<p>What would a top 10-15% engineering graduate at UC Berkeley expect to make after graduating? I'm most curious about ME's. I am aware of the career center website which has a pretty good breakdown. However, only a small sample of grads seem to actually give data. I am curious if anyone actually knows some numbers from some of their high-performing peers.</p>
<p>$55 - $65k...maybe a signing bonus as well.</p>
<p>Top students are not necessarily the ones who make biggest amount of money.</p>
<p>Depends on your work function mainly. For different companies engineers range around ~55k-65k, but can go up quite a lot or down depending on your job function. MEs probably around 55k average. I think EECSs and ChemEs (and related such as MatSciE, CompE) shouldn't expect less than 55k. Civils get lowballed a lot so maybe lowest $45k. These are generalities though. Berkeley has a salary database for recent grads.</p>
<p>The highest earning engineering grads can earn upwards of $150k a year to start, sometimes over $200k.</p>
<p>But there's a rather big catch; those engineering grads are not working as engineers. Instead, they're working in investment banking, private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, wealth management, and similar high finance jobs.</p>
<p>Sakky, are they double majors? Other than the calculus, what does a typical ME know about finance? What is his/her function? (Just curious since I'm having trouble putting the two disciplines together in my mind)</p>
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Sakky, are they double majors?
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<p>Nope. </p>
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Other than the calculus, what does a typical ME know about finance?
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<p>Nothing. Nor does he need to know anything he learned in college, not even calculus. They're going to train you on what you need to know. It's the same philosophy underpinning why Wall Street investment banks will hire Harvard English majors (and to some extent Berkeley English majors). </p>
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<p>You don't put the 2 together in your mind, because they can't be put together.</p>
<p>Look, the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of college graduates in the country will not take jobs that are related to their major. Think of it this way. How many poli-sci majors actually become professional political scientists? How many history majors actually become professional historians? How many sociology majors actually become professional sociologists? How many math majors actually become professional mathematicians? </p>
<p>Look, we need to get over this false notion that an undergraduate major is actually preparing you for a long-term career. It is not. I believe CNN once ran a story that estimated that the average American changes careers (not just jobs or employers, but entire careers)about 4-5 times in a lifetime. Hence, it is highly probable that, sometime in your life, you are going to find yourself in a job that has nothing to do whatsoever with whatever you studied in college. </p>
<p>What a college degree is really supposed to provide is the ability to think logically and improve your learning faculties. In other words, the true value of a college degree is that you learn how to learn. You should therefore choose a particular major because it provides an interestingly-packaged vehicle via which you can improve your thinking processes and enjoy doing it. But not because you actually believe you will be using the specific topics that you will learn in a specific job. Now, if you happen to get such a job that actually does in fact use those topics that you learn, then that's gravy. But you shouldn't count on it. Plenty of people will take jobs after college that have nothing to do with the specific topics they learned.</p>