad coming fresh out of college.</p>
<p>For those kinds of fields, I’d worry less about location and more about placement rate. Try to find out what firms interview on campus, what the outcomes were for last year’s class, etc. Most schools should be able to provide that info.</p>
<p>One example of what I mean is Carnegie-Mellon. While Pittsburgh isn’t the epicenter of the software or computer biz, I would imagine their CompSci grads have little difficulty in finding jobs.</p>
<p>If you want to live in a particular location after graduation, a school in that area might give you an edge due to the possibility of part-time jobs, internships during the school year, etc.</p>
<p>But, I’d mainly focus on how successful each school is in placing grads in your field.</p>
<p>Thank you for the info. Do you know how I can find out that information, like where in their website or what is it usually called?</p>
<p>I think your instinct on this is correct. Location matters for internships and research opportunities. It’s helpful if your school is located somewhere that makes it easy to plug into the industry network locally. For example, the relationship between Silicon Valley, in the SF Bay Area, and Stanford is well known: Many, if not most, of the CS and engineering faculty consult to, sit on the board of, or have helped to start tech companies in the area. The school feeds the industry and vice versa. That doesn’t mean you can’t get a good job there if you go to Carnegie Mellon - but if you go to a much less well known and selective school nearby, you will probably do fine too. </p>
<p>The biotech industry is very big where we live, so kids attending local schools frequently do well on job placements there because the network is good, the companies do recruit on campuses here, and those kids who are really interested make a point of getting themselves connected via internships and faculty introductions.</p>