@MAandMEmom
ABET accreditation is a MUST for civil engineering. Around here, civil engineers receive a pay increase once they get their PE, and you must be a PE to become an associate or principal engineer. You are guiding your son correctly.
Re:#17
Civil engineering is the type where people licensing is most needed, so ABET accreditation is most necessary there.
Nor is Stanford, all Ivies, Caltech, nearly all LACs, and the vast majority of other private colleges that are considered top CS schools. ABET is rarely important for CS, particularly if attending a well known college. However, ABET accreditation is more meaningful for certain other fields. Among the common engineering fields, civil is probably the one where ABET is most important.
Don’t you take the FE exam first as a senior or shortly after graduating then the PE after working a few years? I think that is what my #3 CE told me.
Yes, generally FE senior year and then four years of engineering experience and then PE. My state’s rules requires that the bachelors degree be from an ABET accredited university in order to apply for the PE.
Thanks that is what I understood. My son apparently already has a couple state certifications around soil, cement and steel he picked up along the way for internships but I do recall asking him about PE and he said he needed more real world experience before he could take that exam and he thought it was important for civil and structural.
My daughter (civil) is taking the FE now. Some do take it while a senior in college, but she had no time. She’ll then have to work 2-3 years before applying for the PE/exam. I know her school had to confirm it was ABET in order for her to register for the exam. If the school hadn’t, I think there is another process to go through in some states to get to take the exam. Not sure what it is, but it was a whole lot easier to have the school be ABET accredited.
My daughter is most likely going to be chem e but she didn’t want to rule out any engineering discipline until she learned more during her first year, so ABET for us was the first criteria for any school on her list. She didn’t want to end up being a situation where she would need to transfer.
Around here on CC we always say it doesn’t matter if it is a top 20 engineering school as long as it is ABET Accredited. Why sell your self short ? Why give yourself more hurdles?
I really don’t lump in CS with the rest of engineering. For the REST of engineering, go to an ABET school!
I encourage young people to get their PE licenses as soon as possible, because the rules are getting stricter all the time. For example, when I took the PE exam, it was a general civil test. Although I am purely structural, I answered some of the civil questions because they were easier - highway curves are a piece of cake compared to seismic design. Now, structurals in our state take a structural test that is harder. I’m glad I got in when I did.
We have a good friend who is an excellent engineer - he has overseen huge construction projects, including ones at Logan Airport. But he struggles with exams. He could have gotten a higher salary if he’d become a PE, but he just couldn’t pass the test. 
The ABET accreditation process is pretty rigorous. Even though UT is one of the top ranked civil/architectural engineering programs in the country, my dad (head of Arch E for years) always sweated it out when the evaluation team came to check them out.
I think it really comes down to what you want to do with the engineering degree after graduation. If you want to work in a field that would require a PE, then you’ll need to go to an ABET accredited school. If you want to work at a company that only hires from ABET accredited schools, then you’ll need to go to one. But if there are plenty of companies recruiting at Benedict that you are interested in, you could be fine there.
That may be an exaggeration of some opinions.
While there are meaningful differences between different ABET-accredited engineering programs, the minimum standard for ABET accreditation is fairly high, so that an ABET-accredited engineering programs will not be bad in terms of expected in-major content coverage (though not all schools will offer more specialized electives), unlike in some other subjects where there may be colleges offering majors in physics, philosophy, etc. with inadequate upper level offerings in those subjects.
Suppose a student wants to go in to Industrial Engineering. If they limit the list to ABET accredited, then almost all of the privates that are top ranked in Industrial Engineering go off the list – Stanford, Cornell and all other Ivies that offer similar majors, Northwestern (is dropping ABET accreditation in IE this year), etc. It’s good to consider the details of the engineering subfield and career plans, rather than just assuming you have to go to an ABET school in your major, regardless of whether it is relevant for your career plans.
And again I say…the college engineering student might not KNOW exactly what they will be doing for the rest of their engineering career. If they don’t get the PE or attend an ABET accredited school, this could get in the way of jobs they MIGHT want in the future.
Like I said…my husband’s company only hires folks who are on track to get a PE AND who graduated from ABET accredited schools.
Sure…this college student could spend their entire career doing engineering jobs that don’t require a PE or a school with ABET.
But…why take that risk? Why?
Non-ABET degrees from powerhouse programs are not the issue. Benedict College is no powerhouse. It’s not a matter of ABET or not per se. It’s a matter of getting hired from a virtually unknown engineering program that does not have a single ABET accredited program.
OP isn’t talking about Caltech, Cornell or Northwestern. For lesser known programs it may create hiring barriers if there is no ABET accreditation. With all the ABET accredited programs, why potentially limit future opportunities?
Nobody has been talking about the OP and Benedict for quite some time. Much of the recent posts have been about civil and structural engineering, for which ABET is important. However, civil and structural aren’t offered at Benedict, and the OP mentioned being interested in electrical. The post I quoted mentioned ABET was not important for CS, but implied it was important for “the REST of engineering” – not just electrical engineering at the OP’s school, the rest of engineering in general. My point is that it’s important to consider the specific college, major, and career goals; rather than blindly severely limiting options with restrictions that may not be relevant to your career goals.
If a college offers engineering and isn’t ABET I would look at what the grads are doing and where they are getting hired.
What’s more important is the respect a school has in particular subject. Look at schools that are T20 (not necessarily a T20 college) in a specific engineering discipline. I know of schools that are ABET accredited that grads have a difficult time getting jobs due to there lack of reputation.
I would only allow my sons to apply to ABET accredited schools for Engineering.
My oldest also applied to LACs because he had interests outside of engineering.
If the college is a perfect match in every other way, the accreditation may not be as important to the student. My feeling was to not add obstacles so early in the game if we didn’t need to.