<p>I intend to go to graduate school somewhere after I finish my BS. I'm thinking about concentrating in Transportation Engineering and staying in Texas. What kind of money do Transporation Engineers get?</p>
<p>Transportation engineers are some of the lower moneymakers in civil engineering, which is one of the lower moneymakers in engineering overall.</p>
<p>You'd likely be working for a transportation authority or TxDOT, or perhaps you'd end up working for a private subcontractor of one of those government agencies.</p>
<p>It'd certainly be livable. Not sure of actual numbers since the only ones I have to go on are non-engineers' salaries and my internship hourly pay rate. I'd guess that you'd see a starting salary of about 43 to 50K, but don't quote me on that.</p>
<p>I'm also equally considering Structural Engineering. I'd like to engineer skyscrapers, bridges, etc. What kind of starting salary does that have?</p>
<p>With an MS from UIUC, I was offered between 50K-55K-ish starting, in multiple locations from Florida to Chicago to Dallas/Houston to LA, designing skyscrapers and long-span bridges and the like. UT has an excellent structural program, if you want to stay in Texas. Definitely top-10 caliber.</p>
<p>I definitely want to stay in Texas, and, actually, UT-Austin is my first choice after community college. I also plan on keeping my 4.0 by the time I transfer, too, which will be after the fall semester of next year. How competitive will having a 4.0 GPA make me in getting into UT?</p>
<p>Quite.</p>
<p>What year are you, and where do you currently go?</p>
<p>Well, technically, I'm still in my freshman year. At the end of the fall semester this year I'll have 36 hours. I'm going to take all the way up to Differential Equations and the two General Physics courses here - Alvin Community College.</p>
<p>I actually know where that is... I went to Rice in Houston, and a couple of my friends just moved to the Clearlake area. Anyhow, just know that plans change... the 4.0 might get tougher to keep. Start talking to the UT transfer admission folks and see if there's anything you need to do in order to ensure that you'll be prepared for junior year at UT.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>get ur PE and open up ur own firm...that's where the $$$ is</p>
<p>Thanks. I'm really hating the two History classes I'm currently taking concurrently. I might get a B in one of these classes as lethargy is taking over. Haha. IF my GPA is not 4.0, I assume that the Engineering department at UT will only be concerned with my Science and Mathematics grades, correct?</p>
<p>Might want to ask them. Obviously, they'd be more interested in the grades from the courses that you're going to be building on once you get to UT, but if you totally bomb several of your non-engineering classes, they might raise some eyebrows at that, too.</p>
<p>By the by... Starting your own firm is great if it works, but if running a business really isn't your thing, be really sure that you want to take that plunge... I've heard from several engineers that they really wished they'd taken everyone's advice and hadn't opened their own firms.</p>
<p>Go to a city with traffic problems like Los Angeles or Atlanta. That's where the money (relatively speaking, anyway) for traffic engineers will be at.</p>
<p>Having worked as a traffic engineer in Houston (and anyone who's ever driven the Katy Freeway will vouch for Houston's crappy traffic situation), you'd think that there'd be a lot of money in traffic engineering there, but there were really only two smaller firms working on traffic engineering in Houston and the one I used to work for just had to lay off one of their engineers, which is a really ridiculously rare thing for a civ firm to have to do. Sometimes there's just not the money in the city budget for that sort of thing, and with an individual, specialized firm, it's typically either feast or famine. You're sort of at the mercy of the term's budget for traffic alleviation spending. Larger firms are able to have multiple locations across the nation and combine traffic engineering services with hydrological services and land development services and the like, sort of like how CH2M Hill and some others do, but if you're just one small company in one city, you're more or less at the mercy of local government.</p>
<p>^Ouch. That sucks.</p>
<p>Well, in ATL, traffic engineers will be in great demand for the next 20 years because of the major expansion projects. I-75 north of the city will be expanded from 16 lanes to 20-26 lanes; GA-400 and I-285, north of the city, will be changing into a stack interchange (the highest in the world, I must add); I-285 by the airport has a landing strip over the freeway (I'm not sure if it's done or not, though); GA-400 is being widenned to accomodate more traffic from those northern counties; and, there is some talk of adding more limited access state routes to Cobb and Gwinnett counties. </p>
<p>So, yeah, if you want a job, come here, haha. WE NEED YOU!!!!</p>
<p>Thank you aibarr now I have someone to curse( ;P ) when I have to drive on that god forsaken land some people actually call a freeway. Good thing I live in Sugar Land and only have to go over that way for Katy Mills and Memorial City and that doesn't happen to often.</p>
<p>People used to look us up in the phone book under "traffic engineers" and would yell at us about the lousy traffic.</p>
<p>We'd have to explain that we weren't actually in charge of traffic in general, and that we were the ones hired by the city to fix the problem, and that they should talk to the city... but they would always just want to yell at someone about the traffic.</p>
<p>Haha. That's hilarious.</p>
<p>HAHAHA! Bad times! </p>
<p>We just yell and flip each other off here...</p>
<p>But, wait, you can look in the phone book and look up "traffic engineers"? That has to be the funniest thing ever.</p>
<p>I am an engineering professor, have been for more than 30 years. My advice for students desiring to actually practice engineering is to go into the workforce after completing the BS degree and begin the process for licensure immediately. However keep in mind that ASCE is promoting the idea that a MS degree be a prerequisite for PE licensure in which case go to grad school first. I doubt that many State Boards will adopt this proposal, but keep it in mind.</p>
<p>For practicing engineers a PE license is far more important than a MS degree and the sooner you get it the better. Also many engineering firms have reimbursement programs which subsidize employees taking graduate level courses. I suspect that UT-Austin has course offerings at nite which allow working engineers to earn a MS as part-time students.</p>
<p>One last piece of advice. Civil Engineering has many subspecialties-transportation, geotech, structural, environmental, hydraulics, construction management, etc. As you are taking your intro engineering courses get a feel of what you like best and are best at. Midterm during my intro fluid mechanics class I knew that this was the field for me.</p>
<p>Finally, of all the engineering majors civil engineers have the greatest opportunity to develop a consulting business of their own.</p>