<p>So, by the title, I am interested in doing engineering. Though I was wondering how good is Swarthmore's Engineering program? I've been admitted to Carnegie Institute of Tech at Carnegie Mellon and the financial is only $3000 difference.
Can anyone give me some insight on whether the small eight person faculty at Swarthmore can out-do Carnegie Mellon?
Also can you work after getting an engineering degree at Swarthmore or do you NEED to go to Grad school?</p>
<p>Here are the immediate plans of Swarthmore engineering majors from the last five year (who indicated their plans on the senior week exit survey):</p>
<p>Employment</p>
<p> Marine Structural Engineer, Urban Engineers, Philadelphia, PA
Project Analyst, Cannondale Associates, Wilton, CT
Highway Engineer, Missouri Department of Transportation, Macon
Mechanical Engineer, Dewberry, New York City, NY
Entry level engineer
Associate Consultant, Kaiser Associates, Washington, DC
Business Analyst, McKinsey and Company, Moscow, Russia
Engineering Consultant, Prismark Partners LLC, Cold Spring Harbor
Program Manager, Microsoft, Seattle, WA
Assistant Manager of Strategic & Technical Service, Aramark, New Haven, CT
Analyst, NERA Economic Consulting, Washington, DC
Analyst, Industrial Engineering Management Trainee, UNK
Junior Engineer, Kling, Philadelphia, PA
Software Engineer, Amazon Global Resources, Inc., Seattle, WA
Customer Service Engineer, Mercury Computer Systems, Inc., Chelmsford, MA
Analyst, Lehman Brothers, New York, NY
Analyst, Silver Oak Solutions, Philadelphia, PA
Analyst, Lehman Brothers, Hong Kong, China
English Teaching Assistant, Nova, Osaka, Japan
Financial Restructuring Analyst, Houlihan Lokey Howard and Zukin, LA, CA
Assistant Language Teacher, Japan Exchange and Teaching, Japan
Peace Corps Volunteer, Peace Corps, Somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, UNK
Member of Technical Staff, Level 1, The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, MA
Structural Engineer, Medina Consultants, Hackettstown, NJ
Emergency Response Team member, Americorps St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
Teacher, Mercan Language Institute, Taiyuan, China</p>
<p>Graduate/Professional School</p>
<p> Masters, Transportation Engineering, Northwestern University, IL
M. S., Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, NY
M.D., Medical School, New York Medical College, NY
Ph.D., Electrical Engineering (EE), MIT
M.S., Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
Ph. D., Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, NY
Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, MIT
Ph.D., Physical Oceanography, University of Washington
Masters or Ph.D., Active Vibration Control, University of Southampton, England
M.S., Ocean Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology, FL
MPH, Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, GA
Ph.D., Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, MD
Ph.D., Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University, PA
Ph.D., Mech. & Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University
M.D., Medical, Jefferson Medical College
Ph.D., Electrical & Comp Engineering, University of Wisconsin Madison
Masters and Ph. D, Civil Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, CA
Masters, Nano Engineering, SUNY, NY
Ph.D.in Electrical Engineering, MIT, MA
Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin, TX
M.S./Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, UC Santa Barbara, CA
M.S./Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering, U.C. Berkeley, CA
M.S. Civil Engineering, Civil Engineering, University of Hawaii, HI
Masters in Electrical Engineering, Columbia University
Masters, Marine Policy, University of Delaware
M.S. in Structural Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, MD
M.S./Ph.D., Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Princeton University, NJ
Ph.D., Microbiology, MIT, MA</p>
<p>Other</p>
<p> Fulbright Fellowship in Poland
Fulbright Scholarship</p>
<p>Here’s the link for the full list, for all departments:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/careerservices/grad%20stats%20by%20major%202004-2009.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/careerservices/grad%20stats%20by%20major%202004-2009.pdf</a></p>
<p>You have to think about what you want out of college and what you see after college.</p>
<p>If you want to get an engineering degree and go straight into an engineering cubicle and you know, today, that there is zero chance that you won’t like engineering or that you won’t want to study other things in addition to engineering, then going to an engineering school is probably the best bet.</p>
<p>However, if you find that you don’t like engineering or that you don’t have an aptitude for engineering or that you also want to study linguistics or economics or music or learn to write, then you are screwed because you may have to transfer to shift gears.</p>
<p>Swarthmore offers an excellent ABET-accredited Engineering degree in the context of the best all-around liberals arts education in the country. You will learn to write. You will learn to discuss and debate in class. You will be surrounded by engineers and economics an biology and theater and classics and linguistics and English and psychology majors. That’s a very different experience from an engineering program at an engineering school. </p>
<p>I don’t think anyone can tell you which is better. You have to think about what you are looking for in a college experience, how married you are to engineering for the rest of your life, and so on and so forth. Personally, I’m not wild about 18 year old high school seniors making their final career choice and locking into an engineering school, but there are lots of students who are prepared to make that choice.</p>
<p>I don’t know too much about Swat engineering, but I have friends who are in the program. It seems very good, based on what they’ve told me. If you go to Swat, then you’ll have to satisfy distribution requirements in different subjects. There aren’t that many, but some people might find that it gets in the way. Swarthmore has a general engineering major–if you want something more specific (e.g. civil engineering), then you’d probably go to grad school to specialize further.</p>
<p>@interesteddad: I see what you mean by making a decision by 18, and yes I am actually considering going to Dental school afterward, which might further push for Swarthmore or Johns hopkins, though again I’m am actually becoming more interested in going into something like Medical Robotics(further proving your point about changing my mind), which Carnegie would be perfect for.
So in all I’m mostly wondering then since I do agree that I may change my mind, which college do you think would give me the most options?Though i can say with almost certainty that I will be going into either a math/engineering field or a science/health Also, Carnegie does have premed/Dental and Biomedical Engineering, while Swat is only general engineering but of course is great for premed.</p>
<p>I was just looking at I think the US News and World Report 2010 ratings and they said Swat was in the top five in engineering for something.</p>
<p>Class of 2009 Engineering here. Headed to Stanford for graduate school, as are two of my classmates. Others from my class are at MIT, JHU, Princeton, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon, PSU.</p>
<p>Reading through the list of where the engineering grads are working, I’m surprised that there don’t some to be many working for major corps like Intel, IBM, Microsoft(I think I saw 1 here), etc. Why is this? I know this is a self reported survey…perhaps that is the reason.</p>
<p>Patrick Awuah (Class of 89) was a Swarthmore engineering major who worked for Microsoft, made a killing, and retired early. He returned to his native Ghana where he founded the first liberal arts college in Africa:</p>
<p>[The</a> Meaning Of Swarthmore](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/meaning/awuah.html]The”>The Meaning of Swarthmore :: Swarthmore College)</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>Interesteddad,of course, I’m sure there has been at least one swarthmore engineer who worked in the corporate world…that wasn’t really the intent of my question. I’m not trying to strike a nerve with my question either. I’m just curious. A college that sends their engineering grads to MIT, berkeley, and Stanford, but sends so few to the corporate engineering world is…well…really weird…unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I wonder if the data is complete.</p>
<p>I think it is great that Swarthmore, a top Liberal arts school,has an engineering program. It is rather unique in that way. I wish other Liberal Arts schools would follow suite, and I guess I’m understanding how their engineering programs works and how the recruiting works.</p>
<p>Probably computer science majors at Swarthmore are more likely to work for those firms than engineering majors. I know a number of Swatties at google…</p>