<p>"Hence, if a school like MIT can successfully run M.Eng programs sans theses, then that potentially opens the door for other schools to do the same. "</p>
<p>I thought MIT <em>did</em> make you do a thesis for a M.Eng.? Wasn’t that the point you were making all along?</p>
<p>are you ladies through!?</p>
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<p>If you want to insult people personally on this internet forum, that is NOT your prerogative, for you just violated this board’s terms of service. </p>
<p>Look, I don’t tell you how to craft your posts. Don’t tell me how to craft mine.</p>
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<p>I meant ‘with’ theses (I mistakenly wrote ‘sans’, as I was thinking of something else).</p>
<p>“If you want to insult people personally on this internet forum, that is NOT your prerogative, for you just violated this board’s terms of service.”
<p>“Look, I don’t tell you how to craft your posts. Don’t tell me how to craft mine.”
<p>For what it’s worth, I apologize for offending you in this specific instance. If I’ve ever done it intentionally, or ever do, I’ll mean it when I say (write) it.</p>
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<p>Some of us are trying to determine whether the MS/MEng dichotomy is meaningful or not. {And evidently some other people are simply interested in dictating to others how to craft their posts while tossing out personal insults to boot.} Do you have something to contribute? If not, then are you through?</p>
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<p>I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Nobody is being forced to read my posts. You don’t like them, fine, don’t read them.<br>
It’s not my job to craft my posts in a manner to anybody’s liking. For those who may find my style bracing, hey, it is what it is. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I don’t post statements that insult people personally, which is more than some can say. Tool-ish behavior indeed.</p>
<p>“And evidently some other people are simply interested in dictating to others how to craft their posts while tossing out personal insults to boot.”</p>
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<li>In hindsight, it was probably hoping for too much to try to offer you advice. Goodness knows sakky knows best already.</li>
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<p>As far as M.Eng. versus M.S., I think that it’s probably safest to ask the question with regard to specific programs, as it’s probably best to ask any question like this - particularly at the graduate level. It’s my understanding that there is relatively little standardization in such programs, at least compared to undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>In general, I would say the MS ~ thesis, M.Eng. ~ project simplification is valid to a first approximation. We can look at statistics and even weight different schools according to their rating in the USNWR or whatever you want, but I think it would be found that the generalization is a valid one. Then again, one never knows.</p>
<p>"It’s not my job to craft my posts in a manner to anybody’s liking. For those who may find my style bracing, hey, it is what it is. "
<p>"On the other hand, I don’t post statements that insult people personally, which is more than some can say. Tool-ish behavior indeed. "
<p>you two really sound like a bunch of little girls LOL this thread is so funny</p>
<p>I am not a little girl. I’m an elegant Dutch woman.</p>
<p>[Stewie</a> is Gay | Lauren Conrad, Family Guy Quotes, Season 7 | Addicted to Family Guy](<a href=“http://familyguy.onsugar.com/3110409?page=0,0,3]Stewie”>http://familyguy.onsugar.com/3110409?page=0,0,3)</p>
<p>sakky, MIT might be perceived as the best of the best, but clearly other schools, or at least the majority of other schools, are not following them on this. Quite frankly, I can’t really understand why MIT even differentiates between the M.Eng. and the M.S. because from all the information I have read, they are essentially the same thing except that the M.Eng. is for undergrads that are part of one of their 5 year programs. Personally, I find that strange. Most programs either have both being distinctly different or have only one of them. MIT is obviously the exception to the rule here.</p>
<p>While many schools strive to be “like MIT” in many ways, that doesn’t mean that they are going to strive to be like MIT in every way, and at least at this point in time, other schools have not followed MIT’s lead on this. Again, this could possibly just be because of the fact that the degree is relatively new (in the U.S. anyway) and so it hasn’t really become standardized yet, or perhaps MIT just did it to set themselves apart while most schools don’t do it because it would create too many confusing situations that they don’t want to deal with. I don’t honestly know what causes the disparity. All I know is that MIT is the exception here, and at least for the time being, the rest of academia is NOT trending in that direction. Perhaps in 10 years time other schools will start heading that direction, but perhaps not.</p>
<p>At any rate, the argument originally started about arguing semantics of whether to call a degree a B.Eng/M.Eng vs. a B.S./M.S. I thought that the current B.S./M.S. shouldn’t be renamed to B.Eng/M.Eng because if you you were to ask an average engineering hiring manager, I would put money on the fact that most of them would be wont to assume that the M.Eng was a professional, non-thesis degree since that is how it USUALLY works. If MIT’s idea catches on, however, then perhaps in 10 years that would no longer be true.</p>
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<p>I make no claims about knowing best. But are you claiming that you know best? If not, then exactly why should anybody take your advice on how to craft their posts? </p>
<p>I said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t tell you how to craft your posts. Don’t tell me how to craft mine. </p>
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<p>Oh? So then if I were to say that you’re coming off as a horse’s posterior, that too is a different ball game - is it not? </p>
<p>Look, at the end of the day, my style of posting is my style, and I won’t change it just because some people dislike it. It’s not my job to conform to everybody’s literary tastes.</p>
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<p>No, that is not correct. Only one of the MEng programs - that being run by the EECS department - is reserved for undergraduates as part of a 5-year combined program. The rest of MIT’s MEng programs are entirely separate of the undergrad program and are open to all. </p>
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<p>Not yet. On the other hand, MIT is clearly not following the other schools in abandoning their MEng programs or removing the thesis requirements from those programs. Hence, I would suspect that if any movement were to occur, it would be for other schools to become more like MIT rather than the other way around. </p>
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<p>Well, let me put it to you this way. The MIT MEng graduates usually earn higher starting salaries than do their counterpart MS (actually SM in MIT parlance) graduates in the same discipline. To be fair, that may be partly due to the fact that many MEng graduates have professional working experience whereas many SM graduates do not. {Yet even that relationship is unclear when dealing with EECS MEng graduates - who, as part of a combined undergrad program, have zero professional working experience - yet still earn higher starting salaries than the EECS SM graduates). The point is, there is certainly no evidence that hiring managers disfavor the MEng graduates over the SM graduates. If anything, the evidence seems to indicate the opposite.</p>
<p>However, at the end of the day, I believe that we’re discussing a distinction without a difference. I highly doubt whether hiring managers care whether your degree is a BS vs. a BEng or a MS vs. an MEng. What matters far more is the reputation of your program, how well you performed in the program, your interview performance, and whatever relevant experience (i.e. internship/coop/research/etc.) you bring to the table. I highly doubt that any hiring manager would remark that while your skillset is strong, your program is reputable, your experience is impressive, and your interview went well, since you have a BEng rather than a BS, we’re not going to hire you (or pay you a lower salary). That seems to be a stretch.</p>
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<p>I, in fact, never implied that there was. I merely implied that there is a general perception that an M.Eng does not involve a thesis while an M.S. does. I never implied that one is favored over the other or one is better. Personally, I believe that they both have their place and neither is necessarily superior than the other. For my own part, I am doing the more typical B.S./M.S./Ph.D. route since my ultimate goal is research… hardcore research. In a normal (read: anyone but MIT) M.Eng, you don’t get that research experience. At those schools, the M.Eng program has a totally different goal than the M.S. program. As far as I am concerned, they are usually apples and oranges.</p>
<p>And at the Baccalaureate level, no, I do not think that B.S. vs B.Eng would matter. It already doesn’t matter when it comes to international students, for example. However, at the Masters level, it does matter since the goals of the programs are usually different. For the average (non-thesis) M.Eng program, the ultimate goal of the degree is to basically get a higher salary at a non-research based position because you have more classes and thus a greater expertise in a particular subset of your field. With an M.S. program, the independent research portion gives you that added professional competency of having actual research experience, as well as gets you published, and so it puts you, to a degree, into a different class of jobs than the M.Eng (albeit no more or less important).</p>
<p>Again, obviously MIT is an exception to this trend and I am using a lot of qualifiers since these programs are currently not standardized to the point where more points apply to every last school, but the general idea that most people (hiring managers included) have about the two degrees is still relevant. Perhaps as a suggestion about the original topic of this post should be that these “professional degree” programs should be standardized to some degree so that there isn’t so much confusion regarding the topic. If we have proven nothing else with this debate, we have proven that there really is no clear answer about what the difference between M.Eng and M.S. are in every case. Perhaps there should be a clear distinction drawn and set of general rules laid out to standardize the titles of degrees to make them less ambiguous. That could also help fulfill the thread’s original idea of creating a second, less traditional path through engineering degrees as well.</p>
<p>On a slightly unrelated note, why exactly does MIT forgo the typical M.S. designation and go with an S.M. degree instead? They are essentially the same thing, so why the difference?</p>
<p>Sometimes, some of the things MIT does seem to be designed to just be different from everybody else. Sort of like when Marilyn Manson dresses up for a CD cover (<a href=“http://earlthebutcher.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2009/11/marilyn-manson-mechanical-animals-front.jpg[/url]”>The Butcher Shop: Image). Hey, it’s a neat idea, and they certainly have a right to differentiate their program from others.</p>
<p>Anybody else get the same vibe, btw? I mean, the way they number their courses of study is weird too.</p>
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<p>This is a point that I’m afraid I still have to dispute. Would a hiring manager really discount somebody for a research position because he held a MEng rather than a MS, everything else equal? Would he say:“Your research skills are strong, your knowledge is top-notch, you performed well in your interview, but because you have the ‘wrong’ type of engineering master’s degree, we’re not going to hire you.”? I find that hard to believe. </p>
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<p>Because MIT insists on using the official Latin designation of Scientiarum Magister or Scienti</p>
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<p>I think you missed my point. My point was that, except for in those special cases like MIT, the vast majority of M.Eng candidates do not have that research experience. All else being equal, if the only different between two candidates is the name of the degree (M.Eng vs M.S.) then sure, they will be looked at the same. My point is that for the vast majority of M.Eng programs, everything else can’t be equal because most of them leave their recipients with a different skill set than a typical MS would.</p>
<p>In general, M.Eng indicates a focus on coursework while MS indicates a focus on research. Obviously this doesn’t hold at some places, like MIT, but in general, that is how the programs differ.</p>
<p>I think to me it actually looks like we agree on the key points here, but we are kind of looking at it differently.</p>
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