Engineering Graduate School Prospect Question

AuraObscura
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 02:32:48 +0000

Do you mean immediately after graduating with your Bachelor’s? Don’t do it.

Don’t get an MBA, or an MS in Engineering Management, and definitely not the two of them together. Not only would these open up zero doors, they would close a lot of doors, too. Almost all of them, actually.

If your goal is to work as an engineer, then these degrees will make that extremely difficult. An MBA or an MS in management signal to an employer that you’re looking for a career shift to a management role from a technical role. This is great if you’ve got several years of experience in a technical position and are seeking a management position. Otherwise, not so much. Similarly, an MBA is not a degree one gets after college, it’s a degree one gets after several years of work experience in roles of progressively higher responsibility tending toward supervisory, managerial, or financial responsibility. There’s a reason almost every reputable MBA program requires work experience.

Furthermore, I really don’t understand why degrees like “engineering management” exist. You do not need an engineering management degree to become an engineering manager. What you do need is at least several years of experience in a technical role and/or several years of experience in a supervisory or managerial capacity.

The common denominator is that these jobs and these degrees require experience to be useful. Nobody is going to hire an engineering manager who has no experience as an engineer or as a manager. Someone with an MBA will not be taken seriously if they don’t have any work experience, if they can get an MBA without experience to begin with–an MBA is meant to supplement one’s experience, not replace it.

I guess the question is: what do you want to do? Do you want to work as an engineer? Then don’t bother with these degrees. Not right now, at least. Get a job, work for a few years. Do you want to work as an engineering manager? Then work as an engineer, first. Do you want to work as a manager in some other capacity? Then get some relevant work experience, first.