Is going to an ABET certified school a big deal?

<p>I was accepted into two universities, one isn't certified and one is. The one that isn't costs less/I'll be in the honors program/I'll only be an hour from home so I'd like to go there, but the one that is certified is a better school. So is going to an ABET certified school a big deal for aerospace engineers or civil engineers?</p>

<p>I’m no expert on this (I’m an EE major), but I’d wager that ABET accreditation is very important, especially for AE and CivE. ABET accreditation shows that the department is held to certain standards, so potential employers know that you are well prepared for a job upon graduation. In AE and CivE, where you may be working with roads, buildings, aircraft and the like, I’d wager that employers would care about ABET accreditation more so than they would in other fields. I also believe that if you plan on becoming a licensed Professional Engineer, graduating from an ABET accredited program is a prerequisite.</p>

<p>ABET is critical and almost essential if you ever want to use your engineering degree. If you want to get licensed, it must be ABET accredited or you’ll have to do a lot more years of experience to make up for it. Also, if you want to get into a grad school in the future, you’re going to need an ABET accredited undergrad. In short, go to the ABET school without hesitation. Otherwise, the degree really isnt worth the price, no matter how much of a discount you get on it now.</p>

<p>If your engineering degree is not ABET-accredited, don’t plan on getting paid as an engineer.</p>

<p>From what I have been told by other non-software professionals, you need that ABET accreditation. </p>

<p>For computer science?..not so much. Then again computer science being “engineering” is a 1,000-post thread in itself.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Really? Then perhaps somebody forgot to tell MIT. I know a guy who finished a master’s degree in civil engineering from MIT who not only did not have an ABET-accredited undergrad engineering degree, his undergrad degree wasn’t even in engineering at all (rather, it was in, of all fields, biology).</p>

<p>Ok so he got a MS in CE, but I bet he had to basically take all the undergrad foundation courses first and start from scratch. There’s an exception to everything.</p>

<p>

This is a seperate issue - “Can someone without an engineering undergraduate degree get into engineering grad school?” The questions here should be “Can someone with an UNaccredited US engineering undergrad degree get into a respectable engineering grad program?”</p>

<p>I think the answer is almost always going to be NO (although please post any examples you have). Some examples in aerospace:</p>

<p>Embry-Riddle: [-</a> Graduate Admissions Specific Program Criteria Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University](<a href=“http://www.erau.edu/db/gradadmissions/grad_prog_requirements.html]-”>http://www.erau.edu/db/gradadmissions/grad_prog_requirements.html)
Penn State: [Prospective</a> Students Aerospace](<a href=“http://www.aero.psu.edu/grads/Prospective_Grads/FAQs.html]Prospective”>http://www.aero.psu.edu/grads/Prospective_Grads/FAQs.html)
Stanford: [Office</a> of Graduate Admissions - Frequently Asked Questions | Student Affairs](<a href=“http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/gradadmissions/faq-general]Office”>http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/gradadmissions/faq-general)</p>

<p>All of these explicitly state that accreditation is required, although only Embry-Riddle explicitly states ABET.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>For civil engineering, yes, you want an ABET degree. Professional licensing is very important in civil engineering, and ABET accreditation is important for licensing. I have never heard of a legitimate US bachelor’s program in civil engineering without ABET accreditation (apart from brand new programs that are still in the process of earning it). </p>

<p>It is theoretically possible to get a non-ABET bachelor’s degree in science or math, then get an MS in civil engineering, and then work as a civil engineer. But it’s not very common in practice. </p>

<p>For aerospace engineers, an ABET degree is not as critical. States don’t license aerospace engineers (although I’m sure there are aerospace engineers that are licensed as MEs). So ABET accreditation is optional. For example, Stanford’s undergraduate program in Aeronautics & Astronautics is not ABET accredited.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>A week ago, you [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-florida/1087594-help-me-decide-ucf-uf.html]posted[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-florida/1087594-help-me-decide-ucf-uf.html]posted[/url</a>] that you were trying to decide between engineering at UCF or UF. </p>

<p>If those are the two schools you are referring to in your post above, then they are both ABET-accredited for aerospace engineering, and they are both ABET-accredited for civil enginering. You can verify their accreditation status at the [url=<a href=“http://www.abet.org/AccredProgramSearch/AccreditationSearch.aspx]ABET[/url”>http://www.abet.org/AccredProgramSearch/AccreditationSearch.aspx]ABET[/url</a>] website.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You just lost your bet: he has never taken a single undergrad engineering course in his entire life. Yet he now holds a MS in Civil Engineering from MIT. Not bad, right? </p>

<p>Heck, I believe he was even offered the opportunity to stay at MIT and finish a PhD in Civil Engineering, an opportunity he refused because he received a very nice job right after his master’s. What would have been truly ironic is if he had completed his MIT PhD to then be hired for a tenure-track engineering academic position where he would be teaching undergraduate engineering coursework for an ABET-accredited program without ever having actually completed any such coursework himself. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Then consider the Berkeley BioEngineering program, which is unaccredited as can be seen in footnote 3 of page 8 of the following pdf:</p>

<p>This program is not accredited by the Engineering Accreditation
Commission or Computing Accreditation Commission of the
ABET, Inc.
</p>

<p><a href=“http://coe.berkeley.edu/students/EngAnn_5-13-10.pdf[/url]”>http://coe.berkeley.edu/students/EngAnn_5-13-10.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Yet the graduates seem to be admitted into plenty of top-ranked graduate biomedE/bioE programs. Heck, one graduate in 2010 was apparently admitted to the Stanford EE PhD program and another was admitted to the MIT Materials Engineering PhD program. Perhaps somebody needs to notify Stanford and MIT that they should not be admitting unaccredited engineers into their PhD programs. </p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Bioengr.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Bioengr.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Personally, for the purposes of grad engineering admissions, I don’t understand how earning an unaccredited engineering degree would make you worse off than not even earning an engineering degree at all. If even somebody with a biology undergrad degree can get into the MIT graduate civil engineering program, would it really be so outrageous for somebody with an unaccredited civil engineering undergrad degree to do the same?</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>MIT’s “civil engineering” program is in fact a “Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering” (CEE). It happens to include a program in [“Environmental</a> Microbiology”](<a href=“http://cee.mit.edu/research/environmentalmicrobiology]"Environmental”>http://cee.mit.edu/research/environmentalmicrobiology). And here is what they do:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This is biological research that happens to be in the CEE department, presumably because it may ultimately have practical applications to environmental engineering (as microbes are commonly used to degrade sewage and pollutants). A biology major would, in fact, be well suited for this program – probably better suited than the average civil engineering major. </p>

<p>But this program is not representative of the vast majority of civil engineering work, either in industry or academia. Most civil engineers work on issues involving structures, transportation, utilities, or earthwork. Apart from MIT, few (if any) civil engineering departments sponsor this sort of biological research. </p>

<p>sakky has found an interesting niche for biologists in civil engineering academia – but it’s tiny and exceptional. Very few biology majors will go on to pursue graduate study in civil engineering departments.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Allow me to explain.</p>

<p>MIT’s CEE dept. sponsors biological research, as noted above. So it is actually quite reasonable for them to admit a biology major from a suitably rigorous program. As another example, some civil engineering departments (quite possibly including MIT’s) admit geology majors to their geotechnical engineering programs. In these cases, it is recognized that there is some overlap between the science and the engineering; a well-prepared science major in a relevant scientific discipline can learn the engineering.</p>

<p>In contrast, it would be outrageous for MIT to admit an applicant from a non-ABET civil engineering program (discounting foreign schools, where ABET accreditation does not apply). This is simply because there aren’t any well-regarded non-ABET civil engineering programs in the US. A science BS from a good school may be respectable, but a civil engineering BS lacking ABET accreditation is not. </p>

<p>Don’t buy it? OK, name a good non-ABET civil engineering BS program. Brand new programs that don’t yet have ABET don’t count.</p>

<p>sakky - I’m pulling out the BS flag on this. To take a biology major which is completely different from civil engineering and throwing them into a civil program without the foundational undergrad engineering courses is absolutely impossible. I think it’s quite possible like someone else said that he could have done the Environmental Science and Engineering track within the civil grad department, which includes an Environmental Microbiology.</p>

<p>

And yet most Berkeley and MIT programs ARE accredited, so if they think it is generally worthless, why do they bother? Bioengineering is a pretty new field (and irrelevent to the OP), and it takes decades for the formalism exemplified in accreditation to really take a hold - aerospace and civil are old enough for a lack of accreditation to be unusual and worrying.</p>

<p>Even more, there will ALWAYS be exceptions to the rule, especially at top-tier institutions. If Berkeley decides that ABET accreditation for a particular program is unneeded it is not such a big deal, but if UCF or UConn do it they are risking quite a lot. Likewise, if MIT decides that a particular janitor is prepared to enter their graduate math program, I doubt the other schools or employers would be able to second-guess them (someone should make a movie about that). Cherry-picking special cases helps only if the OP is trying to be one.</p>

<p>

Yes. The difference is that a quality non-engineering program can be very rigorous, but the assumption with non-accredited engineering programs is that they COULD NOT pass the accreditation standards, implying that they are NOT a rigorous school. Again, bioengineering is pretty new and for new fields accreditation is not as important, but I cannot think of any aerospace or civil programs that either do not have ABET accreditation or are not desperately trying to get it. Lacking accreditation in these fields implies that you either are unable to reach accepted standards or think that the other 99% of quality programs are wrong.</p>

<p>Considering many bioengineering programs are not accredited at this point, would having a non-accredited bioE undergrad lock you out of BioE Grad programs like stanford’s (which requires an accredited undergrad to apply for grad)?</p>

<p>With bioengineering I would say it is probably much less of an issue than for most majors. With Stanford, I suspect that the task of checking for accreditation falls to the individual departments, so as long as it is a quality program you should be fine - they know the quality programs and know that accreditation is too thin in that field to be an expectation yet.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>There seems to some confusion here about the different types of academic accreditation.</p>

<p>Stanford [url=<a href=“http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/gradadmissions/faq-general]says[/url”>http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/gradadmissions/faq-general]says[/url</a>] that graduate applicants must have a “bachelor’s degree from a U.S. college or university accredited by a regional accrediting association”. But regional accreditation is very general and common. For example, you can assume that any school with a USN&WR ranking (as a national or regional university or college) has regional accreditation (because if they didn’t, then USN&WR wouldn’t rank them). </p>

<p>ABET accreditation, on the other hand, is for engineering programs specifically. ABET accreditation is widely regarded as essential in traditional disciplines affected by state licensing laws (e.g. civil, mechanical, electrical). However, ABET accreditation may be optional in newer disciplines that are not state-regulated (e.g. bioengineering, computer science). </p>

<p>You can reasonally assume that the Stanford graduate BioE program does not discriminate against non-ABET BS degrees, for the simple reason that Stanford’s undergraduate BioE program is not ABET accredited.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Then navyasw02, you just surrendered your BS flag, for he had nothing to do with the environmental microbiology research group whatsoever, and indeed, was not part of any CEE research group at all. Indeed, his master’s thesis was actually regarding workflow management and equipment re-use at Intel, which clearly has nothing to do with environmental microbiology. But he nevertheless obtained the necessary thesis signatures from the department to graduate. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Surely you’re not daring me to find one, because I suspect that I probably could. MIT has had a lot of graduates. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I don’t think the question is whether any good non-ABET civil engineering BS programs exists. The real question is whether any such graduate has ever been admitted to any decent civil engineering graduate program, whether at MIT or elsewhere. </p>

<p>For example, just off the top of my head, I can think of a number of people who completed undergrad at low-tier undergrad programs yet were nevertheless admitted to MIT eng graduate programs. Granted, none of them were civil engineers specifically, but, again, this is an analysis being conducted purely from memory and regarding people that I actually know. I suspect that if I actually searched around, I could probably find some people who were admitted to the Civil Engineering grad program with unaccredited civil engineering degrees. After all, how is that any worse than admitting students from low-tier non-civil-engineering undergrad programs? </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Actually, if you remember the movie, he was never admitted to the program at all, but simply worked with a professor. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, in post #8, you asked for examples, and I’m giving you one. If you didn’t want any examples, why ask for them?</p>

<p>The bottom line is that MIT does not seem to require accredited undergrad engineering programs to be admitted to their graduate programs, even their civil engineering program. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, as Corbett pointed out, Stanford’s aerospace engineering program is not accredited. I think it would be hard to argue that Stanford is a poor program that is unable to reach accepted standards (although they may indeed believe that 99% of the programs are wrong).</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I am daring you to find a respectable non-ABET-accredited. civil engineering BS program in the US. I don’t think there are any – just as I would also question the existence of respectable non-ADA-accredited dental schools. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>But if they don’t – and I don’t think that they do – then it becomes very easy to answer the “real question” that you pose next.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>If the programs don’t exist, then it follows that “such graduates” don’t exist either. And in that case, the “real question” can be confidently answered in the negative.</p>

<p>By the way, I acknowlege that historically (19th and early 20th centuries), there were certainly respectable non-ABET civil engineering programs. After all, ABET wasn’t even established until the 1930s. So I am not asserting that “no such graduate has ever been admitted to any decent CE program”. I am referring to contemporary conditions specifically.</p>