<p>Hey, I'm about half of a year off from getting my CCNA. I am a junior in High School right now. How useful will this be to my profession.</p>
<p>No, because CCNA is certification to be a Cisco Network Associate, a job without formal degree requirements. Computer Engineers don't do that stuff.</p>
<p>I would say that it's not a bad thing to have, but standalone, it's by and large, useless. You still need that degree, and CCNA would just be like a little icing on the cake.</p>
<p>I don't think it would be that useful if you're not planning to end up as a network administrator somewhere... and I don't think many Computer Engineering majors want that ;)</p>
<p>Also, why do you want to get your CCNA as a HS student? If you don't plan on applying that knowledge, i.e. working in the field soon, you'll forget most of it, plus you'd have to renew it every 2 or 3 years.</p>
<p>I got my CCNA and CCDA too when I was about 15 or 16, and honestly, I don't remember much of it. I don't think I'd do it again, never needed it.</p>
<p>Only get certifications if you're sure you'll be working in that particular field.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I was planing to land a job in networking out of HS to pay for college. That's why i'm going for it.</p>
<p>You want to land a full-time networking job and major in Computer Engineering at the same time? :confused:</p>
<p>If you have a Computer Engineering degree and try and work in that field, the people you interview for will either 1) not be familiar with a CCNA or 2) will be and won't care about it</p>
<p>Caveat: Do you want to do networking in the future? If so, then go for it, but if not, then you might not want CCNA on your resume. In my experience, if you've got useful credentials like that, then your employers might tend to use you as that... a lot...</p>
<p>I once let slip that I had experience in GIS work and within ten minutes the company's unopened ArcView software boxes were sitting on my desk and I had instructions to please use the next few months of my time to create a tutorial to present to the rest of the company. I couldn't believe that they would pay me engineering wages to do GIS work, but they needed GIS.</p>
<p>Haha, likewise, never it let be known in a research group if you're familiar with HTML, C++, Java, or any other sort of computer thing unless that's what they explicitly hired you for. </p>
<p>Every time I've accidentally slipped that I built my home desktop I wound up having to build a new computer or two for the current lab, because they knew I could do it for a fraction of the cost of buying from Dell. Same thing with mentioning about how I wound up doing a homework problem in C++ since I thought it was easier than doing all these variations on the same problem by hand. Guess who got to then write all of the data-parsing software. :(</p>
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You want to land a full-time networking job and major in Computer Engineering at the same time?
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<p>Well, in the OP's defense, I don't think he ever said anything about full-time work. I think it is eminently reasonable to get a part-time networking job to pay the bills. </p>
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If you have a Computer Engineering degree and try and work in that field, the people you interview for will either 1) not be familiar with a CCNA or 2) will be and won't care about it
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<p>Well, I don't know that I would be that cut-and-dried about it. I can see one crystal-clear example of an employer who employs boatloads of computer engineers yet also places value on the CCNA: that employer being Cisco itself. Similarly, (but ironically) many of Cisco's competitors would also probably place value on that cert, because they are trying to sell gear that has to be able to interoperate with Cisco gear.</p>
<p>The traditional computer engineering degree isn't geared towards networking at all. If you want to learn about such, then you have to take network specific electives at your own discretion (which in itself would give you a solid networking background). Therefore, when you apply for a Cmpe position, there will probably be no interest in CCNA since the work isn't related. You do realize that the computer engineering degree is primarily the study of digital and analog circuit theory/design? CCNA is good for someone studying IT or something IT related.</p>