How significant is the difference between a top Engineering school and a lower one?

College Majors Engineering Majors
81

<p>"i can answer for him, nursing.</p>

<p>if you mock the veracity (truthfulness) of my answer, sakky, i shall give you a 7 page retort on why nursing is a good undergraduate major."</p>

<p>uggio, thanks for answering the question for me.</p>

<p>ecc, the 110k ceiling is in the bay area, where the average salary of engineers is about 90k after 3-5 years. You may not be able to afford a lexus if you buy a house, which goes for 750k nowadays. Your take home pay will be 60k, and your cost of living about 40k....so you only save 20k every year!! At that rate, it will take you 30 years to pay off a house...doctors can save 50k a year, and buy a house in half that time....after all, it's not how much you make that counts, it's how much you can keep that matters.</p>

82

<p>"Many engineers would do quite poorly in many liberal arts programs. Engineering is the easier major for these types, because they lack verbal skills. Liberal arts would not be easier for these individuals I know many engineers like this."</p>

<p>Sorry i didnt bother to read the entire thread but i think this is the MOST RIDICULOUS statement i have ever heard. As an Engineering major i have to take several liberal arts classes to fulfil my general education requirements and whether it be geography, religons, rhetoric , Psychology or even Econ the liberal arts classes are a JOKE. A B grade(3.0) is guarenteed no matter what( compare that to engineering classes where people work their tails off just to pass em) and a little extra work of coming to class and writing BS papers gets you an A. I wish i was exaggerating a little here but i am not!. As a matter of fact, how easy an engineer's schedule is depends solely on how many Gen Eds he is taking ! So hearing from people that LAS majors are more succesful or make more money in the long run would be pretty darn surprising.</p>

83

<p>
[quote]
unggio83, do nurses get paid more than engineers in normal cases, and will just having an undergraduate degree be enough for somebody to be a nurse?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>i wouldn't say they actually get paid significantly MORE, but they do have more job security and it is easier for them to find jobs especially in california where i live. i used to live in the san francisco bay area, now i'm in southern cali both places demand a lot of nurses.</p>

<p>and yes, 4 years is all you need to get a R.N. which should be cakewalk compared to engineering.</p>

<p>best thing for you to do is not to be asking me for facts on salaries and facts on nursing, go find out for yourself</p>

<p>call up your local hospital or one in l.a., orange county, san francisco, new york and ask how many positions they have open for nurses. or check their local website. i have a friend who works in orange county hospital, they give immediate walk in interviews to anybody who has a R.N... they can get hired within a week. let's see that happen for engineers coming out of no name schools. btw starting salaries are around 60K w/out factoring overtime in cali.</p>

84

<p>"The truth is, if American engineers got paid 100k to start, we'd have guys coming out of the woodwork to study engineering. That would solve all of the country's engineering problems in a flash."
Or lessen the amount of financial aid. Higher tuition means less people going to college and/or a greater attraction to professions that help them recoup their investment faster. </p>

<p>Aside: I think universal college attendance is a fantasy, and not one of good use at that, considering the costs. I suspect that for most occupations, and even for engineering, were it not for the status quo and all the strings attached, students could learn by apprenticeship instead of college. I read that the path to law was in apprenticeship for a few years, in 19th century Massachusetts, (from the story of Lysander Spooner, the "father of affordable postage" and political philosopher. Spooner actually sued Mass., as the rule discriminated against the poor. I forget the specifics of the trial.). But there are many vested interests in the current arrangements.</p>

85

<p>Just as a side note, the average starting salaries of undergraduate Nursing majors graduating from the University of Michigan and NYU is over $55,000 (NOT A TYPO)!!! Granted, those are two of the top 5 undergraduate nursing programs, but still, those types of salaries match the average salary of undergrads coming out of Michigan or Cornell Engineering or Wharton, or Ross or Stern. </p>

<p>A Nurse fresh out of graduate school from those two programs starts at about $75,000. Nurses make a very good living...just ask Gaylord Focker! hehe I couldn't resist. But seriously, nurses have very respectable salaries.</p>

86

<p>h.ell a nurse coming out of SJSU (san jose state university is a 2nd or 3rd tier univ) makes 60K starting in the bay area.</p>

87

<p>And let us face it unggio, if a guy had a choice between studying Engineering or Nursing, why would he chose Engineering. Let us think about this one seriously:</p>

<p>Engineering:
Hours of lab time, killer projects and homework, very difficult subject material, 80% of classmates are geeky guys and of course, tough grading. End result, decent job opportunities and starting salaries that hover between $45,000-$60,000.</p>

<p>Nursing:
Relatively easy workload and subject material, 90% of classmates are female, lots of partying. End result, very high employability due to extreme demand and limited supply and starting salaries that hover between $50,000-$65,000!!!</p>

<p>If you ask me, it is a no brainer!</p>

88

<p>There are many more men in nursing today...obviously, they are catching on! Flexible scheduling and guaranteed employablility in any city you choose to live in are two great benefits, in addition to the respectable salary. One other thing that nobody mentioned yet: nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, and physical/occupational/respiratory therapists usually work their 8 hours and leave work behind them. Normally nothing to invade your personal time!</p>

89

<p>aehmo, trust me engineers can buy a lexus, a house and send their kids to private universities. My relatives have been there and done that. 110K is definitely not the ceiling for engineers. I know plenty of East Coast chemes worked up the management level in pharma companies and they are getting paid at least 150K. Personally, I don't think a person in their late 20s while making 90K is a terrible thing.<br>
My point is do something you like and don't place money as the primary reason. Being an engineer might not get paid as much as an Ibanker, but you can definitely make a good living and do something challenging at the same time.</p>

90

<p>A nursing degree guarantees you 50,000$ ATLEAST(with great benefits). In fact, if your willing to work nights, you could earn $100k +. </p>

<p>AND your guaranteed a job.</p>

<p>Why then do most men shy away from nursing?</p>

<p>because of stereotypes. I'd like to have another reason, but I don't.</p>

91

<p>In the past, men in nursing tended to work mainly in emergency medicine and OR, but now it is common to find men working in all areas of nursing. It like women in engineering: as long as you do the job, you are accepted.</p>

92

<p>For excellent data on salaries in different regions, go to <a href="http://www.salary.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.salary.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

93

<p>
[quote]
A nursing degree guarantees you 50,000$ ATLEAST(with great benefits). In fact, if your willing to work nights, you could earn $100k +.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, no, it's not quite THAT good.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nursing2004.com/pt/pt-core/template-journal/nursing/media/46SalarySurvey.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nursing2004.com/pt/pt-core/template-journal/nursing/media/46SalarySurvey.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Don't get me wrong. I think nursing is a pretty good deal. But it's not as good as some people are saying that it is. Engineers, on average, still make more than do nurses.</p>

94

<p>engineers only make more than nurses when they're employed
nurses practically never get laid off,
engineers on the other hand get laid off plenty of times</p>

<p>when u factor in the periods of layoffs for engineers where there's no salary, you'll find that most nurses will probably make more over the course of the entire career</p>

<p>i hope you don't bring up superstar engineers, cuz we're talkign about average joes here. average joes will do much better in nursing than not
give me a wk or 2
i will give u a full 10 page report on why nursing KICKS engineering's A.S.S. in terms of job security, and pay.</p>

95

<p>Yeah, but I would say that if you do get unemployed as an engineer, you can take that unemployed time to get a nursing degree. Like I said, if you already have a bachelor's degree, it only takes 1 more year to get a BSN through those accelerated programs. However, I am not aware of any 1-year accelerated BS engineering program. </p>

<p>That to me is by the biggest weakness to the 'nursing strategy'. The fact is, nursing is something you can always get into later. I've known several people who have - people who have degrees in the liberal arts, worked for 10-20 years, and then later retrained themselves as nurses. However, this is rarely possible in engineering. If you give it up now, you're not going to be able to come back. </p>

<p>The other major problem is that undergrad nursing programs, with the exception of a few (i.e. UPenn), are not offered by top-ranked schools. For example, in the state of California, none of the UC's currently offer an standard 4-year undergrad nursing program (although UCLA might soon). So take a person who goes to UC. What's he going to do? Engineering is the most marketable degree he can get of the choices that are available to him. That is, unless you advocate that everybody from UC transfer to a CalState. Are you advocating that? I'm of the opinion that, all things equal, you ought to go to the best school you can get into. I don't know too many people who would turn down Berkeley to go to San Jose State just to get a nursing degree. </p>

<p>Finally, one could easily say that if that what you really care about is constant employment, then you can ask why should anyone even bother to go to college at all? Just learn a trade like carpentry or plumbing or auto repair. Skilled tradesmen rarely if ever get laid off, and when they do, they can always find other work. And they tend to be even more unionized and tend to be more eligible for overtime than are nurses.</p>

96

<p>"engineers on the other hand get laid off plenty of times"</p>

<p>Such a broad statement is rediculous. If this is true in the bay area, I would hypothesize that it is because many of the engineers there are working in software. In the software industry where technology changes rapidly, unfortunately it often makes sense to opt for the younger, cheaper, and more recently educated engineers.</p>

<p>But this is not the case for nearly every other industry. I have dozens of relatives, friends, aquaintences, etc. working as engineers, some in their 50s and 60s, and zero have ever been laid off. And I'm talking about companies that are not doing so well to say the least. But as budgets shrink, the last people worrying about their job are the senior engineers. It simply isn't an option, in say a manufacturing setting, to lay off the only people who understand the machinery and the process in a way only someone who has been working with it for years does.</p>

<p>So if job security for computer science majors in silicon valley is a problem, it doesn't make sense to expand this to include 8 other unrelated engineering majors and the rest of the country. In comparing engineering to nursing I would say engineering offers: slightly greater pay, comparable job security, much more interesting work, more career flexibility, and more oportunity for advancement as a reward for the obviously more difficult education. In defense of computer science, it does offer the highest starting pay and a shot at striking it rich.</p>

97

<p>"In comparing engineering to nursing I would say engineering offers: slightly greater pay, comparable job security, much more interesting work, more career flexibility, and more oportunity for advancement as a reward for the obviously more difficult education. In defense of computer science, it does offer the highest starting pay and a shot at striking it rich."</p>

<p>How do you get rich in computer science??? By joining a startup? lolz!! There are a thousand companies that go broke before they ever get close to going IPO!! r u talking google??? Well, let me tell you that the only people that got rich at google were the early birds, and in the early years, you had to have phd from stanford-mit-cornell-berkely etc. to even get into google, so how's a regular engineer supposed to get in?</p>

<p>And the 110k ceiling in comp-sci -- well, that's if you work 60 hours a week. Plus your always thinking at home about next mornings presentation/meeting, so it's more like working 24 hrs a day. Your work follows you even on weekends. So, instead of making $55/hr, you're now making $30/hr, which is much less than nurses!!!</p>

<p>Nurses/doctors go home and they ENJOY life! Their work never follows them, leading to them actually LIVING their lives, which is the way it should be.</p>

<p>"Yeah, but I would say that if you do get unemployed as an engineer, you can take that unemployed time to get a nursing degree"</p>

<p>Ohhh....ok! So you're recommending majoring in engineering, getting LAID-OFF, and then becoming a nurse???! That's a poor argument if you ask me!!!
Why not become a nurse/doctor to BEGIN with...if you don't like the medical field (rare), then you can always become an engineer by taking a 1-year masters course at a local university. It's much more difficult to become a doctor/nurse with engineering degree since you miss out on tons of prerequsites, and it'll take you 2+ years just to catch up. After joining corporate engineering for 6 months, let me see how fast soemone runs back to the medical field :)</p>

98

<p>"How do you get rich in computer science??? By joining a startup? lolz!! There are a thousand companies that go broke before they ever get close to going IPO!! r u talking google??? Well, let me tell you that the only people that got rich at google were the early birds, and in the early years, you had to have phd from stanford-mit-cornell-berkely etc. to even get into google, so how's a regular engineer supposed to get in?"</p>

<p>If you didn't notice, my post was pretty negative toward the outlook for computer science. I'm not sure who you're arguing with. </p>

<p>"Nurses/doctors go home and they ENJOY life! Their work never follows them, leading to them actually LIVING their lives, which is the way it should be."</p>

<p>Many doctors spend most of their lives on call. How many engineers do?</p>

99

<p>Hey guys why are we arguing over a dumb thing like the best job with the least amount of work. Maybe some people like engineering or whatever else they do. I'm not interested in being a nurse. Plain and simple. I'm also not interested in doing something to get a big reward for less work because personally I'm working hard for a reason. I work hard I deserve more and that's probably going to come through.</p>

<p>I think the most ridiculous part about the whole debate is the "big MONEY with big SOCIAL LIFE" like the two are rarely in sync. Engineering doesn't debilitate you to the point of total isolation and nursing students I would hope don't spend every night partying. The reality is that if you work hard and focus your career goals there should be no reason you can't find a job, and a good one at that.</p>

<p>Some areas are always going to be harder to find work and others are always going to be easier just because of supply and demand. There may not be as many engineering jobs as sales jobs but just because they're more in demand does that make them easier to find or better jobs. No plenty are qualified for sales but again there is a big market. Engineering jobs, not many qualified engineers, not that many jobs, it probably has the same market.</p>

<p>Why not let people just make their own choices based on what they like rather than starting salary? Salaries are always changing and across the board, that's why they have ranges. Engineers have a tighter range than most other careers which is why they're considered reliable.</p>

<p>The only people that ever pick a major or job based on money are high schoolers who don't know what they want and don't realize devotion is what it takes to be good not determination (it counts but when your heart isn't in it, it won't be as easy and if you really want something else you will always have "What if..." playing in your head forever. Not something you want to deal with). So all of you career mongers, aehmo, uggio can shove it. I don't want to be a doctor or nurse and the people that do probably will and will fill that demand. People don't choose careers unless their forced. Careers choose people. Settle down about the career1 > career2 because it has no real world validity no matter how many stats you haul out about various features of life for these workers. So stop!</p>

100

<p>
[quote]
Ohhh....ok! So you're recommending majoring in engineering, getting LAID-OFF, and then becoming a nurse???! That's a poor argument if you ask me!!!
Why not become a nurse/doctor to BEGIN with...if you don't like the medical field (rare), then you can always become an engineer by taking a 1-year masters course at a local university.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Why not become a doctor to begin with? Tell that to all the people who applied to medical school and didn't get in anywhere.</p>

<p>And your contention that any nurse can just enter a 1-year master's engineering program is ridiculous. It is far far easier to transition to becoming a nurse than it is to becoming an engineer. </p>

<p>
[quote]
It's much more difficult to become a doctor/nurse with engineering degree since you miss out on tons of prerequsites, and it'll take you 2+ years just to catch up. After joining corporate engineering for 6 months, let me see how fast soemone runs back to the medical field

[/quote]
</p>

<p>2+ years? Is that so? How is it that I know people with liberal arts degrees who manage to get BSN's in 1 year?</p>