FUNship2

what kind of salary and benefits should i expect after graduating from college. I am a civil engineering major with a GPA of 3.87. Should GPA be a factor in calculating salary. Also are entry level salaries negotiable??

aibarr

Any salaries are negotiable. You *should* negotiate. Salary range kind of depends upon what area of civ you go into, and whether you're looking at top firms. Typically, most civs start out at mid-forties without a masters degree. A structural concentration with a masters degree from a top program can put you at mid-fifties or low sixties, even, with a top design firm.

See what they offer you, see what others offer you, and try to bump the offers up by a couple of K.

notre dame AL

Should we assume that the area of the country will also have an impact on salaries? Just curious!

ken285

Of course!

aibarr

You ought to. The firm I worked for in Los Angeles, though, didn't give a bump in salary to the people in their LA office (versus, for example, their Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Atlanta offices...) because they said that getting to live in California is compensation enough. (Obviously hadn't ever been to LA.)

So, be sure to look at cost of living indices when you're looking at your offers.

liteintrees

im a structural eng major (masters stanford), this year my classmates are getting low-mid 60k in CA and high 50s to low 60s in NY. If you just have a BS you should probably subtract 5k from that.

brad97z

The average at UIUC is 51k with bachelors and 54k with a masters.

lil_killer129

Get a masters, and your salary will be higher by 3-5k?!?!?!

aibarr

In structures, at least that.

jmilton90

65K for a Stanford MS grad in structural eng sounds about right. This isn't the EE field where you start at 85k+ coming out of UCSB with a MS.

aibarr

65K is high, at least for civil structures. You'd be hard-pressed to find more than about 55-60K, even in California, starting fresh out of grad school.

RacinReaver

Here's Civil Engineering's stats from CMU: http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/ca...alary/CivE.pdf

Degree (# students) High/Low/Mean/Median
B.S. (12) $84,480/$40,000/$51,182/$50,350
M.S. (6) $83,000/$44,160/$58,753/$53,000
Ph.D. (8) $75,000/$57,600/$65,792/$65,000

I imagine the person making $84k either went into finance or is the CS instructor at CMU:Qatar.

UCBChemEGrad

Civil engineers make more money than uncivil engineers.

foreverbj

Why do civil engineers make less than other engineering majors? Also, aside from structural what other civil engineering concentrations earn more money? Do hydro or infrastucture earn more? Will getting a masters in environmental engineering help your earnings potential?

ken285

From the people I know, those working in construction management make the highest (if you still consider that to be engineering). If you're working in infrastructure, you'd probably make less since more than likely it's a government contract. In the past few years, the big money sector has been residential project for big time developers.

Traffic engineering, for whatever reason, tends to pay the least. I used to work for one of those firms as an intern and was informally offered a full time position. I made the switch to construction management, and my starting salary is 50% more than what it would have been in traffic engineering.

On average, civil engineers make less money because 2 out of every 3 civil engineer works for the government (correct me if I'm wrong). They certainly make significantly less than those in the private sector, but from my personal experience with a state agency, government employees do the least work per dollar that they earn. I think I do more work in one week in the private sector than I did in 6 months working for the government.

A masters will typically give you a boost in salary.