@thumper1 That’s great advice. I haven’t been involved in his school world until this year… but now he’s living out his junior year at my dining room table (thanks to covid). Your reminder is well received and I will do my best to remove myself from the equation.
Yes, I can see your point about math sequencing. So far so good, I suppose. If he didn’t like math or wasn’t good at it thus far, he wouldn’t be considering engineering!
@MamaBear2001 Yes! Sounds like you’ve been through some of the same questions… big/small, Eng/CS, flexible major, FYE…
I would love to hear where your son is going to school and how freshman year is going!
@1NJParent I can research, but offhand, do you know which colleges do not have barriers between CS and Eng? Case Western, Rose Hulman, WPI, URochester? Santa Clara-maybe? Will we find barriers at Big 10s? Would it help to look for CS majors within engineering programs rather than a separate CS program (ie UIUC)?
Cornell makes it pretty easy to switch majors as well (as long as a student isn’t trying to get into Dyson) but I’m not sure if fits the rest of the criteria. Like Purdue, students can either apply to CS in the college of arts and science or college of engineering, but Cornell makes it pretty easy to switch colleges and majors aren’t declared until the beginning of 2nd semester sophomore year.
IMO, it’s more important to look at the curriculum differences between A&S and CoE and see what’s the better fit for your son.
Generally speaking, large publics with a well-regarded CS program almost always have some barriers. The same is true for privates where their CS program is housed in a separate school/college from the one the student was accepted into (A few, like Cornell, have their CS program affiliated with more than one school/college with somewhat different emphasis based on the particular school/college). The schools you mentioned all fit into the above scenarios.
If a university has separate CS programs (A&S vs Engineering), the main differences are in 1) general education requirements; 2) the ability to have a second major/minor in a different school/college; and 3) there may be fewer CS requirements for students in the A&S program because they’re assumed to not have the same background in math as the engineering students (this isn’t always the case, however, for some universities such as Cornell or Columbia).
My son is at UMD. They seem to be very open to students switching majors there. The only “competitive” majors are in the business school. There are LEPs otherwise, engineering, CS, etc but the students are able to switch into them from other majors by completing certain gateway courses with acceptable grades. Many incoming students don’t get admitted to their desired major directly but are placed in “letters and sciences”, their undecided major, and then just have to complete the gateway courses satisfactorily. That’s just one state flagship example. I’m sure everywhere is a little different.
MIT showed both by-major and by-industry in 2017: https://capd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/GSS2017.pdf . For by-major, they also showed the three sub-courses for course 6 (EECS). Note that the number of responses in each major was included. Removing the by-major information made the career survey results in later years less useful, no matter how you look at it.
The 2017 survey combined data on bachelors and masters (when listed by major), so it isn’t really more useful. For course 6-3 (computer science), the highest salary listed is $260k. If you cross-reference with the data by industry, it’s clear that the high salary came from the financial services industry. That’s what I meant by data distortion.
In the 2017 report, pages 26-27 showed the bachelor’s data, while page 28 showed the master’s data (although the large font title on page 26 may mislead the reader into thinking that the data is combined in the first table).
The tables by major do show which majors produced graduates who hit those high pay levels. EECS 6-2 and 6-3, management, and math had high pay >= $200k, while economics and physics had high pay of $160k. That can be helpful in suggesting which majors may be more likely to find those financial services jobs with much higher pay.
In any case, if you want the by-industry pay in the 2017 report, it starts on page 29.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Probably no one goes to MIT to be an investment banker. All the financial services jobs for MIT graduates are all likely in the more quantitative fields (CS, math, physics, and econometrics or algorithmic economics) and students interested in those jobs at MIT are well aware of the possibilities. The issue here is that these high paying jobs may distort the overall compensation picture for these majors.
They are part of the sample of graduates from MIT in those majors, so it would not be a distortion for an MIT career survey. Note that the 2017 report showed both mean and median for each major.
It looks like the median for the 89 CS-related majors was slightly above $100k, and the median for 24 financial services industry was approximately $100k. There was one stray CS + financial services who reported $260k, which was far above the median for either grouping. In the following year, the max for financial services bachelor’s was $175k. So the 1 kid in 2017 survey reported a salary $85k ~= 50% higher than anyone in the financial services sector during the 2018 survey.
I wouldn’t focus on such extreme outliers that occur less often than once per year, and I certainly wouldn’t expect a particular student to have that type of outlier result. Instead I expect it is far more likely that the outlier has a unique story that largely contributes to the abnormal result. For example, maybe he/she misunderstood the survey and included bonus + perceived value of stock options. Maybe he/she had a decade of management experience with a $200k salary prior to MIT and finished up a 2nd bachelor’s in CS while working to add to his skill set. Maybe he/she lied on the self-reported and not externally verified survey. There are countless explanations.
Considering the wide range of possible salaries in the financial industry, I don’t find the grouping particularly helpful. Far more meaningful would be a list of company, job title, location, and salary that is grouped by major, for reporting students. However, this isn’t practical for a variety of reasons, including student privacy. Instead salary reporting surveys almost always leave at least one key part of the relevant information missing.
Just need to add.
Look for ABET accredited engineering programs if engineering is the end goal.
Loving math and being good at it does not necessarily align with loving engineering.
Consider the affordability of the colleges on your application list as well as your student’s application credentials. Make sure you have a couple of schools where he is sure to be accepted that you can afford.
I can comment on Santa Clara, but my kid graduated in 2010…so it could be different now. It was easy to switch into engineering, or switch out to a different major. Or to add a minor or double major. BUT the school is very expensive…if cost is a consideration.
Even for MIT, some of these jobs may be distortions. If you take a look at the 2018 survey, there were no such jobs. Maybe there’re more since then but such jobs can certainly vary from year to year. The other point is the comparison with other colleges without such jobs will likely be inaccurate. Median also isn’t always the better measure either, depending on the distribution.
$200k+ (salary + 1st year guaranteed bonus) is possible (likely with a HF).
What is possible and what is likely can be very different. In the 2018 survey, nobody in the financial sector industry reported anything near $200k+, which implies it certainly is not likely. Given how extreme and uncommon the outlier is, I expect that there is a unique story.
The point is while it may be interesting to discuss what may or may not have happened to a rare outlier, it should not have much impact on expectations for a particular student. Students should expect the more likely result, and should not expect a result similar to the most extreme outlier over a multi-year period.
Heh, you two… Lol… He’s not going to MIT or Cal Tech…
We can go into 100 different variations of this… Its good kids get jobs when they graduate…
@momofboiler1 Thank you! Good idea to check the curriculum differences between programs and majors. The nitty gritty details will become more pertinent as time goes on! Going in, I think he should at least have some idea about core requirements, how FYE is addressed, and when/what it takes to declare a major.
@1NJParent Very helpful, thank you. Deciding between CS and engineering is going to be one of the first hurdles. Ultimately, he may have a better shot getting into engineering than CS at some schools (ie CMU, UIUC). If he wants CS, he will either not apply to these schools at all or consider them reachiest of reaches. I think he would be most suited to a school where he can choose engineering or CS around the end of freshman year. Then again, his summer programming may provide good answers.
Going in, cost is not a factor. If he starts getting merit aid with offers, then we’ll compare financial packages. Good to know about SCU.
He has some experience with engineering through PLTW (intro and principles) and plans to take digital electronics next year. Strength/interest in math and science over his school career has been consistent. The journey will unfold in the months/years ahead 