Let's be brutally honest...

College Majors Engineering Majors
21

<p>IMO, most employers want to hire people who :
i) have a level of intelligence/raw talent suited to the jobs being offered, ii)want to do the jobs that you have available;iii) for the money you are offering for that job, iv) in the location where you are offering this employment; v) are optimally qualified by background & training to do those jobs;; vi) will not necessarily bolt instantly if they happen to go thru a less entertaining stretch while in your employ; ie will do what you want them to do.</p>

<p>Engineering firms do not have unlimited time and budgets for recruiting, they tend to recruit most heavily. for engineering jobs, at places that will offer high numbers of applicants who meet their criteria.</p>

<p>So it stands to reason that the colleges that have high numbers of such students will be more heavily recruited for engineering jobs.</p>

<p>That does not mean graduates of smaller programs who produce fewer people who meet these criteria cannot get engineering jobs. But they may not have as many interviews with engineering companies set up for them on campus, and may have more difficulty being exposed to the broad range of opportunities in engineering. Seems like.</p>

<p>An engineering company would want to hire an individual from any college, so long as they meet the hiring criteria better than other applicants.</p>

<p>There are other issues I perceive with smaller programs, pertaining to one’s ability to gain exposure to the full depth and breadth of areas and sub-areas within engineering, and optimally choose one’s path within the profession. But that doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that in the end no company would hire a particular person from a small program, vs. a particular less qualified applicant from Purdue, or whatever. But that company might be recruiting at Purdue for those jobs, and not at small program u. And perhaps there may be fewer of those jobs that individuals from that program, in aggregate, may be optimally qualified for.</p>

<p>I believe that people who want to be engineers would be best served, in that effort, by schools that offer them a substantial breadth and depth of courses, training and exposure to the broad field of engineering, followed by great, broad, engineering on-campus recruiting for engineering jobs. </p>

<p>That does not mean, however, that a particular student who goes elsewhere cannot get a job, or shouldn’t be hired, by anybody. Or make less money. Just that he/ she may be suboptimally served in crafting a path within the profession.</p>

<p>That’s not the same thing.</p>

<p>BTW my above statements about engineering recruiting are just ,IMO logical,conjectures, interested potential applicants should investigate the actual situations in this regard at particular engineering programs of interest for themselves.</p>

<p>Now if you actually don’t want to be an engineeer- but nevertheless have decided to devote a significant proportion of your only shot at an undergraduate education towards studying engineering anyway- then opportunities and exposure within engineering from a particular college will not matter that much to you.</p>

<p>But in this thread people have been discussing engineering employment.</p>

22

<p>What about…UCSB?</p>

23

<p>its an accomplishment in itself to get into an ivy league school</p>

24

<p>I think the reason people have issues with your examples is you’ll find a lot more people deciding between, say, Princeton and Georgia Tech than U Penn and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.</p>

25

<p>I can assure you that companies large and small evaluate and hire individual “applicants” not “schools”. To propose anything else is laughable and would be regarded as lazy, misinformed, unprofessional and a bad (read: unprofitable) business practice. </p>

<p>Many times I have seen a displayed sense of superiority, vis-a-vis ones alma mater, undo a candidate. My old boss called them “Decal Dandies”.</p>

26

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<p>That’s beside the point. I’m not talking about people deciding between two schools. What I’m saying is that the Ivies, on an absolute level, are better at engineering than is a school like Florida Atlantic University. I don’t think that’s a close call in the least. Does anybody want to seriously argue the opposite?</p>

<p>Assuming that nobody will argue the opposite, then the next piece of information to consider is that many engineering programs are roughly of the same caliber as FAU. Hence, if the Ivies are better than FAU, then the Ivies are better than most other engineering programs. Again, like I said, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of engineering programs out there, most of them being no-name lower tier programs. I never even heard of the University of Central Oklahoma until just today. How many of you had? How many have ever heard of West Texas A&M? Or University of Missouri-Kansas City? Or Minnesota State University Monkata? </p>

<p>Yet the fact remains that if engineers from FAU are able to get decent jobs - and they do - then why is it so hard to believe that engineers from the Ivies can also get decent jobs? </p>

<p>So let’s get back to the original question that brought me into this thread. Chuy asked “Why in the world would an engineering company want an Ivy League grad?” Well, I could just as easily ask why in the world would an engineering company want a grad from FAU, Wayne State, or University of Central Oklahoma when, according to Blah2009, employers can supposedly fill their needs at a top flagship state university? Yet the fact remains that employers are indeed hiring those graduates. Perhaps those employers are just being stupid?</p>

27

<p>“University of Missouri-Kansas City”</p>

<p>Not only have I heard of it, but actually I don’t believe they offer an engineering program.</p>

<p>But if you go through first paragraph of post #22, there are multiple criteria where many employers might prefer a given Wayne State grad to a given Harvard grad. In fact, if your company is local to Wayne State , for a particular job the Wayne State grad could very likely score higher in each and every particular category I cited.</p>

<p>You are placing great stock in these US News rankings, but my recollection is that these were based largely on reputation of certain research groups, and had no bearing on breadth and depth of engineering course offerings or exposure to engineering practice. Or even comprehensive research in engineering. They are giving relatively high rankings to a school that doesn’t even offer civil engineering, altogether!! I don’t think these rankings reflect who turns out the best trained engineers for practice and employment. Or even considered any factors relating to this. They may have some relevance if you are considering graduate study in one of the particular areas that these schools actually have a research group in. But most engineers actually don’t really want to do research.</p>

<p>For an employer though, these rankings would have no validity whatsoever. They would most likely recruit at the lower-ranked local school in their region, vs. remote prestige school with teeny engineering program and few interested and well qualified applicants, because there would be more qualified applicants who actually meet their criteria at the local school. In many cases their criteria are more like what I posted, not the US News criteria.</p>

<p>The so-called lower ranked school may not be lower to them, it quite likely may be preferable.</p>

28

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29

<p>

</p>

<p>Oh really?</p>

<p>*The mission of the School of Computing and Engineering (SCE) is to provide nationally competitive educational opportunities and focused research in Computing and Engineering to the students of the Midwest region - generating the technical work force and research results needed to drive the economic development of the region including entrepreneurial activities.</p>

<p>The University began hosting engineering degree coursework in 1956 by offering the Bachelor of Science in General Engineering.In 1978 the Engineering disciplines become ABET accredited.*</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.umkc.edu/collegeschools/#sce[/url]”>http://www.umkc.edu/collegeschools/#sce&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering offers the bachelor’s degree and the master’s degree in both Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and participates in the UMKC Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program. The Bachelor of Science degrees are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)</p>

<p>[Department</a> of Civil & Mechanical Engineering | About the department](<a href=“http://www.sce.umkc.edu/cme/aboutus/department.asp]Department”>http://www.sce.umkc.edu/cme/aboutus/department.asp)</p>

<p>*The CSEE Department is housed in the School of Computing & Engineering (SCE). We offer the following degree programs:</p>

<pre><code>* Undergraduate level (all ABET accredited):
1. B.S. in Computer Science (with concentration/emphasis in Computer Networking, Software Engineering, and Bioinformatics),
2. B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering *
</code></pre>

<p>[University</a> of Missouri - Kansas City (UMKC) * * * * * Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Information Technology, Electrical Engineering, Information Technology degree](<a href=“http://www.csee.umkc.edu/]University”>http://www.csee.umkc.edu/)</p>

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<p>Of course. And by similar logic, there are multiple reasons why an employer might prefer a Harvard engineering grad over one from Stanford, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, or wherever - including, as you mentioned, regionality. An engineering company in Massachusetts may strongly prefer to hire locally. </p>

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<p>No, it is not I that is placing great stock in the US News rankings. Others are doing that. After all, people are assuming that the Ivy engineering programs are (relatively) bad just because they aren’t ranked as high in USNews as some of the other schools. Yet who’s to say that those schools are great? Just because USNews says so? </p>

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<p>And the University of Missouri-Kansas City does? West Texas A&M does? University of Central Oklahoma does? Western New England College does? {As a case in point, UCO and WNEC don’t offer civil engineering either.}</p>

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<p>Which has been precisely my point all along. It has been asserted by others, disdainfully, that there is no reason for an employer to ever hire an engineering grad from an Ivy. As chuy said: “Why in the world would an engineering company want an Ivy League grad?” My response is simple: companies hire engineers from the University of Central Oklahoma. They hire from Western New England College. They hire from Minnesota State-Mankato. They hire from McNeese State. They hire from Wayne State. They hire from University of Missouri-Kansas City which you (monydad) didn’t even know offered engineering. They do so even though they supposedly have the option to hire at the ostensibly higher ranked schools. UM is only 45 minutes away from Wayne State, so why do even local employers ever hire from Wayne State? Are they just being dumb? But the fact remains that they do it. </p>

<p>So I pose the question again: given that employers hire engineers from schools that most people have never even heard of, is it so ridiculous to fathom that employers may also hire engineers from the Ivies?</p>

30

<p>Per my post #21 above, I agreed with you on this point.</p>

<p>Interesting about UMKC, I wonder where those people go; K State and U Missouri,-Columbia and Rolla, and to a lesser extent KU get all the attention regionally for these fields. UMKC is known for having a decent music program. Never heard about its engineering program before.</p>

31

<p>From my perspective, the issue isn’t why would an engineering company hire an ivy league grad but rather why would an ivy league grad want to work in an engineering company.</p>

32

<p>^In terms of “pure” engineering, I don’t think a typical ivy grad would want to do that. By pure engineering, I mean a job where you’d like have to check pipe’s water pressure in a power plant and make occasional adjustments. But, if you go into more innovative engineering (silicon valley start-ups come to mind), you can see what that may be more appealing for a more typical ivy grad who is more interested in the combination of venture capatilism and science. Also, some lawyer I know went to MIT for undergrad engineering, got a law degree from UofC, and now works as a lawyer in patent law for biomedical technologies. Those types of jobs are the ones that ivy-league grads are more likely to take, at least that’s my impression.</p>

33

<p>Or an engineering job in R&D or product design.</p>

34

<p>

Your post is kinda sarcastically funny, but true…</p>

35

<p>As long as you go to a relatively well-funded research university, exactly where you go doesn’t matter. There’s something to be said for being a big fish in a small pond. Whether you get a great job depends a lot more on your experience than the name of the school you went to. At a less prestigious school you’ll probably have more opportunities to do internships with profs and get that experience.</p>

36

<p>what do you honestly think of the programs at Maryland or Penn state. They seem well developed but is the oos tuitin justified by the program at my state school umass?</p>