<p>To the OP, if you are in an area with a lot of engineering, you should make local contacts for engineering internships. Also, if you have a female child, there will be a lot of opportunities in engineering. If you have a spouse, or you yourself, or even your child, has military experience, you will have more engineering opportunities. Applications for internships frequently ask those questions separately, are you female, are you a minority, do you or someone you are related to have military experience. I think these factors are a lot more important in landing a job in engineering, or probably any field, than where you get your degree.</p>
<p>^^^ not our experience. my student is a female (good grades/good resume) my husband has many contacts at most of the energy companies around town. hasn’t helped a bit.</p>
<p>^^^It stinks, doesn’t it, Mike? Used to be, if you had an engineering degree, you had a job entering senior year. It will be interesting to see how many engineering students who do co-ops actually graduate with a job in hand. I’d love to see those statistics for the last couple of years, and for those graduating in May. I’d also love to see the statistics broken down into jobs, not just jobs or graduate school (including medical and law school).</p>
<p>yeah, it kinda does! </p>
<p>i know some of the dow co-ops (from lsu and other schools) got offers in august.</p>
<p>^^^Son’s high school classmates who are engineering majors at LSU had jobs in hand before Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>i haven’t heard of any of the UA ChemEs with offers in hand (but a LOT of the ones my daughter knows are pre-meds.)</p>
<p>Hey guys. I glance at this board every now and then since it helped steer me to Alabama a few years ago :-). I am a December UA engineering grad so I figured I could give you worried parents the best perspective and advice. Let me start by saying that everyone I know in my class that wanted a job has received one (those who didn’t wanted to pursue graduate and professional schools). I recently got a job offer. I would ball park that our class’s average starting slalary is around $68k/yr. I’ve literally had over 30 interviews and still receive phone calls every couple of days asking for an interview. I do have good work experience, extra curriculars, am willing to relocate anywhere, and have spent probably 40+ hours working on my r</p>
<p>Hitting the <love> button for your post, rtrdec2013! Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of your thoughts and advice. It is spot on!</love></p>
<p>What is your eng’g major, please?</p>
<p>Thanks aeromom! It is ChemE. Mike, I’m sorry to hear that. Your daughter and I must be in different cliques. I started to get down at one point because I kept getting interviews but couldn’t get an offer (I finally came to the conclusion that I just suck at interviewing). Just have her keep her head up and keep checking crimson careers. Crimson careers will send an email directly to the he recruiter when you apply. I also applied to around 20 jobs/week on indeed. I also suggest copying the MIS r</p>
<p>Did you have any internships? Did you get them through campus recruiting or on your own? Did you get your ultimate job offer on your own?</p>
<p>I did one summer internship that I got through a connection with a family friend. Got the job through applying on crimson careers. I originally wanted to go to medical school, so I didn’t do a co op. I would highly recommend doing a co op if you just or your child want to directly enter the workforce. Or, actually try to do a co op and an internship with different companies. I know this will take a long time, but the diversity of work experience will go a long way.</p>
<p>Also, from my understanding, it is extremely difficult to find just a summer long internship without any connections. Most companies and schools seem to be pushing co ops, which are definitely easier to just apply to and receive.</p>
<p>I am a December UA engineering grad so I figured I could give you worried parents the best perspective and advice. Let me start by saying that everyone I know in my class that wanted a job has received one (those who didn’t wanted to pursue graduate and professional schools). I recently got a job offer. I would ball park that our class’s average starting slalary is around $68k/yr. I’ve literally had over 30 interviews and still receive phone calls every couple of days asking for an interview.</p>
<p>Congrats!!</p>
<p>That avg starting salary is pretty much what’s going on everywhere.</p>
<p>i haven’t heard of any of the UA ChemEs with offers in hand (but a LOT of the ones my daughter knows are pre-meds.)</p>
<p>lol…well, that’s why. premeds aren’t applying/looking for jobs. </p>
<p>My younger son is home for Christmas and he still keeps in touch with ChemE friends that are graduating this year…including a friend from high school. These kids do have either job offers or serious leads.</p>
<p>Students do have to be pro-active. My sister’s son graduated at the same time as my younger son (both were ChemE) last May. My nephew graduated from Vanderbilt. He still doesn’t have a job…but seriously, he’s not that great at looking for a job…kind of expects one to fall into his lap. If my son had changed his mind about med school at the last minute and had gone into the private sector, he would have nearly immediately found a highly paying job. (Believe me, my sister is quite annoyed that after spending over $200k at Vandy her son doesnt’ have a job.)</p>
<p>Yeah I know, that’s why I posted that number. UA grads are getting the national average salary. So, like you said mom, why pay for an expensive education when there doesn’t really seem to be any sort of reward besides the ego thing (at least with bachelor level engineering jobs.) I think a lot of people have a misconception about school. The schools job is to educate you. Your job is to find the job. I mean, sure, the school will probably help as best it can to grow it’s reputation and alumni donations ;-). But, like moms vandy example, just going to a school and getting a degree doesn’t mean one is entitled to have an employer pay them a bunch of money.</p>
<p>*The average salary of civil engineers coming of out MIT ($56K) is exactly identical to the national average ($57K), *</p>
<p>I got the above from another post.</p>
<p>rtrdec2013, first off, congratulations on the job!</p>
<p>Do you mind if I ask if you are male or female?</p>
<p>My son’s lab partner in his mech eng senior course, who was female, who graduated in December, has a job, as does her twin sister, also a female mech eng major. Both will work for the same company, but in two different cities. His lab partner did a coop at Mercedes, but that is not the company she will work for. </p>
<p>Son said that two big oil related companies were heavily recruiting female engineering majors for jobs.</p>
<p>He knows no male engineering majors in his senior level classes who have jobs upon graduation. They are hoping that their senior design projects will lead to job offers.</p>
<p>He also said that when asking for internships at the career fair, companies were only interested in offering coops, not internships.</p>
<p>Like rtr, my son is looking at grad school, so he wasn’t interested in doing a coop. </p>
<p>Again, congratulations on your job offer, and I wish you much luck in your future endeavors.</p>
<p>Good to know.</p>
<p>Thanks Montegut. I’m male. From my experience this past semester, it definitely gives someone a leg up to be female or a minority in a STEM field. You can’t just blame that though for not being able to obtain a job. I was actually pretty discouraged at one point because of it. My dad sat me down and said, “yeah, it happens. What can you do about it? What is getting upset about it going to change?” And, of course, I replied “nothing.” All you can do is focus on things in your control in hope that things that aren’t fall into place, right?</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your encouragement, rtr. I am really glad things are working out for you, and wish you so much success in the future. Be safe and enjoy your new life!</p>