I am an international student intending to apply to US universities this year for an engineering major. I would like to know what do international engineering students do after graduation? Do they get jobs? Is it easy to find a job if you work hard during college? If they continue for master degree, does a master degree costs a lot? Many schools of full rides for international students for undergraduate degrees, is it the same with master degrees? Would it be better to have a master degree in terms of job placement?
An engineering degree will not get me a job in my country, this is why I am worried
any thoughts?
As an international student with an engineering major, you automatically get a 2-year training permit called OPT, which allows you to apply the skills learned in college. In order to get an opt you typically need to have had an internship over one summer while in college. After the opt, you should be eligible for something called an H1B. The problem is that H1Bs have been subverted from their original intent, which was to offer a job to satisfactory OPTs or hire exceptional internationals with special skills. The idea was that the company would apply for one visa for an individual person that matches what they wanted. However unscrupulous companies have started buying hundreds of H1Bs at once then giving them to people (especially from India but it can be many other countries) who accept working for very low salaries, so that entire departments in the US are fired and replaced by those “H1B” (who are neither us degree hiders Joe exceptional talent from abroad). As a result, the odds of getting a H1B as a student for whom it was meant are close to zero and many Americans got angry at the unfair process. You’d think a consequence would be for the unscrupulous companies to be punished and barred from acquiring hundreds of visas at once but it seems the actual result is going to be to make it even harder for regular us-degree holders to get such a visa with nothing done against the unscrupulous companies as far as I know.
Therefore, you’ll need to get into a funded PhD (more rarely, master’s) if you want to stay and keep going. If you get a Master’s degree you get 2 more years of opt after that.
@MYOS1634 Thank you for the explanation. There is something I couldn’t comprehend.
1- Is getting the H1B now became hard for international students? If someone worked in summer research and internships, are there good chances of getting the visa? (If an employer wanted me) or it’s hard.
2- Is it possible to get a funded Master degree?
3- I heard that if you stayed for 5 years in the US, you can apply for citizenship. Is this real? I think after 4-years bachelor degree and the 2-year training (or if you applied for master degree), it is supposed that you exceeded the required 5 years.
I don’t know is it better to get my bachelor degree from the US, or getting the bachelor from my country can open the same doors as a bachelor from the US.
yes, it is so hard it's no exageration to say it's almost impossible. It's LITERALLY a lottery where winning tickets have been purchased by large groups that had no business doing so.
Funded Masters are rare. Often, you get your Master's degree enroute to the PHD.
If you've been 5 years as a legal resident, which, as a student, you're not since the student visa is a non immigrant visa (and any indication you want to stay in the US ie., immigrate, is an immediate cause for denial).
It's better to get your BAchelor's in the US since you can get OPT experience at least, whereas the Bachelor's degree in your home country doesn't offer that opportunity; in addition, when you get your BS/BA in the US, you compete on the same ground as other students with US degrees whereas if you have a degree from abroad you compete against all international students, and it's typically harder to get research experience, meaningful recommendation letters, and other documents, from an international university where these are rare if not unheard of for undergrads.
@MYOS1634
If the process is complicated and it’s hard to get a work visa, also it is rare to find a funded master degree, so why is there a HUGE number of students travel to the US to take the BS? I know that the in the US you will find research opportunities, a better atmosphere, and a lot of other advantages, but after graduation, you will not find a job in the US and you can hardly stay in the there as well. I know that people differ from one to another and everyone has his/her special circumstance and special reasons to travel to the US, but at least there is a big number of people, like me, who want to pursue a STEM career in the US with the cheapest cost as possible, and the OPT period is just a couple of years, not your whole life. Why would all these people travel and risk their whole life especially for those who come from countries where there are no research opportunities and no facilities
Sorry for my repetitive long replies but I am really ambivalent and I have to decide what to do. @MYOS1634
Students who come to the US don’t feel that they “risk their whole life” by coming here. They believe they’re making an investment in themselves and it’s up to them to prove it was worth it.
In some fields, including STEM, the US programs tend to be the best in the world, with excellent funding and labs - and the US offers a few scholarships, which top universities in other countries rarely do, so that, if you have plenty of money or if you have no money, the US remains a very popular choice. (For developing and middle income countries, China has now overcome the US by offering full scholarships, which it didn’t before.)
Other reasons:
In many countries, a US degree is very prestigious and will secure excellent job opportunities at home.
In other countries, the degree allows students to bypass byzantine post-secondary school selection processes, to enter top schools at the Master’s degree without a need for those processes.
For other students, it’s the best stepping stone to graduate school. (In the US, you have two sorts of programs: short Masters programs, lasting one or two years, providing a direct professional qualification; and Masters programs as part of the PHD, focusing on specialized knowledge in order to conduct research either for academia or industry. The “professional” Masters programs tend to lead to higher salaries which is why they cost money, whereas the Masters+PHD programs are longer and thus less profitable for students, who tend to also work as TAs.)
Most students don’t consider that a US degree is related to staying in the US, but rather they apply for the prestige, to improve their personal situation or make it livable, to improve their learning situation and their job prospects.
(For instance, girls, LGBTQ kids, or minority kids who suffer from discrimination due to their country’s policies).
@MYOS1634 Thank you a lot! I hope I will make the right decision. I will apply this year then compare both situations. Btw, I am choosing between a biomedical engineering degree and a CS minor in the US (This the plan I am intending to do if I got in any US university with a good financial aid) or a Degree of medicine from my country (Doctors in my countries don’t get the same prestige as in the US and their salaries are the lowest in the country!) This is why I am so ambivalent
Biomedical engineering is a tough field to find work, especially from undergrad because there are so many pre-meds enrolled in the major. If you are thinking biomed eng for pre-med, it’s extremely difficulty for international students to be accepted to US med schools.
As stated up thread, H1B visas are getting very difficult to obtain. So much so, that my husband’s previous employer stopped even interviewing international applicants because their legal team wasn’t able to secure permanent work visas. Horrible both for employee and company to invest years in development only to have the government deny the permanent visa.
I would recommend focusing on CS, Robotics, bioinformatics, data science+ genetics… rather than biomedical engineering.
What subjects are you interested in?
What sort of work do you see yourself doing?
@MYOS1634 I am interested in engineering and medicine. I love to apply engineering to medicine. I love to learn about cancer, aids, another health issue. Also, I enjoy calculus and Physics and I want to get into programming but I haven’t started yet. I can major in mechanical or electrical or even computer with a minor in neuroscience or biology. This would be the same as a biomedical engineering but in this case, I would be able to work in both fields: Engineering or medicine (not as a doctor but at least be in the industry) After this I can get a master degree in biomedicalEng. I think this would be better. What do you think? If you have any advice I would love to hear it.
My cousin, a pharmacist in South Carolina, told me that anything stem fields, especially computer science majors, is the most demanding in the US
@momofsenior1 I think of taking electrical or computer with a minor in biology or neuroscience. This would satisfy my passion.
But I am really scared about my future after obtaining the bachelor of science in engineering degree from the US as it is very hard to find a job or to continue for a funded master degree. What do you think? Do you have any opinion or any advice? I would love to hear it
Note that opt means you can work for two years and thus get valuable work experience as an engineer (in the USA a BS in engineering is sufficient or work as an engineer).
“I am interested in engineering and medicine. I love to apply engineering to medicine. I love to learn about cancer, aids, another health issue. Also, I enjoy calculus and Physics and I want to get into programming but I haven’t started yet.”
Chemical engineering with a concentration in pharma is the intersection of physics, math, chemistry and biology. Targeted drug therapies are being developed rapidly. Programming is a tool for any engineering field. PHD programs are generally fully funded and more often required for jobs in the health care related industries.
@momofsenior1 engineering degree or anything related to STEM fields is, unfortunately, useless in my country. @MYOS1634 Is it easy to find someone to employ me during these 2 years? Days in which I am job-less are counted as OPT? After the OPT, will I return to my country?
@KLSD Thank you for your useful information regarding the chemical engineering major. I guess that would be another great option.
Can you elaborate more on these funded PhD programs? I guess I will need to take a master degree to be eligible for PhD, right? I think it is hard for an international to find a funded master degree in the US. What do you think?
Does taking a master degree or a PhD will make it easier for me to obtain the H1B visa? What about taking my masters and PhD from another country, then returning to the US? I hear A LOT that many European countries offer funded masters and PhDs but it seems that the US is different. @KLSD@MYOS1634
OPT is a type of work contract where you work to apply what you learned in college. It must be directly related to your degree (which is why Biomedical engineering is not auspicious). Typically they come from doing well in an internship undertaken after sophomore or junior year, during the summer. You apply for jobs between August and December of senior year, and apply for OPT 2 months before graduation. Then you start working almost right after graduation.
After the OPT, either you secure a job (again, applying ahead of time) in your country, or apply (between November and February) to graduate school in the US.
I can’t think of a country that doesn’t need engineers though.
In the US, you get a “short” “professional” Masters right after your BA/BS, then go to work. Or you apply to a PHD. THe PHD program is articulated in two stages: it includes 2 years for the Masters’s degree, after which you can do 2 years of OPT (that’s stage1). Then 3 years for the PHD, after which you can do OPT, or a postdoc. (That’s stage 2).
You can’t get an OPT with a Master’s or PHD from another country. In order to get an H1B from a US company with a PHD from another country, you need 1°research that has been so groundbreaking they’ve heard about it and 2° that matches what they want and 3° that will make them money AND THEN you literally need to win the lottery (H1B is a lottery where bad faith actors have purchased the winning tickets already. And the system is NOT being fixed, it’s only in “pretend fixing” whereby nothing is done to constrain bad faith actors.)
As far as I know, funded Masters aren’t common in Europe - they may offer some tuition scholarship, but you rarely get a stipend to live on.