<p>I'm an American student who's looking into applying to transfer to an Irish university, specifically NUIM, for an undergraduate degree. One of the questions I need to answer before doing this, however, is how foreign degrees are received by employers in the US. Are they seen as equal in value to American degrees when it comes to job interviews? Do they hold more value since the potential employee has gained international experience and shown the ability to adapt and excel in another country and culture? Or would they be less valuable as foreign universities, like NUIM, are less well-known in the States?</p>
<p>If anyone has any feedback on this topic that they wouldn't mind sharing, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!</p>
<p>With the exception of students like Rhodes Scholars, who get graduate degrees from Oxford, I don’t think that U.S. employers are familiar with or impressed by foreign degrees. They are more likely to be impressed by someone who gets a degree from the in state flagship of the state where the company is located. Few employers probably have heard of NUIM, so I don’t think it would help you.</p>
<p>Companies with major overseas operations might like it. Of course, an English-speaking country is not as much of a stretch as a degree form China, etc</p>
<p>What employers are going to be impressed with isn’t the degree from a foreign institution but rather the interesting perspective you have on business questions and the unique experiences that you can tell them about because you lived and studied abroad.</p>
<p>I think you are selling US employers short. When it matters, they know. It is true that for a run of the mill job, where the employer basically wants a warm body with the right training (i.e. a generic engineer to fill a cube or an accountant to count parts for an audit ) then a state U degree may be fine.</p>
<p>But folks looking for real engineering talent will know what IIT is (not the one in Chicago), what an MBA from INSEAD is about, where Edinburgh and its university is and so forth. </p>
<p>We employers are not clueless. Heck, many of us have even been outside the US!</p>
<p>I think the more important point is that “what you can do” is always more important than “where you studied”. The biggest problem one might have with a non-US degree is convincing an employer that a course of study at a non-US college is comparable enough (or better) than a similar US degree. Employers are wary of the unknown. </p>
<p>This is where work experience, including internships can play a big role.</p>
) then a state U degree may be fine.</p>