<p>[The</a> Crimson White | College of Engineering sees growth](<a href=“http://cw.ua.edu/2013/12/02/college-of-engineering-sees-growth/]The”>http://cw.ua.edu/2013/12/02/college-of-engineering-sees-growth/)</p>
<p>The average ACT of entering engineering freshmen for fall of 2013, was 29.2! The article says that is a five point increase from 2005, but that is an exagerration. Still, the avg. for engineering freshmen was NOT nearly as high then as it is now.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing! My daughter will be entering UA as a freshman in the fall of 2014 and plans to be an engineering major. Her favorite part of the article you linked? The stat saying only 21% of the engineering students are female - Just kidding! 
The entire article is amazing… and exciting!</p>
<p>Yes, thank you for posting…My daughter will also be entering Bama in the fall of 2014, her major is Aerospace Engineering. Roll Tide!!!</p>
<p>Welcome, fdngfrnzy…my S is aero class of 2016. In years past there were routinely only ~12-18 aero grads/year. #s have doubled and are on track to triple.</p>
<p>In the Iron Bowl of college engineering, UA seems to be winning, in terms of attracting top out of state students and quality growth.</p>
<p>now it needs to work on attracting more top companies to hire UA grads.</p>
<p>^ That is the same current weakness I see.</p>
<p>While it’s always good to “get more” companies, Bama’s eng’g grads are hired, and are hired at very good starting salaries.</p>
<p>I have to agree that this is by far the biggest weakness we’ve experienced at Bama and although last year I was able to scour the internet to find opportunities for my son and he was able to get an internship, I fear that we might not be as lucky in the future. </p>
<p>I’ve said before that I’m a firm believer that admitting and identifying weaknesses are essential to making improvements. It’s nice to say that ‘Bama’s eng’g grads are hired’, but in order to improve it’s necessary to admit that they are not hired at the rates of comparable schools. Of the schools my son was accepted to, Bama has the lowest placement rate for grads from their engineering school.</p>
<p>Per the attached article - 83% of Bama grads had employment or had gone on to grad school. </p>
<p>From <a href=“https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/InfoFor/FutureStudents/Parents:[/url]”>Home - Office of Future Engineers - Purdue University; 91 percent of Purdue engineering graduates are successfully placed professionally or academically within 6 months of graduation.</p>
<p>From [News</a> | Rose-Hulman](<a href=“404 | Rose-Hulman”>404 | Rose-Hulman) 93 percent of Rose-Hulman’s 2012 graduates were placed before commencement, and 98 percent were placed by November 1, 2012.</p>
<p>From <a href=“http://www.isye.gatech.edu/students/career/:[/url]”>http://www.isye.gatech.edu/students/career/:</a> 87% Percentage of students with a job offer before graduation </p>
<p>At the end of last school year, the threads here on CC indicated as many students struggling to find internships as those that were able to find them and I have seen very few engineering parents on here who have said that their student located an opportunity with the assistance of the school.</p>
<p>The ‘excuse’ I read over and over again is that opportunities are sent out, but students don’t read them. I have my son’s MyBama password, I read his email as much as he does. I read every email from the engineering school, I read every honor’s college newsletter. The opportunities are few and far between for the number of students on campus.</p>
<p>After the job fairs on campus last year, Bama posted the number of business that had attended over the 2 day event. </p>
<p>Per <a href=“Documenting Justice (Video) - The Crimson White”>Documenting Justice (Video) - The Crimson White; have over 80 companies registered for the General Interest Fair and over 90 companies for the Technical Fair,” said Linda Johnson, the director of employer development and relations for the Career Center at the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration. “If you are looking for an internship or graduating this year, you don’t want to miss it.”</p>
<p>For a campus of well-over 25,000 undergraduate students - there were 170 businesses on campus. There were just 90 businesses recruiting (all disciplines of) engineers (and computer science students). </p>
<p>In contrast Purdue hosts a job fair specific to it’s civil engineering department: The numbers of attending companies typically ranges from 50 to 100. (<a href=“https://engineering.purdue.edu/CESAC/careerfair/cffaq.php[/url]”>Purdue Civil Engineering Student Advisory Council) That is not even for the entire engineering school.</p>
<p>Rose-Hulman a campus MUCH smaller that Bama routinely brings 400-500 businesses to their campus during their school year. And they are exclusively an engineering school. Bama brought 90 businesses to their career fair for a much larger student population.</p>
<p>The campus has grown signficantly and the career center needs to grow their recruiting and events to keep pace. The number of OOS students at Bama indicates that their student body is willing to relocate to pursue opportunities and Bama can use that to bring national recruiters to campus. The quality of the student body should be an attractive feature to businesses. </p>
<p>But instead of counting on finding an opportunity through the school, my S has already sent out about a dozen applications/resumes for internships for next summer. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and hope we’re able to get lucky again.</p>
<p>also, with, now, the majority of students coming from out of state, UA needs to attract companies who are recruiting from all over the country. i am sure that many of those OOS students would like the possibility of returning to their own city, state or region.</p>
<p>another thing i have noticed is that the average salary i have seen quoted for UA grads is 15ish percent lower than at some other schools i am familiar with. that is directly related to the kinds of companies that are (or are NOT) recruiting at UA.</p>
<p>Perhaps the top companies will start coming to UA as its rep for attracting top notch students grows and word spreads. Have any of you contacted Dean Chuck Karr about this concern? I also wonder if the salaries are a bit lower, cause salaries across the South are lower?</p>
<p>the salaries i am comparing to are in the south, as well.</p>
<p>The honors college (which includes many engineering students) recently promoted a successful regional recruiter to a new post, director of alumni and organizational development. His job is to build relationships with alumni and companies to hire UA grads, essentially recruiting employers. It’s not an overnight process, but UA is working on it.</p>
<p>While UA does need to step up it’s game, to be fair, Perdue, Georgia Tech, and even Rose Hulman are not fair comparisons as far as recruiting. RHIT is a well regarded engineering-only school that attracts many regional firms, hence the 400-500 number they claim. Perdue and Georgia Tech are two of the top engineering schools in the world, with recruiting to match.</p>
<p>I would like to know what was “wrong” with the 17% of Bama grads that were not placed after graduation. Is there evidence of UA engineering grads with respectable GPA’s that couldn’t find work?</p>
<p>^Who should UA be compared with?</p>
<p>As I noted, I used those schools because those were the schools my son was accepted to and the ones he had the opportunity to attend.</p>
<p>“They are not fair comparisons”, so does that imply that in order to get a good job in his field my S should transfer back to Purdue for his senior year? One year of paying tutition would definitely be worth him having superior job opportunities.</p>
<p>The question for me isn’t just why those 17% are not getting placed, but also of the 83% that do get placed, how many do so by finding an opportunity with the assistance of the school and how many are finding those opportunities on their own. </p>
<p>Last year my S, a Civ-E major attended both the fall and spring career fairs and found <em>1</em> company that was looking for interns in his field (there are over 100 Civ-E students in his class, so somewhere between 300-500 Civ-E students on campus and there was <em>1</em> company on campus looking for Civ-E interns (to be fair there were a couple more hiring for full time positions, for a total of 4 or 5). The even sadder thing is that company was not at the career fair again this year.</p>
<p>the salaries i am comparing to are in the south, as well.</p>
<p>Are you including Texas?</p>
<p>I think that not only do you have to compare regions, but also disciplines. Some disciplines pay better.</p>
<p>As for pay…that has nothing to do with Bama…lol… A company is going to pay a Bama grad the same amount that they pay a Purdue grad. Company A (in a particular city) does NOT say, "hmmm, we’re hiring 2 new EEs…one is from Bama, one is from Purdue…so we’ll pay the Bama grad $65k and we’ll pay the Purdue grad $70k. Nope, nada. They’ll both get paid the same. </p>
<p>If many of the grads are starting jobs in Cummings Research Park, then their salaries (no matter where they went to school) will be less than if they’re hired by companies in other regions that have pricier COLs. </p>
<p>Do you realize that a Bama EE grad that is hired by Company A’s Calif division is going to get paid more than the Bama grad hired by Company A’s HSV division. It has nothing to do with Bama’s pedigree.</p>
<p>that said, anyone with a concern about recruitment at Bama SHOULD be contacting Dr. Karr. A complaint here is probably no more effective than complaining to the wind. We can’t implement changes. The people who can are the ones that need to know.</p>
<p>Dr. Karr’s email link can be found here. If you want, include a link to this thread so he can read your posted concerns.</p>
<p><a href=“http://eng.ua.edu/about/dean/[/url]”>http://eng.ua.edu/about/dean/</a></p>
<p>copy/paste the below into your communication with him
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/1585197-ua-college-engineering-sees-incredible-growth-quality.html#post16646126[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/1585197-ua-college-engineering-sees-incredible-growth-quality.html#post16646126</a></p>