<p>I have the best position in my company in my opinion. It’s not the highest I can go. I’m still a regular employee, not a lead or manager. What I need to be a lead is experience and that just takes years. Fancy degrees don’t substitute for experience at my company (and probably most others.)</p>
<p>Yes top companies recruit at lots of schools (like, ahem, Boeing) and most medium-strength engineering program will have at least a couple top companies that recruit there due to their regional reputation or that company’s prior experience.</p>
<p>At the top schools, nearly all of the top companies are there, including the tip top (in some peoples’ opinions) companies like Goldman Sachs. In that regard, you generally have more top opportunities at the top schools, though more regional schools in no way exclude you from all top companies.</p>
<p>Just a an aside, I do not consider Goldman Sachs a top company for myself, as I actually got an engineering degree to do engineering. However, by sheer selectivity and pay grade it is certainly tip top.</p>
<p>I spent the first 1/2 of my working career on Wall St. working for the big NYC houses on trading desks. And I will tell you that 75% of new hires made by Wall St. for choice positions are the result of nepotism or personal connections. I know this because I was one of them. But if you’re not one of the 75%, then name prestige means allot, (what else do you got)?. And this hasn’t changed.</p>
<p>To my mind, this thread has focused in on the wrong thing. Because this is CC, most people reading this thread will be overachievers of some sort who really don’t need to consider the lowest tier engineering schools. Your average CC student could probably get in at UMinn, Pitt, A&M or some such school without much stress and perhaps with a very generous scholarship. That’s the comparison you should be making: does it make a significant difference to go to MIT/Caltech/CMU/* Ivy/Stanford over A&M/Minnesota/Florida/etc?</p>
<p>My opinion to noimgination’s question is no, unless you work in academia. </p>
<p>I work side by side with PhDs and Caltech/MIT grads. We all do the same job for roughly the same pay (except they pay more for service / experience.)</p>
<p>I don’t know, as a student I liked reading stuff here. What I got from this place is:
- Not really that big a deal in what school you go to besides starting salary.
- Just work hard, do internships, etc.
- Go to whichever school you like most and major in what you like to do. The pay is barely all that different, it depends more on you, and either way you’ll be making enough for a nice living.</p>
<p>This thing killed a lot of stress for me really. I kinda dropped Cornell as a place because I was applying for the prestige and I like RPI much more. So now I’m just deciding mainly between RPI, CMU, and UT in my mind. I take the whole prestige out of mind and it’s just on which I figure will let me do what I want to do in college most (besides education I mean, like theatre clubs, social scene, environment, etc.). I figure I’ll get as good an education and job from either one right? So it’s which gives more money (if I get the gates then that’s out of the equation) and which I’ll fit in more at.</p>
<p>I don’t really think the average “CCer” is any superstar student necessarily. Maybe the regular posters are, on average, better than average students, but there really is no indication that people that come here to ask questions are better than average.</p>
<p>^ This subforum isn’t quite as inundated as some of the others, but a high percentage of CCers aim for a small set of top private schools. And this makes sense. Most truly “average” students go to relatively local state universities and do fine without worrying about a major college search.</p>
<p>The point is that many “top 30” engineering schools are not really that competitive (good test scores + GPA = admit) and may offer good merit aid.</p>