<p>what kind of salary and benefits should i expect after graduating from college. I am a civil engineering major with a GPA of 3.87. Should GPA be a factor in calculating salary. Also are entry level salaries negotiable??</p>
<p>Any salaries are negotiable. You <em>should</em> negotiate. Salary range kind of depends upon what area of civ you go into, and whether you're looking at top firms. Typically, most civs start out at mid-forties without a masters degree. A structural concentration with a masters degree from a top program can put you at mid-fifties or low sixties, even, with a top design firm. </p>
<p>See what they offer you, see what others offer you, and try to bump the offers up by a couple of K.</p>
<p>Should we assume that the area of the country will also have an impact on salaries? Just curious!</p>
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Should we assume that the area of the country will also have an impact on salaries? Just curious!
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Of course!</p>
<p>You ought to. The firm I worked for in Los Angeles, though, didn't give a bump in salary to the people in their LA office (versus, for example, their Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Atlanta offices...) because they said that getting to live in California is compensation enough. (Obviously hadn't ever been to LA.)</p>
<p>So, be sure to look at cost of living indices when you're looking at your offers.</p>
<p>im a structural eng major (masters stanford), this year my classmates are getting low-mid 60k in CA and high 50s to low 60s in NY. If you just have a BS you should probably subtract 5k from that.</p>
<p>The average at UIUC is 51k with bachelors and 54k with a masters.</p>
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im a structural eng major (masters stanford), this year my classmates are getting low-mid 60k in CA and high 50s to low 60s in NY. If you just have a BS you should probably subtract 5k from that.
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The average at UIUC is 51k with bachelors and 54k with a masters.
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Get a masters, and your salary will be higher by 3-5k?!?!?!</p>
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Get a masters, and your salary will be higher by 3-5k?!?!?!
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</p>
<p>In structures, at least that.</p>
<p>65K for a Stanford MS grad in structural eng sounds about right. This isn't the EE field where you start at 85k+ coming out of UCSB with a MS.</p>
<p>65K is high, at least for civil structures. You'd be hard-pressed to find more than about 55-60K, even in California, starting fresh out of grad school.</p>
<p>Here's Civil Engineering's stats from CMU: <a href="http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/employ/salary/CivE.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/employ/salary/CivE.pdf</a></p>
<p>Degree (# students) High/Low/Mean/Median
B.S. (12) $84,480/$40,000/$51,182/$50,350
M.S. (6) $83,000/$44,160/$58,753/$53,000
Ph.D. (8) $75,000/$57,600/$65,792/$65,000 </p>
<p>I imagine the person making $84k either went into finance or is the CS instructor at CMU:Qatar.</p>
<p>Civil engineers make more money than uncivil engineers.</p>
<p>Why do civil engineers make less than other engineering majors? Also, aside from structural what other civil engineering concentrations earn more money? Do hydro or infrastucture earn more? Will getting a masters in environmental engineering help your earnings potential?</p>
<p>From the people I know, those working in construction management make the highest (if you still consider that to be engineering). If you're working in infrastructure, you'd probably make less since more than likely it's a government contract. In the past few years, the big money sector has been residential project for big time developers. </p>
<p>Traffic engineering, for whatever reason, tends to pay the least. I used to work for one of those firms as an intern and was informally offered a full time position. I made the switch to construction management, and my starting salary is 50% more than what it would have been in traffic engineering.</p>
<p>On average, civil engineers make less money because 2 out of every 3 civil engineer works for the government (correct me if I'm wrong). They certainly make significantly less than those in the private sector, but from my personal experience with a state agency, government employees do the least work per dollar that they earn. I think I do more work in one week in the private sector than I did in 6 months working for the government. </p>
<p>A masters will typically give you a boost in salary.</p>
<p>Thank you ken285. The reason I ask is that my son accepted a coop position with a very large civil engineering company in the roadway division. His thinking was that he would accept the coop with the thought that he can later transfer to the environmental engineering area, which is his interest and plans on a masters in environmental engineering. I know you should do what you love for a living and not worry about the money, but at the same time you have to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Hopefully a future MBA will help get him into management and boost his earnings potential.</p>
<p>Ken285 and aibarr, both of you offer valuable information. Thank you for the information.</p>
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Why do civil engineers make less than other engineering majors?
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</p>
<p>Because life is chronically unfair. (Wannh.)</p>
<p>No, actually, this is a major point of contention within the field. We build your homes, your hospitals, your office buildings, we coordinate and design all of your utilities, we design the airports and roads and bridges to get you to and from places, we alleviate traffic through traffic control systems, we design oil rigs to gather the oil you need… We have to be licensed from here to Timbuktu in order to do our job, and after grad school there are years of on-the-job training that you need before you can take a series of grueling exams and earn the right to even CALL yourself an engineer… If your computer crashes for a few hours, you go read a book. If your condominium high rise crashes for a few hours, though, that'll ruin your whole weekend. So why can't we earn as much as our doctor and lawyer friends? My high school buddies are finishing law and med school. Four more years and one of my friends will be a pediatrician. Several of my friends passed the bar exam a year ago. I have another two years before I can take the PE civil exam, then another two years after that before I can take the SE I exam, then I'll need to check the qualifying experience requirements, but there's an SE II exam after <em>that</em>… Meanwhile, my friends can call themselves Dr. John and Sarah Esquire but I'm still a "graduate engineer" or an "engineering associate"… etc., etc., interminable whining from the civil engineering professional.</p>
<p>It's partly that we do a bad job of making people understand what it is that we do. Who designs buildings? Ask a guy on the street. The answer's likely going to be "architects!". People don't really get it… Architects come up with the visual design, but the ones who actually turn the things from pretty pictures into real live buildings are the engineers. </p>
<p>It's not all that uncommon, though, for this sort of thing to happen in artistic endeavors. Actually, I once heard a pretty accurate set of analogies… Architects are like conductors and structural engineers are like the rest of the orchestra. Lots of people know that Leonard Bernstein conducted the New York Phil, but they'd be hard pressed to recall the names of any of the people who actually did the music-making. Lenny, rest his soul, just waved his baton around and took all the bows, he (typically) didn't play a single note. Leonard Bernstein yells at musicians and gets famous. Bela Karolyi yells at gymnasts and gets famous. Frank Lloyd Wright yells at engineers and gets famous! …but without Leonard Bernstein, that recording of Copland's ballets would be just another recording of Copland's ballets. Without Karolyi, that little Romanian girl is just another schoolgirl. Without the Frank Lloyd Wrights and the Eero Saarinens and the I.M. Peis, we're all cranking out strip malls.</p>
<p>We could do a better job of marketing ourselves. We ought to do a better job of marketing ourselves. Still, this is an old hole that the profession has dug itself into, and the fact is that clients know how much they have to fork over to have a building designed, and they're not going to pay more than they have to. We've got to eat, so we keep designing for the money that we're offered, otherwise the next guy down the ladder's going to get our jobs.</p>
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Also, aside from structural what other civil engineering concentrations earn more money?
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</p>
<p>Like Ken said, construction management, but that takes you out of design and more into management. (Structural's actually kind of disparate from most of the rest of civil engineering, to the point that I'm pretty sure structural engineering is going to become its own college major some time in the next few decades, rather than being a subset of civil engineering… But that's a whole other discussion…) </p>
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Do hydro or infrastucture earn more?
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</p>
<p>They're all kind of comparable.</p>
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Will getting a masters in environmental engineering help your earnings potential?
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</p>
<p>Yes. Do so. Some companies won't even interview you if you don't have a masters degree, and it only takes one year, sometimes a year and a half. Two if you're not in the mood to hustle.</p>
<p>Ultimately, none of us is starving. I support myself and my forever-a-student husband on my salary, and we have money enough to pay rent and pay down student loans, and still have some left over every month to sock away into retirement funds and savings accounts and the occasional vacation to faroff lands, and I'm only two years into my career. It's a pretty good gig!</p>
<p>Note that these are just that averages, you can be a new engineering grad and be offered 20K a year, ive seen it happen.</p>
<p>20k? Interesting... what were the circumstances for this person that got a $20k offer if you don't mind me asking?</p>
<p>
[quote]
We could do a better job of marketing ourselves. We ought to do a better job of marketing ourselves. Still, this is an old hole that the profession has dug itself into, and the fact is that clients know how much they have to fork over to have a building designed, and they're not going to pay more than they have to. We've got to eat, so we keep designing for the money that we're offered, otherwise the next guy down the ladder's going to get our jobs.
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</p>
<p>Funny you say that because architects complain all the time that they don't market themselves well at all. I've seen AIA be dragged through the mud constantly. (EDIT: This excludes starchitects).</p>
<p>I don't think the low salaries are limited to civil engineers. It's across the board for everyone in the buildings industry. To the best of my knowledge, that includes mechanical engineers working in HVAC and electrical engineers working in power. Of course, you have architects too. And contractors have the highest business failure rates among all industries. Did I miss anyone?</p>
<p><a href="Structural's%20actually%20kind%20of%20disparate%20from%20most%20of%20the%20rest%20of%20civil%20engineering,%20to%20the%20point%20that%20I'm%20pretty%20sure%20structural%20engineering%20is%20going%20to%20become%20its%20own%20college%20major%20some%20time%20in%20the%20next%20few%20decades,%20rather%20than%20being%20a%20subset%20of%20civil%20engineering…%20But%20that's%20a%20whole%20other%20discussion…">quote</a>
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</p>
<p>That's an interesting thought. I can't see that being too common at any point in the future though. What I can see is structural AND geotechnical being divided from water resources and environmental. Those two pairs go pretty well together. Traffic engineering can easily be incorporated with the urban planing department of the architecture school (if that exists at University X), but that won't ever happen because of school politics. And of course construction management is barely in the civil engineering department as it is right now. The research I worked on in grad school was actually more related to business than engineering. All that just goes to show how broad the civil engineering field really is. Okay, I've strayed way off topic now.</p>
<p>Aibarr, good information. Actually my husband is a senior project manager for one of the largest international construction companies. He works on very large projects, but does not management anything above a mid-rise. High-rises go to the project managers who are civil engineers, and in his opinion, rightly so. </p>
<p>He was disappointed when our son decided on civil engineering instead of another engineering major. My husband loves what he does, but the earnings potential just isn't there. Jobs always go to the lowest bidder. Materials cost what they cost. Labor is where they crunch the numbers.</p>
<p>DS ultimately plans on a masters in environmental engineering. He currently attends one of the top public engineering programs in the country and hopefully that will help him attract the interest of some of the larger employers. He certainly had plenty of coop opportunities come his way.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, we can always hope that there is a shortage of civil engineers and it will help boost salaries.</p>