I met the manager of one of the most popular NASA projects of all time. His words exactly, “it doesn’t matter where you go to school.” He said some of the best engineers on the project went to “Podunk U.” According to him, curiosity and a drive to solve problems were the key ingredient, not the school.
As for debt, $80k+ for a masters seems silly to me. My son is pretty sharp. He was inducted into TBP as a sophomore and will graduate Magna Cum Laude. It’s not unreasonable to think he’d be a good candidate for Stanford or Berkeley. He didn’t even think twice. He’s enrolling in the 4+1 at his undergraduate institution (Cal Poly) because he didn’t even think $50k more for the extra year was worth it.
“I’ve heard some employers will retroactively pay for graduate school as a sort of “signing bonus” if you agree to work from them. Is this a “reasonable” thing to expect if I graduate from here?”
I haven’t heard of this in software engineering. I don’t know about ME but this would surprise me.
I’ve heard of people showing themselves to be of immense value and potential getting a grad school opportunity after 2-5 years with a company. One coworker or two got paid to go to MIT that way. of course in DOD work there is AFIT and the Naval Postgraduate School. AFIT used to be open to civilians, bit it’s been a long time since I tracked that. Beforehand? Never heard of such a thing.
Anything greater than, say, $10k, is too much debt for STEM graduate school regardless of the school. Really, anything more than $0 is usually too much.
I took out a small loan only because I knew I was going to be buying an engagement ring soon and needed a loan to help with the cross country move as a result. It was small and paid back within 2 years of graduation, though.
“If everyone insists it is not worth it, then why do T20 engineering universities always have the highest ROI’s??? I believe MIT’s is around 2 million and UMich not that far below that. I can’t even verify if Clemson is in the millions to be honest. Can someone please explain to me why “ROI rankings” aren’t meaningful?”
As others have said, because T20 engineering universities pick the top students. These top students are going to do well pretty much independent of where they go to university.
“In the work place it’s common to find a dude from Stanford (or any other insert impressive name here school) on your left and a dude from Podunk U on the right, all three of you doing the same work, making the same money.”
In my case the dude from Stanford was sitting in my seat, with a kid from UNH one one side and a kid from UMass on the other side next to a kid from IIT Bombay, all being managed by someone who went to a university that none of us had ever heard of. What you can do is much more important than where you went to university. The top universities don’t have a monopoly on math, science, mechanical engineering, or anything else.
I would assume that ROI rankings compare the income over time to the full pay cost of the universities. Do your own ROI estimate based on estimated income compared to your costs at the two schools. Anyone who wants to be a CEO should learn about net present value. It looks like the interest rate for grad school starts above 6%. Being a good engineer and a good leader is vastly more important to your goals than where you went to school.
Per ROI (and all earning surveys), results could be skewed somewhat by the cost of living where the grads tend to settle. When DH was considering jobs, I looked at COL calculators. With Denver as our baseline, Boston was 1.3x, and San Francisco was 1.5x. Thus salaries tended to be higher in the other cities.
@boneh3ad Ok boneh3ad. You keep telling me all STEM graduates should be funded, regardless of whether they are interested in industry (masters) or academia (PhD), so please tell me or give me a recommendation HOW I may go about obtaining this. Because you keep saying it, but I have no idea what you are referring to because they are almost self-funded for a terminal masters
A PhD is not only for academia, although a MS is only for industry. There are plenty of PhDs working in industry. The difference between the two is really about how involved you want to be in research and what role you want to serve in that process.
Having said that, there are several methods for funding graduate school for engineers such that there is little to no out-of-pocket cost to the student. It is definitely easier to do with a PhD because you are more competitive for teaching and research assistantships as well as external fellowships. In fact, with a PhD, the student should never be paying. If they are, they are getting a raw deal.
Paying for a MS is a little tougher. There are basically 4 different options (which are the same as for the PhD but have some different logistics and frequencies):
[ul]
[li] Research assistantships: Generally, professors are less likely to fund you as a research assistantship because funding PhDs is more cost effective for their research budgets (MS students generally graduate just when they have become useful and then the professor has to train up an all-new student). That isn’t to say that it is unheard of, but a professor will choose to fund a PhD student over a MS student nearly 100% of the time, given the choice. There are some schools, such as where I got my PhD, where this is remarkably common, though. You just have to do your homework on them. Generally requires doing a thesis option.[/li]
[li] Teaching assistantships: The same thing goes for teaching assistantships, though this is going to be highly dependent on the specific department. Different departments have different policies on this issue, so it may be quite common some places and unheard of at others.[/li]
[li] Fellowships: These are highly variable. There are definitely more of them out there geared toward PhD students, but that’s not exclusive. There are still a fair number that cater to MS students. Fellowships are unreliable, though, and so not a good way to plan to fund your entire education.[/li]
[li] Company-funded: This is probably the most common route for MS students. Basically, go to work for a few years instead of going straight to graduate school. Many (most?) companies have graduate education programs and will be willing to then send their employees back to school to complete a MS (or even sometimes a PhD). Often the MS is nonthesis. This is the most reliable method for someone who is not interested in a PhD.[/li][/ul]
So, I don’t have any hard statistics on how many MS students are funded by some route, but I would still be willing to bet its a pretty sizable majority who are. If funding is a concern for you, you need to start looking at these options and doing some soul searching.
I don’t know how much I can add. I certainly don’t think paying $100K for a MS engineering degree from Michigan over Clemson is worth it. I do think there are professional programs where prestige is much more important such as MBA’s, law degrees, academia/PHD’s… it’s just that engineering in industry is really a meritocracy. I really don’t care where someone’s degree is from. I’ve met plenty of underachieving engineers from “top” programs that the lustre isn’t there for me. I’ve been managed by plenty of excellent engineers who graduated from state schools.
One thing that maybe you need to consider is that recruitment of engineers is often a regional activity. What I mean is that the industries/companies recruiting in the Southeast may be very different than the ones in Michigan. If you go to Michigan and graduate as a ME, then maybe your most likely career path is with the automotive industry. In South Carolina, maybe it is a very different potential career path. Don’t assume that all national companies recruit from Michigan because of prestige. This is just something to consider when choosing schools from such different locations.
I got my degree from MIT and I certainly enjoyed going there. However, and I work in industry, I figure that it’s worth about 15 seconds of “oh, wow” time the first time I meet someone and then it’s let’s show me what you’ve done for the project. The second time I meet with someone, the “where you got your degree” never come up. Just what have you done lately is the point in question.
If you are so intent on wasting 100k, go right ahead. No one here can actually stop you.
@HPuck35@boneh3ad Well I will be honest (most engineers do not like to admit this), I would like to leave open the possibility of working on Wall.Street. My uncle works at GS and he thinks engineers do not get paid enough. He says it is EXTREMELY important to have a degree from a renown school and is really encouraging me to go to either Cornell or UMich (I think UMich is better for engineering).
@boneh3ad: Well I think almost all MS students are self-funded or paid for by their companies (but according to the representative at UMich almost no one is funded by their company). She told me almost everyone self-funds their way through the program. I just do not want a PhD because I would like to get out and work while I am young.
What do you all think of working part time and paying for grad school while working? It would actually only be an extra semester
@colorado_mom Around 35 to 45k (working part-time remember [good pay]). I already have the offer (it’s specifically designed for part-time students so I couldn’t just take the job offer).
Like I said, it would only be an extra semester. Doesn’t this sound like a good option?
Also, I understand he might be “rude” for him to have said this, but I know he speaks the truth. He would not lie to me. He literally told me to forget about working in finance if I went to Clemson, but that I would have a very good chance from UMich or Cornell. He says they are all total “prestige hogs”.
If you want to work in finance you shouldn’t get a masters in engineering. You have all the technical skill you need. This seems to me, and I could be wrong, that you’re choosing the worst path possible, an overly expensive MS in engineering if you want to be an engineer and the wrong masters if you want to go into finance.
That is true almost exclusively for Wall Street. Actual engineering firms will not care.
Then this representative didn’t know what she was talking about, or else UMich is highly unusual.
I think you’d be better off working part time in the form of doing a thesis option so that you get paid for doing research half-time and get your tuition paid.
“That answer just reinforced my belief that in order to be promoted. I need a degree from a T10 school!”
"No, in order to be promoted, you need to be a good engineer. "
In order to be promoted, you will need to be a good engineer, and also you will need to listen to people who have a LOT more experience in whatever area is being discussed.
“I guess you two are both right. I had made up my mind on UMich, but my family is leaning towards Clemson.”
Frankly then you should just do it. You will eventually experience the consequences.