<p>I'm planning to be an engineering major and am trying to best acclimate myself. My goal would be to graduate with a masters degree in 5 years in the best situation possible. Right now i have a few favorite schools:
McGill: -I think good reputation
-should be able to graduate in 3 years with bachelors due to ap credits(only have eng 101 linear algebra and a few humanities to complete freshman year)
-uneasy about post graduation options and job placement
-limited internship/research opportunities</p>
<p>Stevens inst of tech:-great coop and research options
-definitely less reputed
-strong grad salaries and placement-some stat was like half of grads half more than one job offer
-has 5 year masters plans for sure</p>
<p>Im also considering rpi, Drexel or rutgers </p>
<p>I want to set myself up for a well paying engineering job after graduation and am just torn! Please help!</p>
<p>I’m going to say I’m leaning to McGill but am having doubts due to coop opportunities and such that some say are more important than school name </p>
<p>Are you suggesting I reconsider McGill due to costs? I’m Canadian born so get Canadian 8700 tuition at McGill. I could have misinterpreted your point, just let me know</p>
The things you are worrying yourself over are actually small factors. Small, that is, compared to what you do. If you work hard and do well in class, get internship and coop experience, maybe take part in a student project, you are going to have many offers when you graduate. From just about any ABET acredited program. Conversely if you don’t do these things, going to a “better” school is not going to fix things for you. </p>
<p>Ucbalumnus okay I see. For the sake of this post lets pretend all those schools end up costing the same for me with scholarships and what not.</p>
<p>And mikemac, my concern is that McGill won’t have the same kind of opportunities that I would be able to get involved in at Stevens like their summer scholars program or the coop</p>
<p>What type of engineering program are you interested in? Are you only at schools in the NY-NJ-PA areas? Are you not considering top tier engineering schools? Other schools with excellent engineering programs I can name off the top of my head are Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, to name just a few. I graduated from what is now NYU-Polytechnic, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But if you’re considering Steven’s you should also look at Poly. They have one of the highest average salaries for its graduates according to Payscale.com.</p>
<p>People I know in engineering say that the problem with coop programs is not finding a position, its having a program set up in your college that allows you to graduate in 5 years after taking 2 coop positions while in school. (or 4 years and 1 position). Most kids don’t want to take a full semester off, so the competition for coop positions is not big. The problem comes with getting off-track since many engineering courses are year-long sequences and are tightly integrated with other required courses; miss a semester and you can really fall behind. Schools with large coop programs have this baked in, you need to check with other schools you are considering to see the effect of taking coop jobs. </p>
<p>Let me emphasize, though, my belief that in the end your future is going to depend primarily on your achievement in college and not whether you had a coop instead of internship position. </p>
<p>I also visited Carnegie Mellon, I liked it but wasn’t my favorite. Those other are great schools but a little far and little expensive but not out of question I suppose. I’m doing my best to graduate debt free bc my parents aren’t going to throw 50k at me. </p>
<p>I’ve got 34 act and only 4 As on my transcript. Everything else Is an A+. I word it that way bc the weighted gpa at my school is meaningless to colleges anyway. But it’s a 4.5 on a weighted 4.0 scale</p>
I disagree with that. Many companies have GPA cutoffs to even set up an on-campus interview. Engineering is hard, and a decent GPA represents a combination of intelligence and willingness to work that one could suspect might not be present in someone with a C+ average. </p>
<p>That said, GPA and intern positions tend to go hand-in-hand. Being hired for one isn’t automatic, so you aren’t going to find a lot of kids with low GPAs and stellar internship experience. Which brings up one last point I want to make. An advantage of some schools with strong coop programs is that getting outside experience is so important to them that they will guarantee that anyone who wants a coop will get one. There is no such guarantee at most schools. Not, in the end, that I think the post-college opportunities will be great in any event for someone with a low GPA, but for those with a decent (or better) GPA the guarantee can be nice to have. </p>
<p>Would you all agree that if you can get yourself the internships and work hard at a “better” school like McGill you should do so then rather than take the internships almost handed out at less reputed schools</p>