<p>The school does not have two different programs. In the Harvey Mudd viewbook, it lists maybe 54 electives that you can take. You still must take calculus and physics and all, but then you pursue what you want.</p>
<p>
[quote]
MIT has advantage for its huge size and its long history. But in the past 20 years, Stanford and Berkeley may have made more contributions to engineering than MIT, especially in computer science and Electrical Engineering. That is why Silico Valley is better known than route 128.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I don't know about that. Stanford, may have contributed more to EECS in the last 20 years than MIT has. But Berkeley? Don't get me wrong. Berkeley has contributed a lot to engineering in the last 20 years. But more than MIT? That's a pretty strong statement. Frankly speaking, the greatness of Silicon Valley is mostly attributable to Stanford, with Berkeley being just Stanford's sidekick. That's why Silicon Valley grew up around Palo Alto, not around the East Bay.</p>
<p>I just skimmed through this thread and it really perplexes me. DH is an engineer, degree from University of Hartford. The university overall is nothing to write home about (except maybe for the Hartt School), but the engineering program is very good. He did a coop program as part of his degree which gave him excellent practical experience in his field (power and design) when he applied for jobs. The most important thing about an engineering program is that it should prepare you to take the EIT. Then after a few years of practice as an engineer you are eligible to take the PE exam. The PE makes you a VERY marketable engineer in most cases. My husband is a department head and he looks first for the PE when he is reviewing applications. Then he looks at job experience, and references. He couldn't care less where the person gets his degree from. A degree from the prestige schools will certainly get you an interview in many places...but it is no guarantee that you will get the job, or be successful. The course of study in engineering is rigorous anywhere it is offered.</p>
<p>thumper1, I pretty much agree with you, as far as being a practicing engineer is concerned. At least that matches my engineering work experience.</p>
<p>My guess is that as you go up in the rankings, a higher percentage of the students actually do not become practicing engineers. They may increasingly choose research or other pursuits. It may be that the name value matters more for admission to graduate and professional schools than it does for actually being an engineer.</p>
<p>Small addendum....DH has repeatedly said that the BEST engineering profs he had were practicing engineers (some were adjuncts and some taught part time). THEY knew what a practicing engineer really needed to know. He said the worst profs where those who had always taught and never practiced (and yes there are those), and those who had practiced so long ago that their knowledge wasn't consistent with current practice.</p>
<p>"My guess is that as you go up in the rankings, a higher percentage of the students actually do not become practicing engineers. They may increasingly choose research or other pursuits. It may be that the name value matters more for admission to graduate and professional schools than it does for actually being an engineer."
I've heard many times on these boards that MIT engineering majors and the like increasingly pursue investment banking and consulting.
The difference in salaries between MIT engineering and even Cornell engineering, which is relatively close in terms of selectivity, is about 20k in starting salary, if I am reading this correctly: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html</a>
<a href="http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/student-services/engineering-coop-career-services/employers/salary-statistics.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/student-services/engineering-coop-career-services/employers/salary-statistics.cfm</a>
6k (difference in mechanical engineering between cornell and MIT) is definitely not chump change. The difference is 8-12k for electrical and EECS. And with greater pay often comes better opportunity for advancement. It really does not matter what YOU think, it matters what employers actually DO/PAY.
The import of the school you attended lessens as you work longer, and your performance record matters increasingly more.</p>
<p>Great data; have to look at it sometime. If people are paying an MIT guy $8k more than a cornell guy for the same entry level engineering job, that is very different from the situation I experienced when I went through the recruiting process. There was a wage they would pay, then, and they only varied it a small bit. I'm pretty sure that I, and the MIT guy that I worked with, were paid pretty much the same thing as the state U guys that came in with us. Though I guess I don't really know...</p>
<p>Without analyzing this data, is it not possible that more of these MIT guys are going to Wall Street & consulting? Which would be different than being a practicing engineer. This would be consistent with my comment "..increasingly do not become practicing engineers".</p>
<p>It' s just that I have a hard time visualizing real engineering companies paying their entry-levels very differently. </p>
<p>Perhaps things have changed..</p>
<p>Even on Wall Street, when I was there, entry-level analysts were not paid much differently from each other.</p>
<p>Even if you control for non IB jobs, there is still a tangible disparity, although, if you group it by industry or job title, the groups of students get more fragmented, inhibiting the obtainment of accurate comparisons.
It seems like MIT students only get a few thousand dollars more, and then everyone else gets about near the average.
The range for engineering is 49-54k, except civil is 43k.It goes chemical, EE, computer eng, CS, Mech E, Aero E, Industrial E, accounting, Information sciences (??), Civil E <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/pf/college/starting_salaries/%5B/url%5D">http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/pf/college/starting_salaries/</a> .
In any case, engineers are making the most money, and that probably won't change anytime soon.</p>
<p>The narrow range makes more sense to me, for engineering jobs, and I'm sure MIT kids would command the upper part of the range. (although So would Cornell kids, I'd have thought..)</p>
<p>But I would also believe that far more MIT grads head towards the lucrative non-engineering jobs, and that would boost the averages quite a bit.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The most important thing about an engineering program is that it should prepare you to take the EIT. Then after a few years of practice as an engineer you are eligible to take the PE exam.
[/quote]
This advice needs to qualified with "depending on your intended career field". For engineers working with power, civil engineers, and the like, the PE licenseis important (and required by law in some fields). However in industries such as the computer/networking industry nobody has their PE license.</p>
<p>For example, the EE dept at the Virginia Tech says "Most ECEs will not need professional licensing. Typically only those who enter consulting, power engineering, and public works need licensing." See <a href="http://www.ece.vt.edu/ugrad/feexam.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ece.vt.edu/ugrad/feexam.html</a></p>
<p>"The narrow range makes more sense to me, for engineering jobs, and I'm sure MIT kids would command the upper part of the range. (although So would Cornell kids, I'd have thought..)</p>
<p>But I would also believe that far more MIT grads head towards the lucrative non-engineering jobs, and that would boost the averages quite a bit."
I didn't tabulate any data, but merely looked at the engineers in traditional (nonIB) engineering jobs and their salary was still markedly higher. What I said before, and you see now, is that MIT students get paid slightly more than average and then everyone else, even cornell gets average salary. Stanford's average for mech Es was 52k I believe (from their site).</p>
<p>I'm a hiring manager for a major aerospace company, and I can tell you our starting salary range for engineering bachelor entry-level positions is quite narrow. What we would actually offer is more likely a function of the individual candidate...with things like summer internships or co-op experience factored in...than the particular school he/she attended.</p>
<p>Now THAT makes sense. I was hoping you'd pipe in here.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've heard many times on these boards that MIT engineering majors and the like increasingly pursue investment banking and consulting.
The difference in salaries between MIT engineering and even Cornell engineering, which is relatively close in terms of selectivity, is about 20k in starting salary, if I am reading this correctly: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html</a>
<a href="http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/...-statistics.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/...-statistics.cfm</a>
6k (difference in mechanical engineering between cornell and MIT) is definitely not chump change. The difference is 8-12k for electrical and EECS. And with greater pay often comes better opportunity for advancement. It really does not matter what YOU think, it matters what employers actually DO/PAY.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>When it comes to EECS at MIT (which is the most popular major at MIT), I think there is more going on than you realize. The fact is, the better EECS undergrads at MIT won't stop at getting just a bachelor's. Instead, they strongly tend to take advantage of the 5-year BS/MEng program at MIT which basically offers an easy way for the better students to get a master's degree. About half of all MIT EECS undergrads opt for this option. </p>
<p>I know of no other comparable offering available at Cornell, and I certainly don't believe that Cornell offers such a master's degree option to half of its undergrads in any of its engineering disciplines.</p>
<p>Hence, the point is, when you're looking at the bachelor's degree salary information for MIT EECS graduates, you're basically only looking at the weaker students. The better students will usually continue onto the MEng program. Hence, the MIT/Cornell EECS salary delta is even larger than the numbers might indicate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If people are paying an MIT guy $8k more than a cornell guy for the same entry level engineering job, that is very different from the situation I experienced when I went through the recruiting process. There was a wage they would pay, then, and they only varied it a small bit. I'm pretty sure that I, and the MIT guy that I worked with, were paid pretty much the same thing as the state U guys that came in with us. Though I guess I don't really know...</p>
<p>I'm a hiring manager for a major aerospace company, and I can tell you our starting salary range for engineering bachelor entry-level positions is quite narrow. What we would actually offer is more likely a function of the individual candidate...with things like summer internships or co-op experience factored in...than the particular school he/she attended.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>All of these factors are true, in that companies tend to offer basically the same entry-level salary (with little variation) to anybody to whom it makes an offer. Hence, a company would probably offer the MIT guy the same salary as the guy who came from a no-name school.</p>
<p>However, what we haven't discussed it that there are certain engineering companies, which tend to be the higher-paying and prestigious ones, that will tend to hire most of their entry-level people from the top schools. For example, here's a snippet from the way that Google used to run its hiring practices a few years ago.</p>
<p>"For the most part, it takes a degree from an Ivy League school, or MIT, Stanford, CalTech, or Carnegie MellonAmerica's top engineering schoolseven to get invited to interview. Brin and Page still keep a hand in all the hiring, from executives to administrative assistants. And to them, work experience counts far less than where you went to school, how you did on your SATs, and your grade-point average. "If you've been at Cisco for 20 years, they don't want you," says an employee. "</p>
<p>Now I think that Google has changed its hiring practices since its IPO, but not by much. Google has developed a well-known reputation for placing a quite strong premium on the strength of your alma-mater. Nor is Google the only company that does this. Plenty of other high-tech startups also adopt a defacto policy that that will tend to give greater consideration to those who went to elite schools. </p>
<p>So I agree that if you come from a no-name school and you manage to get an offer from Google, your offer will be comparable to the offers Google made to the guys from the elite schools. But that's the catch - can you really get an offer from Google coming from a no-name school? I would say that while it's certainly possible, the way that Google runs its hiring practices, the odds are against you. I wouldn't hold my breath. </p>
<p>So the reason why the engineers at the top schools like MIT are getting higher salaries than those from no-name schools is simple - it's easier for the MIT guys to get into the 'prestige' companies that tend to pay very well.</p>
<p>This is simply not true, I AM a Chemical Engineer/Wharton student at Penn. </p>
<p>there is an entire undergraduate school (SEAS) devoted to Engineering and Applied Science.</p>
<p>While the broad engineering school ranking holds, more important to applicants IMO is departmental specific rankings.... if rankings are to be considered at all.</p>
<p>Cornell has an M. Eng.program as well. I wouldn't say that the students that entered it were any better than the ones that didn't though. Well there was a minimum GPA requirement so perhaps they were somewhat stronger as a group. But plenty of great students bypassed this for other paths.</p>
<p>Agree generally with your comments about other opportunities open to top school grads, I just think most of these are not engineering jobs. I think they tend towards Ibanking and consulting. The engineering jobs that were available to me, from cornell, were clearly available to many grads of the excellent state u engineering programs as well. For the most part.</p>
<p>In my day the better engineering companies (eg HP, Tektronix) had very selective hiring and were thought to have better, more state of the art work, but they really didn't pay much more than the other places, at entry-level. I don't think they did anyway.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Agree generally with your comments about other opportunities open to top school grads, I just think most of these are not engineering jobs. I think they tend towards Ibanking and consulting. The engineering jobs that were available to me, from cornell, were clearly available to many grads of the excellent state u engineering programs as well. For the most part.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I will see what sort of data I can find. However, I think it is telling that there is one very high-profile example (Google) of a company hiring engineers almost exclusively from the top schools. </p>
<p>However, your comment that compares Cornell vs. the top state schools are, I think, a bit off the mark. The fact is, the top state schools are probably just as good as Cornell, perhaps better, in terms of producing top-quality engineers. For example, the top state engineering school is probably Berkeley. I think the engineers from Berkeley are quite comparable, and arguably better than the engineers from Cornell. In fact, I might argue that the Berkeley engineers may actually have BETTER opportunities available to them than the Cornell engineers. I don't think it's worth debating that point, so I think we can agree that Berkeley engineers are doing pretty well for themselves. Other top-notch state engineering schools like Michigan, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Wisconsin, UCLA and others I would say are of very high quality. It is true that the entering student at those particular schools may not be comparable to the quality of the incoming Cornell student, but those who actually make it to graduation with an engineering degree are quite solid. </p>
<p>I think a far more fair comparison would be to compare Cornell to a no-name state school. Here I would argue that the contrast is clear. A company that makes an offer to a Cornell grad and a grad from a no-name school will probably provide roughly equivalent offers. The difference will most likely stem from the fact that the Cornell grad is more likely to get job offers from more prestigious and higher-paying companies. Sure, if the guy from the no-name school can get an offer from that prestigious company, he will be on the same level as the Cornell guy, but that's a pretty big 'if'.</p>
<p>It depends on the company and the type of job. Each company, and truly each hiring manager, has their own list of schools they like. I interned one summer for a Boeing branch in LA, and they hired Purdue engineers over anyone. Where I'm at right now, the two most sought after "national" schools are Purdue and Michigan. But, they also hire tons of local engineers. We get a lot from CalState Long Beach and CalPoly SLO. This makes sense, because if you want an engineer who will stay an engineer for life, the local schools are a better fit. The Purdue and Michigan ones we hire are looking more to move up into the company, so aren't as valuable as engineers for a whole career, even if they are better for the time they are doing it. But, they are valuable as leaders in the company. Same goes for the Cornell, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc...engineers that work with me.</p>
<p>Sounds right to me.</p>
<p>"I think the engineers from Berkeley are quite comparable, and arguably better than the engineers from Cornell."</p>
<p>What exactly do you find, in your experience, to be better about them? Are they better trained, in every aspect of engineering? Do they have more hands-on experience? Are they accustomed to working harder? What is it about these graduates of Berkely that you've found to better than the graduates of Cornell's engineering program you've worked with?</p>