<p>My major is Chemical Engineering...so which school has a stronger Engineering program (Chemical Engineering more specifically)? Any comments and feedback would be great.</p>
<p>Ga Tech in my opinion.</p>
<p>I was in the same position but as EE. I chose UF and graduated with no debt on money I accumulated while working in high school. GT would have cost me something like $80k. However, to answer your thread, there is no doubt GT has the stronger engineering program with more resources.</p>
<p>Obviously the schools aren’t even directly comparable. I don’t know any other way to say it: you’re comparing a national university with a regional university. GT has international recognition in engineering and pulls recruiters from around the world, Florida is a regional school that pulls locally and from adjacent states. You’ll see different facilities, quality of education, and have different opportunities coming from these schools.</p>
<p>With that established, should you pay $80,000 to attend out of state? That’s up to you and has to do with a number of factors. If you plan to live in Florida for the rest of your live, I would stay with UF, but if you plan to leave I would go to GT. Florida’s degree doesn’t travel well at all (the general impression is that it’s a party school). Another consideration: if you plan to go to graduate or professional school, I’d stay with Florida. UF has higher GPA’s, even in engineering, than GT. While the school’s name will hurt, the GPA should compensate. The exception would if you you’re looking at an elite program in which case you’d want to go to GT and earn a high GPA. Finally, if your family is in a financial situation where that debt from GT would be overbearing, I would choose UF. </p>
<p>But if those conditions don’t apply, you really need to sit down and thing about it. Would I pay $80,000 for one of my kids to upgrade from UF to GT? Absolutely.</p>
<p>The fictional GaTech student is guilty of over-generalizing when referring to UF as a regional school. The major aerospace companies do not consider UF regional by any means. I cannot give you a clear read on ChemE, but even within that discipline, I doubt UF is regarded by most employers as a regional school. Other than that, GPB has some good advice. But you may want to consider quality-of-life factors and visit both schools before you make a final decision.</p>
<p>To answer you question on the stronger school…Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>As far as which school to choose? You should find out what is the “demand” for chemical engineers. Will you be able to obtain employment pretty much regardless of your school (like computer science/I.T./software engineering) or will you have to compete a lot to the point that your alma mater will matter?</p>
<p>Coming out of undergrad with no debt is a great thing and the ONLY thing Georgia Tech can really do is give you a leg up on salary for your INITIAL job. You can make up that difference in salary through good work experience, mastery of a in-demand specialty and other factors on your 2ns job and after.</p>
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<p>There are very few schools that pull recruiters nationally; UFL just doesn’t happen to be one of them, especially in chemical engineering.</p>
<p>If you can stay in-state and graduate with no debt I’d do that.</p>
<p>I would be surprised if University of Florida didn’t have a lot of opportunities with big companies. It’s like the largest university in the nation…and their admissions for undergrad and grad has got to be very selective sense, well lets be honest, it’s in gainesville florida…ahhhhh the beach and sun (there’s a beach there right?) It’s ranked 26th for undergrad enginering too tied with schools like columbia, harvard, usc, ohio state…etc…</p>
<p>If your instate and you’ll save money than sweet Florida for undergrad…otherwise Georgia Tech is one of those go to engineering schools, I mean you can’t go wrong it’s what they do…everything else aside of course, like being close to home and stuff</p>
<p>I don’t recruit for ChemE, but I do recruit for MechE, EE, SysE, and MatSci for a major aerospace company and find GPD’s comment that “UF doesn’t pull recruiters nationally” to be…well, a bit odd. Just looked through the list of corporate recruiters by number of UF graduates employed, and of the top-15 firms I can find only one that could be considered “regional”…that being Harris Corp. And nobody would consider Harris to be a regional company even though its HQ is in Florida. As far as ChemE is concerned…I do notice all the major oil and oil-support companies recruit at UF.</p>
<p>Big companies outside of Florida most definitely recruit at UF. UF is about at top 20 school in engineering. Most companies are going to recruit from at leas the top 25. My fiance for instance, got a very selective job at Boeing in a rotation program and she graduated from UF. Plenty of people at UF also go on to great grad schools like Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT, etc. With that said, I don’t think there is any question that GA Tech is a better school, but you are most likely going with a full ride at UF. I was in the same position as you coming out of high school. I chose UF. Its obviously impossible to decide which was the better choice, but I’m perfectly happy now and not in debt :)</p>
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<p>There are a few companies that recruit everywhere (those with dedicated recruiting staff), but in general, most companies that use part-time recruiters limit themselves to less than 25 (12-13 usually, but depends on the size of the cohort they’re trying to bring in).</p>
<p>And obviously companies come from outside Florida, but usually those have interest within Florida. Boeing visits, but Boeing also hires for Florida and the gulf-coast. </p>
<p>I could argue until I’m blue in the face and this won’t go anywhere. Florida just isn’t a big pull recruiting school for engineering. You’re mostly going to see companies that staff internally in the region, and companies with dedicated staff that hit all of the state schools (and even then, UF won’t be a target school). What you won’t see are the employers looking to source a high paying analyst job in San Francisco, the international companies looking for global resources, etc. Those people you’ll see at a very limited number of top schools.</p>
<p>Your argument is obtuse. The fact remains that none of the top-15 employers at UF are regional companies. But I guess you have your own personal definition of what consitutes a national university… and that includes only a handful of schools. </p>
<p>To the OP: it’s going to come down to personal fit. GPB likes to tout GaTech’s vast superiority, but GaTechs grad ChemE program is ranked 12th by USNews, while UF’s program is ranked 22nd… which is still quite good. Many informed individuals would advise you to think twice before spending a lot of extra money for a difference like that. If GaTach’s environment will make you thrive in a way that UF will not, then the answer is you should, but I wouldn’t be too concerned about this “regional vs national” nonsense.</p>
<p>An international school: a recruiter has a high paying, highly sought after position in London. What schools will make him get on a plane and fly there to recruit? </p>
<p>A national school: a recruiter has a high paying, highly sought after position in San Francisco. What schools will make him get on a plane and fly there to recruit? </p>
<p>A regional schools: a recruiter has a high paying, highly sought after position in Orlando. What schools will make him get in a car and drive a few hours to recruit? </p>
<p>For some reason, you seem to not get this point. Your argument that Florida has a national pull is that large companies with offices in Orlando and Miami are willing to drive down I-75 to hire people. The problem with this argument is that many of those same companies also go to FSU, FIT, and USF. I wouldn’t call those top universities. </p>
<p>I’m sure you can find a few international companies recruiting at Florida, but generally those are special cases. Ask a Chinese student if he’s heard of Florida before coming to the US, and he’ll almost certainly say “no”. On the other hand, internationals know Georgia Tech, they know MIT, they know Stanford. </p>
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<p>For chemical engineering recruiting you look at the overall engineering ranking, not the chemical engineering ranking. Unlike CE, ChE is not a “standalone” field and companies that hire ChE’s are almost always simultaneously recruiting EE and ME graduates at the same time.</p>
<p>The best advice that has been given on this thread is to go to the school that you can do well in. Gtech is the better school, but the average GPA there is probably around a 2.7 whereas UF is around a 3.3. The so called national companies that go to Gtech but not UF are the ones who hire only high GPA students (at least 3.0, but normally 3.2+). </p>
<p>PS. My brother went to UF and got a job with a San Fran based firm, talked with a San Fran based recruiter, and ended up going to San Fran when he graduated. His internships were all out of state, though they were in the Southeast.</p>
<p>Click on the Table II-1 link for GPA source.
<a href=“http://www.ir.ufl.edu/factbook/degree.htm[/url]”>http://www.ir.ufl.edu/factbook/degree.htm</a></p>
<p>cyclone10, I think you need to research Gainesville, FL. You may be in for a surprise. Also, Florida is NOT the biggest school in the country, and isn’t even really that close to the top. The largest are Arizona State, Ohio State, Texas, Penn State.</p>
<p>List of companies that had a physical presence at UF’s Fall 2009 Career Fair: [Employers</a> Attending Career Showcase](<a href=“http://app.crc.ufl.edu/careerfairs/Events/Showcase/cssep09_attending.htm]Employers”>http://app.crc.ufl.edu/careerfairs/Events/Showcase/cssep09_attending.htm)</p>
<p>UF’s top 10 employers from 08-09: [Career</a> Resource Center](<a href=“http://www.crc.ufl.edu/newsreader.aspx?id=1631&blogid=618]Career”>http://www.crc.ufl.edu/newsreader.aspx?id=1631&blogid=618)</p>
<p>There are some pretty big names on both lists, and I can’t imagine that all of those are Florida companies (except SeaWorld :), and I know Lockheed is)</p>
<p>Georgia Tech may open more doors for jobs, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible for recruiters from top national companies to go to UF as well.</p>
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<p>Bloomberg, Sears, KPMG, Deloitte, PWC are recruiting business students (the accounting school, in particular, is very good at UF). Exxon, Lockheed, Siemens, and Microsoft all have operations in Florida.</p>
<p>You see this with schools all the time - Iowa and Iowa State are good examples. They’re the best schools in the area, so they get recruited by the companies operating in the Midwest. Houston is another example on the gulf coast. It’s a low second tier/third tier school that has a very impressive recruiting presence because there happens to be a large number of engineering firms in the immediate vicinity. But no one is going to fly from Seattle to Houston to recruit UH grads. Maybe UT or TAMU grads, but not UH grads. UF fits into that mold - it’s the best school in the state, so companies operating in the state visit it. But is someone going to make a special trip from Chicago? Maybe if the CEO is an alumna, but usually no.</p>
<p>Personally, I would choose UF over GT if it was no debt vs $80k. Sure it’s not the caliber that GT is but you’ll still get a respected engineering degree and best of all you won’t have to worry about an $80k debt when you’re making between $60 - $70k/yr out of college. I was an in-state GT student - no debt - and after landing the big job after graduation, the first thing I did was treat myself for all the hard work. That would have never happened if I had enormous student loans to now deal with.</p>
<p>I won’t deny that Florida companies recruit more heavily at UF. It’s most likely true, but it doesn’t change the fact that other national companies hire from UF as well.</p>
<p>UF provides its students with a database containing contact information for over 9000 companies/organizations. Google is listed with 3 different contacts: University Programs Manager, Recruiter, and Software Engineer. Google doesn’t even have an office in Florida, yet these contacts are available to UF students. I don’t think Google recruits on campus though.</p>
<p>Companies with operations in Florida may recruit more heavily (which is why they are on the top 10 employers list), but companies with a smaller number of UF graduates still hire from there. Plus with today’s method of applying online, having a recruiter to speak with may be beneficial, but isn’t required to be hired. Going to GT may increase the odds of being hired at a top national company, but going to UF doesn’t mean an auto-rejection.</p>