<p>If anyone has transferred from a larger, well known state school to a smaller one or vice versa, can they tell me if I can expect a significant difference in difficulty between those two levels of institutions.</p>
<p>I have 3 Tier-1 Options: LSU, LA Tech and Mississippi State. However, I know that completing an engineering program with with the highest GPA possible is of the utmost importance, so I'm wondering if I should just ignore those schools and look into a lesser known state school like University of New Orleans or University of Louisiana at Lafayette?</p>
<p>If they are ABET accredited, they’ll be the same. The Tier-1 schools are important, since they typically grab more recruiters and landing a job is what’s important, right? Lesser known schools will mean less career recruitments. I wouldn’t say always because some schools are VERY well known in their local region but not outside of it. If you plan on staying local, University of New Orleans won’t be a problem most likely, but I have never heard of that school here in AZ so just something to consider. Bigger schools pull in more funding when it comes to public universities, also. This funding <em>can</em> branch out to more research opportunities and a multitude of other things, like improving their programs.</p>
<p>May I ask why do you think you will exceed better at the lesser known schools?</p>
<p>The Academic Standards at the Tier-1 institutions I mentioned are higher than the lesser known ones. I figures that for this reason, the institutions themselves may expect more of their students and have more rigorous coursework. Kind of like how the coursework at highly ranked private institutions tend to be harder that the coursework at State schools.</p>
<p>Not all ABET schools are the same. All ABET means is that the school has met some minimum standard that ABET sets as being a complete engineering program. All schools satisfying ABET’s minimum requirements are no more necessarily equal than all the Olympic bobsled teams that make it through time trials to earn a spot in the games.</p>
<p>That said, any ABET school should be able to get you lined up with some kind of job. The lesser known programs simply will have a set of available jobs that tends to be less “distinguished” and more local than the more well-know schools on average.</p>
<p>Difficulty can vary between schools, but the minimum bar of ABET accreditation makes the difference narrower for engineering than it can be for many other subjects.</p>
<p>However, with respect to grades and GPA, note that less selective schools tend to have less grade inflation, so it is not necessarily true that your GPA will be higher at a less selective school.</p>
<p>Comparing grades from different tier schools, to me, is very confusing. Different environments obviously results in different GPAs. But going to a top tier institution also means you’ll be around, on average, smarter students, which should also influence your own intelligence, not just in terms of grades. When you’re around smarter students, you also get smarter. In the end, I don’t know how they can compare GPAs from different tier universities.</p>
<p>Another thing that is missing from all of this “this school is harder than this school” stuff is that…</p>
<p><strong><em>Drum Roll</em></strong></p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if the employers are not using any technology or organizing projects that make use of anything that is taught supposedly above the ABET standards,</p>
<p>There just are not enough hard core “think tank” type of jobs out there that require the “top 1% best and brightest” out there…and EVEN those few types of jobs, they are not paying a salary not much more…at least not enough to make up the gap in tuition rates between the tiers of the schools.</p>
<p>Another thing…and I know this area more because I work in it, software engineering is definitely not fair to the top-tier schools. Sure, that “top-tier” grad can get a higher starting salary, but once that “new technology flavor of the month” comes out, that state-school grad can just bottle themselves up in their house for a few months, become an expert/certified and cash in and wipe away all the gaps.</p>
<p>Just think…that state-school grad with no AP credits, average GPA and no internships wipes away all of those deficiencies with one “hot in the streets” technology.</p>
<p>I heard that companies like google, amazon, and Microsoft only recruit people from top school. Especially google to the point that they won’t even consider you unless you went to a top ten CS school like CMU, Stanford, GT, or Cal Tech. I could be wrong though but that’s what I’ve been hearing.</p>
<p>Maybe that is for fresh grads, who knows. I do know this…</p>
<p>Amazon recently started Amazon Web Services - Federal located in Herndon, VA. They won a federal contract over IBM and are staffing like crazy. One of my former co-workers (a graduate of Univ of Maryland-University College…yes, the online school) is now over there working. Yours truly has both an e-mail and voice-mail from this branch of Amazon for Hadoop/Cloud opportunities, but I live in Maryland and that 50 mile drive would be 2 hours in DC-area traffic.</p>
<p>Microsoft recruits pretty heavily from my school, and we’re not one of your top 20 engineering schools. I also talked to a kid who got his MS in CS from my uni and is now working at Amazon. There are other kids who went to Google, Intel, and Qualcomm after graduating. From what I’ve seen, (at least in software engineering) it’s more about what you’re capable of than the university name on your resume. Most of the people from my uni who went to “top” companies were heavily involved in research during undergrad, so that may be a part of it.</p>
<p>Being involved in research means you build a strong relationsihp with the prof you work with. That prof can then contact companies for you, which is far better than not having any connections. </p>
<p>The name of the school certainly matters and it matters quite substantially, especially in academia. Not as much in industry, but the opportunities are better for top tier schools.</p>
<p>Big companies including GAFAM are known to recruit widely, although the “top” schools likely have a disproportionate percentage of people who pass their technical interviews (likely more of a selection effect than a treatment effect). But note that San Jose State is supposedly a very well represented alma mater of Apple employees.</p>
<p>It is smaller companies that may not recruit as widely outside their local area, due to less recruiting resources, and less need for larger numbers of new graduate employees.</p>
<p>Some top tier schools are going to have more opportunities and better recruiting. However that is not going to mean anything if you end up picking a college that you are not comfortable at. Visit the schools and decide where you can see yourself being for the next four years.</p>