My daughter is currently a mechanical engineering student at UF. When she was a senior in HS, we met with a man who does free college consulting at her HIgh School (and still does) and he made a comment that UF is for “hinge engineers”. My daughter and I were really turned off by his comment and we never met with him again. Now I see him on our High School Parents Facebook group making appointments with many people and I wonder how many others he’s giving this great advice to. He says “The companies that recruit heavily from UF and UCF are on the space coast.They build wing assemblies and door parts and other things important to the build. They don’t do a lot of high level concept work.That’s done in California, Washington, and Texas heavily, and in Alabama It’s not disrespectful. It’s who hires. You want to build rocket engines you go to California or Cleveland mostly. Software systems and triggers? Houston and San Antonio”
Just wondering if anyone thinks this sounds accurate? Or how would you handle such a statement if someone said that to you?
Well, I don’t think it is unusual in any industry that the in state companies recruit at the big schools in state, looking to fill the jobs they have. I think the error in his statement is that most recruiting at UF and UCF is for the Space Coast. The Space Coast also has two other engineering schools, FIT and ERAU, right there. If the manufacturing companies need engineers, of course they are going to look local first, but that doesn’t mean that other companies won’t be recruiting too, or that students at any of these schools can’t go anywhere they want, including California or Texas or Alabama.
My daughter graduated from FIT. She is working in West Palm. Kids she graduated with are working all over Florida, in Norfork, VA, in Syracuse NY, in Maryland. The important word in that sentence is working.
If he’s saying they need to go to school in California or Texas or Alabama in order to end up working there, he’s wrong. I don’t think he’ll have a lot of luck getting students to go OOS as with BF and other funds available, more and more Florida students will be ‘staying home’ for school but happy to take jobs in those other places.
About 50% of Gator engineers end up being recruited to work outside of the state. It’s a smaller % at UCF/USF, etc., which tend to be more regional. UCF was founded, in the 60’s, to supply more engineers to the space coast.
Most recruiting is regional. However, UF is fairly well recruited by out of state firms. It has one of the largest career fairs in the Southeast (if not the largest). You can see the numbers by sorting UF alumni in LinkedIn, are reviewing UF’s graduation survey results.
In fact, if you select UF Alumni that work in engineering, here are the top 10 cities:
Gainesville is #1 due to the large number of students, grad students, post grads and professors in town.
I have never heard the term “Hinge” engineers. I googled it and all I get is a listing of companies that make hinges and this thread. 
Most engineers work in manufacturing. That’s what we do. That’s what they are doing in Huntsville and at SpaceX in California. That makes up the majority of the work. I’m not sure how he defines “high level concept work”, but at larger companies, this is usually done by engineers with advance degrees, often post grads.
Three of the most populous states—California, Texas, and New York—together accounted for more than one-fourth of all Science and Engineering employment in the United States. You’ll find more engineers in California and Texas, and hence, more “high level concept work”. That’s why your daughter has a 50%/50% of working out of state.
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13330/
The TL:DR version.
The guy’s is an #$%^. UF is nationally well recruited and working in “high level concept work” has more to do with your degree than which school you attend. However, California does have 3X the number of science/engineering jobs, and Texas almost 2X the number of jobs than Florida, and I’m sure that also includes more “high level concept work”.
If doing “high level concept work” is what your daughter wants to pursue, she may want to look into grad school.
Since I did UF, lets do UCF, as it makes for a good comparison.
About 44% end up working in Orlando, which has several large employees. The #1 employer for UCF engineers is, by far, Lockheed Martin. While UF and UCF share many of the same cities, UF has a higher % of it’s engineers working in cities like Seattle and San Francisco Bay. Melbourne is home to employers like Northrop Grumman and Harris Corporation (two major employers of UCF engineering grads).
This all leads to UCF having a larger % of engineers that stay in state, as compared to UF.