@CollegeCrazy97 “my cousins who are in silicon valley, keep telling me that Penn’s engineering program isn’t very research focused and many people don’t go to graduate school. Also, they said that they’ve never seen a Penn grad in tech in their careers, but they’ve seen amazing umich grads. Are these opinions valid? I’d love to go to Penn, especially because of the larger class sizes at UMich, but these questions are the only thing holding me back from committing.”
DD is just completed her sophomore year. While in other posts I usually say that she is a CS major for simplicity, for your question I will specify that she began as a CS major, but subsequently switched to NETS (http://www.nets.upenn.edu). The two are closely related.
Michigan has about 30,000 undergraduates compared to 10,000 at Penn. Furthermore, Penn SEAS students can and do many things in addition to traditional engineering, so it is entirely possible that they have not run into Penn grads, just as they may not have run into Harvard grads. It is also possible that they just don’t know the Penn grads.
Penn has many of its graduates working in the tech industry from CAS, Wharton and SEAS. One particularly notable example they might know would be Elon Musk.
DD is leaving in a week for her San Francisco internship at one of the largest tech companies, and rejected multiple offers for this summer. I think that is very good for a sophomore, and almost all of her friends have similar opportunities. Freshman summer she worked as a research assistant and took a math class on campus.
It is true that many Penn students don’t go to graduate school right away. The reason is that in an economic environment where about 50% of college grads can’t find a job using their degree, the average SEAS grad has two offers, and they are very good ones. I saw that the average new graduate salary for NETS graduates last year was over $100k, and CS is close behind. Many of these Penn students will decide to continue on the graduate school eventually, they just often have great opportunities to get some great work experience first.
Also, some Penn students pursue graduate school concurrently with their BSE. DD is considering sub-matriculating into the MS in CS. It appears that she can probably even complete it concurrently within the 4 years if she decides to do make it a priority.
I hope some of that information is helpful.