<p>Can anyone shed any light on the perception of the undergrad P.E. program at ULL, either from a professional standpoint or otherwise?
I am interested in going back to school for another B.S., in petroleum engineering this time to supplement my B.S. in geology. Any advice is welcomed. Thanks.</p>
<p>Have you looked into going back to school for an MS in geology? I think, pending your situation, this would be a much better and more time efficient route. Currently, to my knowledge and experience, the job market in industry is much better for geologists than petroleum engineers. I know several petroleum engineering majors who went back for a BS in pete and it isn’t looking good for them right now. </p>
<p>For new hires and interns there seems to be two main groups, the students with multiple offers and the students with no offers. Petroleum engineering is definitely one of those majors that students go into for the money. Maybe I just know a lot of the ones who are doing it for the money. However, I do know there is a huge flux in pete students at universities across the country and it will be interesting too see how the market for them plays out.</p>
<p>In regards to ULL, or as we call it, U-La-La, it is a great school. The city of Lafayette is really progressing, more vibrant than Baton Rouge, our state capital. It has an excellent computer science program, very well respected. Lafayette is a great place for the oil industry, halfway between New Orleans and Houston, so you’re in a good location. Good luck!</p>
<p>U-La-La must be a new one since my days there :D. Even back then in the early 80’s we had a great CompSci program (I was in that), and indeed we had people from Baton Rouge come over for weekends etc because of the atmosphere. Lots of oil industry offices and such. several friends ended up working in the industry…</p>
<p>Going from Geology to PetE will require a couple of years minimum, assuming one never steps foot in the accursed Math building whose name is so vile that even CC won’t let me spell correctly :). Best bet before contemplating anything of the sort is to actually talk to their advising staff and see how many credits they will accept from Geo, then how many they will transfer.I was able to do, for example, a BSCS after a BS Civil Engineering, and that took two years exactly (incl one summer). I’d personally go that route again since there is a lot of synergy between Geo and CompSci (seismic stuff, imaging…) and at the end a CS degree is a CS degree either way. I don’t know what the employability of CS from U-La-La is now, back then we had no problems getting jobs.</p>
<p>Do not, I repeat, do not go to ULL for an undergraduate PETE degree. There is only one oil and gas operator (Chevron) that recruits from there. The other companies are all service companies, which are decent jobs, but you are already qualified to work for them with a geology degree. If you want to get an actual petroleum engineering job with an upstream operator and go to school here, you will need to hustle outside sources to get a job. Compare to a school like LSU or schools in Texas, which have dozens of operators posting jobs at career services. Something isn’t right.</p>
<p>The department itself is pretty unorganized. Classes are often overbooked, cancelled for no reason and no warning, moved to different times that cause scheduling conflicts…overall there is poor communication. The department is getting big and there are only a handful of professors…some of which lack industry experience outside of academia, and some of which are hard to understand. I have heard many, many times about students talking about taking classes and not learning anything, because they can barely understand the professor.</p>
<p>You have a BS in geology…unless you dislike geology, you should go ahead and get a MS. It will take 2 years, much less than getting an engineering degree. The geology department at ULL isn’t necessarily impressive, but there are some good professors with good research opportunities, and if you attend there, and focus from day one on getting an internship (you will likely need to go to the AAPG student conference to do so) then you can come out with an upstream job that will pay similarly to a PETE job.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean for this to sound mean. There are a few positives; some students are able to work part time for industry in town; the cream of the crop do get good jobs with Chevron or other companies. And, as mentioned above, Lafayette is a nice town. Yes, the computer science department is nice. But you are not going to school for computer science, so that is irrelevant.</p>