@ucbalumnus - If I have a stack of resumes on my desk from candidates to a job posting, whom do you think I will interview first, those from Stevens and UCB, or Alabama? With respect to salary comparisons, many Alabama graduates do not settle there.
Given your postings, would it be correct to guess that you would interview every applicant (with the desired major) from Stevens before interviewing any applicant from any other school?
Not necessarily, but since I know the rigor and depth of Stevens’ curriculum and the capabilities of the graduates I likely would give them the edge if the other candidates had similar grades, experience, accomplishments, et al. I am sure you think a Berkeley graduate is more capable than one from Stevens or Alabama for similar reasons.
I’ve worked with and hired graduates of all the big name schools by the way. I’ve worked with a couple of MIT graduates who were quite versed in theory but couldn’t design anything on budget or on schedule, and state university graduates who were excellent designers for example. The school isn’t what makes the person. The person is what makes the person.
@engineer80 Yes, they calculate them all the same way which is the student’s debt, not familial.
Fwiw, our oldest ds graduated from a small college (a state’s small tech school, not its main flagship) in 2011 with his BS in ChemE. I find those numbers posted for 2018 grads surprising since ds’s starting salary in a low col state was higher than both schools and during the midst of the recession. His career has advanced quickly. So, I personally think the person makes the career. 
"If the six figure averages for EE/CS and CS are true (I don’t believe them - how many graduates responded to the surveys and is this a statistically valid sample), it is only because many of those graduates settle in the very high cost SF/Silicon Valley/LA/etc. area. "
You don’t have to believe them, but they’re true, the EECS and CS major at UCB are among the most sought after students in silicon valley, high tech anyway. Only the Stanford EE/CSE/CS is as sought after. Not a surprise to anyone who hires in the valley.
“Many of those locales are even more expensive than the NY/NJ metro area.”
Ok, but this was not your original argument, you’re deflecting because you’ve lost this argument when ucbalumnus compared engineering and cs only salaries between the two schools.
@theloniusmonk - I too was once offered a well into six-figure salary from a Silicon Valley employer. I didn’t take it because I didn’t want to endure the higher cost of living there the higher salary notwithstanding. I know several 2017 graduates of Stevens that were also offered six-figure starting salaries by Silicon Valley companies, so, it is not the school in this case it is the location. Facebook, Google, Intel, et al can afford those salaries and there are enough people who are willing to put up with the high cost of the area to work for those companies, hence, that is the norm and they get them to take the jobs. All of the companies I ever worked for had a specific salary range for a particular job. They didn’t offer more to people just because they went to a specific school. I worked for what was the largest R&D organization in the telecommunications and electronics industry for example. They didn’t offer Stanford or UCB graduates higher salaries than Stevens or Rutgers graduates because they went to Stanford or UCB. I doubt that Silicon Valley does either.
My point regarding locale is simply that the cost of living in a given area is a large factor in salaries in that area in general. If the cost of living is high, salaries have to likewise be high to attract people to work there. The New York metro area, while expensive, is not as expensive as Silicon Valley hence the salaries here are lower. In most places, graduates of schools in the area tend to begin their careers in that area therefore their salaries will be strongly influenced by the cost of living in that particular area. That has nothing to do with the school. No deflection here, merely expanding upon the original topic and no argument lost. Have a nice day.
In other words, any apparent ROI advantage of Stevens (71% engineering + CS) over Rutgers (15% engineering + CS) or Alabama (12% engineering + CS) is merely an engineering + CS major ROI advantage (with some regional adjustments), so that the ROI advantage is gotten by choosing an engineering or CS major, not by choosing Stevens over Rutgers or Alabama to study an engineering or CS major, right?
@Engineer80 , “If I have a stack of resumes on my desk from candidates to a job posting, whom do you think I will interview first, those from Stevens and UCB, or Alabama?”
My son graduated from Bergen Academies and attended Rutgers-NB on a full-ride. Are you sure you will not interview him first?
@Tanbiko - Is he majoring in engineering? Rutgers’ engineering is in Piscataway.
@ucbalumnus - Of course choice of a major has a not insignificant influence on earnings. It is one of many factors influencing earnings. Comparing a social work or art history major to an engineering or accounting major in terms of earning potential is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
“They didn’t offer more to people just because they went to a specific school.”
I agree with you on this, but that’s not what you’ve been saying on these threads, namely that Stevens grads get more because they went to Stevens.
You also said this: “was offered to Stevens graduates over those of other universities (particularly the state university for instance) as a result of Stevens’ reputation”
Your two statements directly contradict themselves.
"They didn’t offer Stanford or UCB graduates higher salaries than Stevens or Rutgers graduates because they went to Stanford or UCB. I doubt that Silicon Valley does either.:
Nobody gets the offer based on the school, at least in silicon valley, your school can get you more interviews and potentially better internships in college. Then you do well in the internship or interview to get an offer.
Since all three schools are accredited, you would be smart to begin interviewing candidates that are local or have expressly indicated their desire to relocate to the area where the job is in their cover letter. Otherwise, you will be wasting a lot of time interviewing and possibly making offers to candidates that will choose to accept offers from other companies in their preferred locations.
@Engineer80 , Rutgers-New Brunswick is the name of the flagship campus that is spread out across multiple municipalities. Engineering is mostly on Bush campus that is physically in the township of Piscataway but still part of Rutgers-NB.
My son did not major in engineering or CS, I was just toying with you. However he is working in CS now.
I cannot believe that attending very pricey Stevens is a cost-effective way to acquire these degrees. Large part of US engineering and CS workforce are people graduated abroad from the colleges you have never heard about and they do not have problems with employment. In worst case they are somewhat under compensated during the first few years but not to the tune of $250K+ that would cost them to attend Stevens.
Again UCB grads are mostly going to stay local and with a COL 20% higher then most other areas outside CA, you’ll need to take 20% off of the salaries for UCB grads to get a more direct comparison.
@CU123, compared with whom? The vast majority of Stevens grads will stay on the East Coast (many in NYC) and NYC and the other majors metros in the Northeast aren’t less expensive than CA.
Maybe, but without a locale, salaries cannot be compared directly, my own DD just moved from San Francisco to Denver with a 20% pay cut but in reality it was a raise. You can’t leave out essential information and pretend it’s a valid comparison.
BTW if you think Hoboken NJ is anything near as expensive as CA your wrong, and there aren’t that many tech companies that require working in NYC.
Silicon Valley makes the expensive Northeast look like a bargain. No one can understand how bad the cost of living is there unless you see it. Housing, food, etc. Ridiculous. I can totally see how a 20% pay cut is a raise going from SV to Denver!
@CU123, you do realize that Hoboken is right next door to Manhattan, right? It’s the equivalent of Alameda. When did you live in NYC?
I’ve lived in the Bay Area (SF and Alameda) and the Tri-state area (living in Jersey City, working in Manhattan) and I found NYC to much more expensive. There are actually pretty inexpensive places to eat in the Bay Area and reasonably-inexpensive housing to be found. In NYC, everything (that was close to Manhattan a nd not crime-ridden) was expensive.
Even with bay area COL, the UCB degree is getting 40% more than the Stevens one, showing the value of a UCB degree.
I think that is only in CS and its $78K vs $107K but if you make decisions based on these tables, be my guest I doubt that UCB grads have anything on Stevens grads. Way too much ambiguity on this data, not enough background. Too many of us simply believe whatever we find on the internet.
@theloniusmonk - I was out in the San Francisco Bay area on business about a month ago. I had occasion to talk to a few of the engineers at the company we were visiting out there. They were talking about the cost of living in the area. The average rent for a studio or 1-bedroom apartment in the SF suburb where we were is $4200 a month. A 3 bedroom house there averages 1.2 million. They were talking about how some newly hired freshout engineers there get together and rent an apartment or a hours with four or five people (or even more) to make the costs manageable.
In my area in northern NJ - which is itself a high cost area being in the New York metro area and a suburb of Manhattan, a studio or 1 BR apartment averages $1800-2100 a month. A three bedroom house in my town can be had for about $420,000. Hoboken is somewhat more expensive, due to demand of people who work in the Manhattan financial and other industries who want to be within the 15 minute train ride to Manhattan but either cannot afford to or desire to live in the financial district there. Manhattan itself - particularly the Wall Street financial district - is hugely expensive, but few engineering companies are located there and I suspect not many engineers live there.
So, in this example the Silicon Valley area (at least where we were visiting) is some 30-40% more expensive in housing costs alone. I suspect food, gasoline (when I was there gas was something like $3.75 a gallon for regular), utilities, and other living costs are also proportionate to housing expenses. Assuming UCB’s salary figure is correct (keep in mind that these figures - from any school - are self-reported by graduates and may not represent a statistically significant or unbiased sample, but be that as it may the same biases and errors are likely present in the salary numbers reported by most schools so they roughly can be compared), then UCB graduates living in the Silicon Valley area are just breaking even compared to Stevens graduates living in this area. If one were to move to this area for example, their salary will reflect the norms of this area and they won’t be making 35% higher just because they went to UCB. Conversely, if a Stevens graduate were to take a job in Silicon Valley, his or her salary will likely be higher reflecting the norm (higher COL) of that area.
In my experience interviewing engineering candidates for example I have seen Stevens graduates offered at the top of the pay scale for a particular job and/or being given signing bonuses (the signing bonuses are less common today, however) because the hiring manager knows of the rigor and depth of Stevens’ curriculum which traditionally has enabled the students to be superior interdisciplinary problem solvers as opposed to the overspecialization that exists in many schools today. I used to work for what was the leading R&D lab in the communications and electronics business, and they recruited at all the reputed schools including UCB, Stevens, MIT, RPI, etc. Stevens graduates were well represented among their ranks.
I put more credence in Payscale’s numbers since Payscale is a third party unaffiliated with the school. IMO that Stevens graduates rank as the tenth highest paid (on the average) in the US and the fifth highest paid in the cohort of engineering graduates in that survey is really all one needs to know.