Importance of Engineering School Prestige

[bovertine]

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We’ve argued the importance of prestige to death, so there’s no need to continue. However, I will say that there are many, many high paying jobs that you’ll only have a chance at if you go to a top tier school, and lower GPA students have a better chance at graduating with employment from a top tier school.

Interesting tactic. First you state that there’s no need to debate the importance of school prestige, then make a declaratory statement about the importance of school prestige.</p>

<p>That said, I have no real opinion (or empirical knowledge) on this but am always interested in actual data. Anecdotally, I graduated from fairly well regarded UCs, but work with people from schools with higher and lower prestige. This has been true my entire 25-year-plus career.
So -</p>

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Similarly, if you look at the ** hiring statistics,** a 2.5 to 3.0 student from UF have a very hard time finding employment, where as from the top schools, such as GT, this is not nearly as big of an issue. We’re not talking about the very high paying positions, but the near-average salary positions in your engineering field.

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<p>Can you point me to those specific hiring statistics? And, out of curiosity, what field do you work in and are your conclusions based on your anecdotal experience as well?</p>

<p>Often, hiring is geopgraphical in nature, and a lot of it depends on whether the person hiring recognizes the school. THat is why it can help to go to a more well known school, but it can also help to go to a local school. However, ironically, although I am well aware of the reputation of Georgia Tech, working on the west coast, first in aerospace, then semiconductor capital equipment, and now in the energy sector, I’ve probably come across far more Cal State grads than GT grads, at all levels. Again, just my personal experience, no claim that it proves anything. And no claim that times have not changed.</p>