Hello all, I am currently a second semester sophomore in Engineering with a 3.6 GPA. I made some mistakes and got caught up in bad things. I have been suspended for the Fall 2017 semester and am trying to look at my options. I have no record or disciplinary report prior to this instance. Earlier in the year I threw around the idea of transferring to a different school that would give me a more prestigious engineering degree than my current school has. If I were to apply to other schools, is it a given that they find out about the suspension even if I apply once the suspension period is over? Also, if they were to find out is it automatically a 0% chance of being accepted? I’m not too sure how it works when you transfer schools. Thanks.
Yes, they will find out about the suspension because you will have to disclose the suspension on your transfer application. You have a 100% chance of having your admission rescinded or being kicked out of school, if you lie about the suspension and it is found out by the school later on.
It is NOT an automatic 0% chance of being accepted at the transfer school. They will look at the circumstances and judge accordingly. That said, schools don’t want to bring in trouble if they can avoid it, so you need to do a good job of explaining why this is all in your past and not indicative of future results.
And, they WILL find out. It probably will be on your transcript. Even if you get away with them not finding out, you risk real consequences if you try to hide it.
I am not expert on this at all, but my understanding is that as long as you get an engineering degree from an ABET accredited school, prestige is irrelevant.
Personally, I think you should stick it out at your current school. Get a job, maybe travel a bit, and do something fun. Consider it a second chance to reinvent yourself and prioritize what matters to you.
“I am not expert on this at all, but my understanding is that as long as you get an engineering degree from an ABET accredited school, prestige is irrelevant.”
That is ridiculous. An engineering degree from MIT vs Devry, both are ABET accredited. You won’t get a sniff from anyone with an engineering degree from some of these ABET accredited colleges.
@cu123, DeVry has a few abet accredited programs at some of their campuses. Biomedical Engineering Technology, Computer Engineering Technology, and Electronics Engineering Technology.
I suspect that the addition of the word “technology” (rather than the worth of the accreditation) puts them firmly in a different hiring world than a degree in Biomedical Engineering does at MIT.
As for the OP, my advice would be to stick it out and take your licks.
Electrical Engineering, Bio Engineering, Computer Science and some other engineering disciplines at Stanford are not ABET. ABET is only meaningful for following schools but not for leading schools.
@CU123, in my area, we probably wouldn’t hire someone from MIT but would consider candidates from other schools. The one engineer I worked with who was an MIT grad had no people skills and was eventually let go. ABET accreditation really is the most important thing to consider. Engineers aren’t big on prestige, thank goodness.
This went off the rails faaaaast. Post #3 correlates with my experience. Where I work, we get a ton of Rose Hulman grads, can’t tell them apart from the Texas Tech or NC A&T grads as a rule. @MotherOfDragons has the right idea, I think.
@MaineLonghorn To be fair, the MIT candidates probably wouldn’t consider companies like that in the first place so I doubt that that situation happens often.
Yes but, to be fair, a one-post user asking how to get around getting busted doesn’t have much shelf life anyway.
To me the abet question has a lot more traction…
My engineering program is ranked 90-100 in the US and is accredited. A degree from a top 20 program wouldn’t make much of a difference?
No.
“Engineers aren’t big on prestige,”
Certainly true. 
I think that this explains the t-shirts and blue jeans.
To the original OP: I don’t think that you ever said what your original school is. This makes it somewhat hard to evaluate whether there is any reason to switch schools. However, prestige very definitely does not matter much for engineering. Also, given your disciplinary issue, I think it is unlikely that you would be able to transfer to anywhere which is sufficiently stronger to matter. Also, your 3.6 GPA is pretty good, but suggests that you are being challenged at about the right level.
Thus while it is hard to say for sure without knowing more, I strongly suspect that you should stay where you are, focus on doing the work well and keeping ahead of your classes, and definitely keep your nose clean and keep yourself out of trouble for the next 2 1/2 years (or however long it takes before you graduate).
OP- your record will follow you. Better to clean up your act where you are and have professors who can, if needed, write compelling recommendation letters for you as to how you turned things areound and how strong a candidate you are.
Sidebar- also agree that prestige is not important in engineering, but ABET certification is. Older s’s current job (its not his first fulltime job) required many, many interviews. Ironically, the final interview was with an employee who just happened to have the same engineering degree from the same undergrad U as DS. Don’t know if it helped, but probably didn’t hurt. That employee, however, has an advanced degree from elsewhere and is in-house counsel.
We’ll I am an engineer and I have hired engineers and I hire from schools that produce quality engineers and not from schools where the candidate couldn’t answer basic engineering questions even though they graduated from an ABET accredited school, but believe what you want.
Furthermore suggesting MIT grads are socially deficient is another ridiculous generization. Having said that there are a ton of great engineering schools. Most will be ranked in the top 100 and are big universities but to say they are equivalent to the top 5 is not the case, and once you go below the top 200, you really aren’t sure what your getting.
Please list these schools. DeVry appears to be for-profit and not really offer engineering degrees, just engineering technology as noted above, so I’m not sure why you’re comparing it to MIT.
My point is don’t be fooled by ABET. It does matter what school you go to. There are many institutions that are great engineering schools including flagship universities. But if you think your going to get a great job graduating from a school in engineering outside the top 200 then think again, my daughter just graduated from a top 20 engineering orogram and it took 6 months to find a good job. A mechanical engineer I know had to go back to get a masters because he couldn’t find a job after looking for 8 months.
So the great news is that your “bad mistakes” resulted in only a suspension, but not being expelled. Take ownership of your bad decisions and move forward with honesty and integrity. It’s what you do going forward that will define you. Best of luck to you.