Hi guys, I was just wondering if there are any specific careers or job titles that only MIT grads can reach that state school engineering graduates wouldn’t be able to attain. I know that wall street/investment banking is pretty much exclusive to the ivies, I was wondering if there was an engineering/technology/science equivalent to this and MIT. Thanks.
“I know that wall street/investment banking is pretty much exclusive to the ivies”
Not true any more. Wall street/IB does recruit primarily from a few top schools, but they’re not just Ivies and a few (like UMich and UT Austin) are even state schools.
No.
No, not really! I work at a very large technology company that is a household name - I promise you’ve probably used something today that we make - and I actually don’t think I know any MIT grads. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty working here, but we have people who have reached the very highest echelons of my company without MIT or any elite school credentials. The EVP of my division got his engineering degree at UW, and the six people who report directly to him got their undergrad degrees at Michigan, Oregon State, Purdue, a Canadian university, Indiana, and Princeton. Note that only one of those is an elite Ivy!
What Canadian university if I mind asking?
Not really as I said in your other post, but yes MIT grads will come out with much better offers initially out of college.
What companies would MIT grads have a great advantage over?
In the end, employers evaluate you, not your school. But the school’s rep and career resources can help you get interviews.
For Finance/IB, MIT is not generally known as a big feeder school, but MIT’s Econ is widely regarded as one of the best programs of its kind, and that helps you both organically (you’ll be well prepared academically) and in rep.
Probably not many MIT grads desire a career in Finance/IB, but if they did, MIT would climb the Wall Street ranks. It would take a little time to reach the Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Wharton level of active recruitment, but I bet MIT would quickly move to the UChicago/Dartmouth/Cornell/Columbia/Stern/Stanford/Duke (and maybe Northwestern) level of interest.
In terms of Engineering/CS, MIT is top-shelf. Again, based on the actual knowledge and experience you will gain at MIT, as well as MIT’s rep. That group includes probably MIT, Stanford, Caltech, CMU, Berkeley, and maybe Cornell, Michigan, Rice, UIUC, GA Tech, for greatness in both Engineering and CS. For just Engineering or CS, the list grows.
Things may have changed, but when I worked at an investment bank my firm recruited at MIT, and MIT was well represented among our analysts (ie new hires out of undergrad)
In fact , at that time, MIT people were bemoaning that fact that a significant chunk of their class was being seduced into Wall Street.
That same firm did not recruit at state universities for the same jobs (front office line positions at the NYC headquarters). . Except for maybe one or two.
Prior to that I worked as an engineer, with another new hire who was from MIT. The other new hires were mostly from state schools, along with some others (Rice, Notre Dame,…) As far as I know everyone got paid roughly the same starting out. There could be some differentiation afterwards, but solely based on performance, not what school one attended.
In the current era I understand that some silicon valley shops pay more, and those jobs are more available to graduates of some schools than to some others. So for example a relative of mine was looking at jobs on Wall Street, but also at Google. If Google wanted the same type of people that had to offer ballpark similar compensation. This was maybe ten years ago? But I doubt that even these employers would pay an entry level MIT grad differently from an entry level UC Berkeley grad, for the same position.
Maybe post #7 of this old thread here is of interest:
This link was posted a long time ago, obviously a lot has changed in the world since then.
But at that time it looks like investment banks and management consulting firms were among the biggest employers of MIT grads
https://web.archive.org/web/20080221182835/http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation07.pdf
Presumably one can find some more recent data.
Access to these “elite”, non-engineering employers is likely easier from MIT than from the preponderance of state universities. IMO.
6 years ago, when my daughter was applying to colleges she went to a question and answer session in NYC for MIT. A group of young alums were there to tell us about the school. They introduced themselves and told us what job they were currently doing. I remember being quite surprised that almost all were working in finance.
MIT will definitely open doors for new graduates, but it’s the graduates’ skills that will get them the job. Most interviews are quite technical. If a graduate from another school gets an interview they will have just as much a chance as the MIT grad to get the job. Once at a company, your school doesn’t matter when it comes to high up you may climb. But it is true that it will be harder in the first place for students of certain schools to get their foot in the door than from other schools, however, certainly not impossible.
Sloan, MIT’s business school, is known for being more quantitative than other business colleges.
MIT is missing some key engineering fields, like petroleum engineering and maybe not super strong
in meteorology but certainly Earth and Planetary Sciences is strong at MIT and many of the top planetary scientists at NASA and Southwest Research in Texas/Colorado come from MIT. MIT has very strong connections to government jobs in physics and chemistry and very strongly prepares students for academic careers in materials science, and all fields it offers. There are pipelines from MIT to Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley if you want to go to grad school on the west coast. I think MIT grads have an easier time getting into graduate schools compared to state school grads, with the exact same grades.
I have never worked with any company that designated positions exclusively for MIT (or those of any other particular school) graduates. The starting salaries offered to newly hired people were a function of the job not the school the person attended. I have worked with people from MIT who were average or ineffective engineers, and people from state universities who were great, and vice versa. If you believe that someone is more capable than another just because he or she attended MIT, well, you’re mistaken. The majority of engineers in the world today did not attend MIT yet technological advancement still marches on. The person, not the school, is the key.
MIT offers special options that some other schools may not offer. For instance, working in a Japanese research lab for a year, with the job guaranteed. (I did that ) MIT’s Alumni Network is active in all 50 states and helps you down the road to find jobs, when job options become more difficult, as your salary goes up. So the choice of a university is much more than just the first job. Its not so much, about how good the students are, its about the name brand MIT, which is recognized worldwide. This is why MIT is ranked so well, its recognized for excellence.
Also, I think MIT innovates curriculum much much better than the average state school. Many schools will copy MIT’s brand new curriculum options, which delights MIT! I think that one example is the product design class, and of course the famous robotics competition classes. I have heard that one artificial intelligence class had 700 students sign up, so about 3/4 of the freshman class wanted to take it. MIT is unique in that they try to serve the students needs, so they rarely close classes, they throw the doors open and you can take AnYTHING, even sit in on a Sloan School Finance class, if you are in a PhD program in engineering for instance. There are no barriers at MIT. Thats the most unique thing about getting to go to MIT. There are very smart people at all levels, even the technicians at MIT in the labs are smarter than average I would say. But the real benefits are the networks, the innovative research, the entrepreneurship, and the innovative new curriculums MIT is developing TODAY for next years kids.
@Coloradomama - In engineering, the requirements of ABET accreditation strongly influence course content and coverage. The curriculums consisting of fundamental theoretical and applied science courses, non-discipline specific engineering courses, and foundation discipline-specific engineering courses are quite uniform in coverage in all ABET accredited schools. If you were to place the MIT course descriptions for say, the EE curriculum side by side to that of any other accredited school, you will find that the course and subject matter is very similar between them. Calculus, physics, thermodynamics, electronic circuit analysis, strength of materials, et al are not much different from one school to another.
Sure, MIT has a “brand”, but in my experience what the person does with that “brand” is the key not the brand itself. I have passed over MIT graduates in favor of state university and those of other technological universities (and vice-versa) for example. In my experience working with and managing engineers in several major corporations, as a cohort or group the level of innovation between the MIT and non-MIT graduates was quite similar. Nobody disputes that MIT is a good school and that the average graduate there isn’t intelligent and capable, but so are those of many other schools. I attended both MIT and another technological university with an excellent reputation but not the “brand” of MIT. The technological university I attended for undergrad provided an excellent foundation on a par with what MIT provides.
Most schools allow their students to enroll in courses outside their direct major and try to serve their students’ needs. MIT isn’t the only place that has no barriers in this regard. Innovation in research, entrepreneurship, and curricula exists in many schools.
Once one begins his or her career, the influence on career of the school that he/she attended rapidly diminishes. The quality of work the person does will be the primary influence in career success and advancement. I worked with two MIT graduates who were laid off when a government contract on which a former employer had was cancelled. I also worked with another one who was passed over for promotion in favor of a state university graduate - because the latter person simply made more contributions to the organization than the former. Again, the person - not the school - determines one’s fortunes.
@Engineer80 I don’t agree that ABET is what most innovative engineers need. They need more group projects, and ABET does not care about that. They need more access to innovative ways of developing products, and ABET does not touch that. MIT does those things well beyond an ABET accreditation. No engineering job I have held gave a good about ABET. Its not the be all and end all, for most new jobs in software or hardware today. We need to go way way beyond ABET and I hope ABET can catch up! Its just a low bar right now for many fields, and I am very disappointed in ABET. It would not have helped me at Seagate or other jobs I held, in fact, at all. ABET is more like a “minimum”. I am talking about what the maximum? Thats what MIT offers.
I believe that Berkeley is very innovative too, well beyond ABET for computer science as is Carnegie Mellon. There really is a lot more offered way beyond ABET , especially for CS curriculums. ABET is way way way behind in CS.
It may be “OK” in aerospace, but I would not trust ABET for CS, materials science, and a question it in EE as well. ABET needs a face lift.
Take a look at this MIT course. ABET does not require it. However MIT students form companies out
of an undergrad curriculum, and its interdisciplinary, so mechanical/CS/EE/materials engineers all working together.
its a fantastic model:
http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/
It gets business hooked to engineers, its just the wave of the future. ABET does not cover this, MIT does.