<p>I've been reading about it on collegeconfidential and i've been getting mixed reviews.
Some people have been saying it's a third tier school while others say that academically, it is great and it's reputable to employers.</p>
<p>Also, if you know about WPI, SMU, RPI, and north eastern's mechanical engineering reputation can you tell me about that too?</p>
<p>Bump</p>
<p>Bump again</p>
<p>Often it’s not the school but the person, do a search on Linkedin to see where RIT graduates work and are placed, much like many other schools which are not ranked in the top 10.</p>
<p>I worked with a few MIT graduates and wasn’t overly impressed, one guy was fresh out of MIT and lied during a round table discussion with a customer when each of us was asked to describe our backgrounds and education, this guy (kid) said he had 6 years of experience but graduated the prior year and told me and another co-worker a few days prior that this was his first job. During the meeting me and the other co-worker did a blank stare at each other after that comment.</p>
<p>Since then, I don’t size up ivy league grads as being superior, it’s more on ability and honesty. </p>
<p>So to answer your question, RIT is a credible school and graduates are hired all over. </p>
<p>RIT and WPI are both part of the [url=“<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org”]AITU[/url</a>] schools and have perfectly good, accredited engineering programs like all of the schools in the Association. All of these schools are known for educating competent engineers and their graduates usually find good jobs so the choice is really a matter of persoal preference. Whether a particular school works for you is something you can only learn by informing yourself and maybe visiting.</p>
<p>In general, you get what you pay for:
RIT - $47,366
WPI - $59,504
SMU - $64,397
RPI - $61,620</p>
<p>@4kidsdad</p>
<p>There are better ranked ME schools for way less, UM Ann Arbor is $13K in-state and is ranked #2 in the nation, GA Tech is even less.</p>
<p>Going into deep debt for a perceived better school is not a great plan. </p>
<p>S looked into RIT for chemical engineering and found out that the program was not ABET certified, though they wre working on it an expected to have it within a few years. Apparently due to the newness of the program. Programs of some graduates would be retroactively certified, but not sure how far back that would go.</p>
<p>I think RIT has a decent reputation in engineering, relative to its level of selectivity. It has a good coop program. I once hired an RIT grad, who was a very good engineer. </p>
<p>But its reputation would be lower than RPI, WPI, and Northeastern.</p>
<p>One negative of Engineering, people tend to be too hung up on where they went to school over how good of an Engineer they actually are.</p>
<p>^^^^ It’s the opposite. In engineering, you’re mostly judged on your skills, not where you went to school.</p>
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<p>I see that type of thing far more on the CC forums more than I do in “real life” to be honest.</p>
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<p>I can think of only a single engineer who had already completed his degree who, in my experience, acted this way. Said individual insisted people continue emailing him at his @alumni.mit.edu email address even while attending graduate school at another institution for 4 years. Other than him, though, no one really cares in the real world more than just being curious about your background. I’ve never seen anyone, having already been hired (by a company) or admitted (by a graduate school) who is ostracized for going to a perceived “lower” school.</p>
<p>@4kidsdad - You might have been looking at old data fro RIT salaries.</p>
<p>Here is the link to RIT’s website for the most recent data for ME at RIT (average starting salary of $59,047):</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.rit.edu/emcs/oce/student/stu_alum_pdfs/CareerOverviews/MechanicalEngCO.pdf”>http://www.rit.edu/emcs/oce/student/stu_alum_pdfs/CareerOverviews/MechanicalEngCO.pdf</a></p>
<p>I think that RIT is one of the better schools at taking kids who didn’t excel at math and turning them into productive engineers. A lot of northeast companies recruit there. It has a nice niche. They also have coop which is very nice. </p>
<p>That said, it’s not a feeder school to the nations top graduate schools and if you have the desire to pursue a career doing cutting edge research, there might be better options. </p>
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<p>I also disagree with this. Engineering is a much more of a meritocracy than other fields, in my experience. What matters is being able to do the work, rather than what school you went to. However, more rigorous schools do tend to prepare you better to be able to do the hard work than less rigorous/selective schools. Which engineering University you attend will have the most impact on finding your first job out of school. Your subsequent jobs will depend more on your work accomplishments. </p>
<p>I typically don’t even know what University most of my colleagues at work attended, except for the people whom I hired, since I would have seen their resumes. Sometimes it would come up in conversation at other times, such as when I would discuss where my kids or theirs were applying to colleges. </p>
<p>I do consider the particular University that an engineering job candidate attended to be relevant in hiring, but it is only one factor considered in trying to determine how well that person will be able to do the work. </p>
<p>@simba9 mixed bag from my experience, depends on the hiring manager but I have seen people let go and/or in a nice way fired because of their Alma Mater not on Ability and skill set. Sometimes when management has head changes, say a co-worker you don’t particular care for based on the above reason is promoted to your Boss and decides to make changes to your roles and responsibilities and/or worse replaces you with someone from his Alma Mater. I have seen it at one place I worked, I was in another department but saw that the hiring manager was purposely placing candidates from his Alma Mater even over ones that I recommended who had more experience and often were from respected schools. </p>
<p>@boneh3ad Not sure on your amount of experience, 20 years gives me a different view but your experience may differ, again it might be my field which is filled with ivy grads and heads so large they won’t fit through most door ways.</p>
<p>@sacchi Really do not agree with you at all, you creating a oxymoron with your statement. If you overlooked one person who didn’t go to MIT, Stanford or etc, but yet had ton’s of proven experience, a great CV and kudos from coworkers and superiors, than you are possibly missing the boat on hiring good talent. Having worked with MIT, Stanford and etc. graduates, I can attest that they are indeed sharp but not always the sharpest knife in the drawer and some were terribly book smart and great at taking tests, but folded under pressure.</p>
<p>^ There is a big difference between determining which person to hire vs. how a person is treated once they start working. I consider the school attended when making hiring decisions, but once a person is an employee, it is completely irrelevant. </p>
<p>When hiring, it is VERY difficult to determine someone’s capability to do the work, since people exaggerate on their resumes, etc. It would be silly to ignore one of the few objective pieces of available information, the University which the person graduated from.</p>
<p>After an engineer has worked at my company for some length of time, either reporting to me or in a peer group, I have a much better understanding of the capabilities of that engineer. Their actual track record at my company is much more relevant at that stage than what school they attended.</p>
<p>I never specifically mentioned such schools as Stanford and MIT. I will happily hire people from good state flagship U’s and private schools of that caliber (such as RIT), but am a bit more skeptical of people graduating from low tier engineering schools, especially ones that I am not familiar with, and especially if they have few or no years of work experience.</p>
<p>To add to my post above, I’m describing my own experiences. There certainly might be jobs and engineering managers with different attitudes towards the selectivity level of the colleges attended.</p>
<p>@ssoulin I’d imagine it very much is field-specific at least to some degree. I also wonder if your own ET background affects this perception. I haven’t been in that boat, but I know that you have posted before at length about how you have an ET background and feel like it gets unfairly devalued by some people. Could that also be playing a role in your experiences here or is that a distinct phenomenon? I’d imagine the two perceptions feed each other.</p>