I attend what I consider to be a fairly prestigious school, West Point, that is not ABET accredited in the major I plan on choosing, Operations Research. Does the fact that West Point is a famous school make up for the fact that it is not ABET accredited in the major I plan on choosing? Or will the fact that I don’t have an ABET accredited degree make it considerably more difficult for me to find a job in the future?
It might also be worth noting that for some reason, there is only 1 ABET accredited school, Berkley, for Operations Research, though I haven’t seen many schools that offer majors in Operations Research. Not sure if that makes any difference.
Since you mention Berkeley, the department there offers two majors:
Industrial Engineering and Operations Research in College of Engineering (ABET accredited)
Operations Research and Management Science in College of Letters and Science (not ABET accredited)
@ucbalumnus Thank you for the explanation on ABET accreditation.
Yes, I will have a job after I graduate. However, I only have to be in the Army for 5 years after graduation and I’m not sure if I want to do more than that or not. Additionally, if I turn out to not be a very good officer, the Army might decide to let me go after I’ve done 8 years, at which point I’ll still be in my late 20s/early 30s. So I want to choose a major that will give me the opportunity to get a good job if I choose to leave/am forced to leave the Army.
Logistics, decision science, risk assessment and management, etc. are important in many organizations (including military, commercial, and charitable). Presumably, you have interest in such jobs and careers (in the Army or otherwise)?
@ucbalumnus Yes I do. You have to be in the Army for a minimum of 8 years before you can get a position that does operations research though, so before that I’m hoping to do either air artillery defense(which deals with missiles) or quartermaster(which is basically supply) for the first stretch of my career and then move to an operations research job in the Army if I feel like staying in. I’m not sure what I’d like to do after the Army, should I leave or be forced out, but operations research looks interesting to me and the job prospects for it look pretty good so that is what I plan on going with.
As long as you do something OR-related in the military, you should have no problems finding an OR job after you get out. OR these days is basically applied computer science, and I’d think there would be plenty of opportunities in the Army to use it.
West Point will look fantastic on a resume. I wouldn’t worry about accreditation at all.
@ucbalumnus I’m not really sure honestly. I don’t know all that much about branching as I’m still a freshman and have only been here about 2 months. But I do know that it takes a minimum of 5 years of being either a quartermaster, ordnance, or transportation officer to become a logistics officer, so the job that is most closely related to operations research might be something I won’t be able to do when I first become an officer.