<p><<it will="" come="" down="" to="" the="" student="" and="" his="" accomplishments.="">> But isn’t getting into Georgia Tech engineering school and graduating from it (a top 5 engineering school in the country, top 2 in Aerospace Engineering) an accomplishment more worthy than the one from UF? Treating them as equals seem a bit unfair to those who did more challenging work at GA Tech competing against brigher students.</it></p>
<p>It’s better to graduate with A’s at Georgia Tech than A’s at UF. It’s better to graduate with A’s at UF than C’s at Georgia Tech, but I don’t think this is a realistic comparison. It’s not THAAAT much harder at Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>In my experience, prestige does matter a bit. If you can get the interview then it’s pretty irrelevant, but on campus recruiting is a lot better at prestigious engineering schools than no name schools. I transferred from UCR to UCLA and my job opportunities got considerably better because of the switch. That’s the only area where I think it really matters. Prestige isn’t a fine-grained measure though. All the best recruiters at MIT also recruit at UCLA, UCSD, Berkeley, Purdue, Waterloo, Michigan, Georgia Tech, maybe even UCSB etc. It’s only when you’re talking UCLA vs. UCR that you see a real difference in opportunities.</p>
<p>I think you might be looking into rankings a bit too much. Just because a school has a higher ranking doesn’t necessarily mean the work is going to be harder and the students smarter. I go to Texas A&M which is ranked higher than Florida, but I don’t think the work is more challenging here than at Florida. If a school is ABET accredited, you are going to be covering very similar concepts. </p>
<p>I would put some weight in the rankings, it’s a good tool. But saying that graduating from Georgia Tech with an engineering degree is a better accomplishment than graduating from Florida I don’t agree with. If you graduate with the same GPA as a student that went to Florida, then you might have an argument.</p>
<p>Globaltraveler - are you pregnant, by any chance?</p>
<p>Banjo
I “appealed to authority” merely because you mentioned supposed statistics. The surveys you link prove very little and certainly not what you claim they prove.</p>
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<p>No, it just that this topic has been brought up about 1,585,723 times and for all of this supposed engineering talent on this board, nobody can seem to conduct a “Search” on this site.</p>
<p>PLUS…</p>
<p>Since I am in software, I have noticed that my industry beats to a different drum. You folks in the other engineering areas with the less job openings and less avenues of newer technology have to worry more about prestige, competition and such.</p>
<p>In my industry, a software engineer from a 2+2 program can learn the latest advances of object-oriented development, databases, networks on their own time and nullify any gap in pay difference from their undergrad school for a few job hops…by just leveraging the number of openings against the number of qualified applicants.</p>
<p>In other words, there are a lot of software engineers in the DC area (with the lowest unemployment rate) who would kick over laughing about “prestige”. Lot’s of U-Maryland, U-Maryland Baltimore County, Towson U, John Hopkins, Howard Univ, George Mason grads making very good money here.</p>
<p>JHU is better than about half of the Ivy League (depending on what metric you use). Just saying.</p>
<p>globaltraveler: I’m in software too (aerospace) and attended a college which is regularly disparaged on CC for it’s non-prestige. So perhaps it should have been more obvious to me!</p>
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<p>Those surveys are richer than you think. Pull the statistics and compare starting salaries and offer rates between schools from different tiers. Then perform a longitudinal analysis from pre and post recession. The evidence is clear and indisputable.</p>
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<p>This is your claim-
Are you actually claiming I can find this data in the so-called statistics you posted? I don’t even see UF listed here, let alone anything like this type of granularity.</p>
<p>Is there some benefit to attending a more prestigious school? Likely so. If for some bizarre reason an engineer wants to work at Goldman Sachs will they have a better chance coming from MIT? Likely. But so will an econ major from Harvard. </p>
<p>But to try to conduct some sort of actual analysis using self-reported data compiled from multiple sources, using multiple and varied methodologies, and often comparing apples to oranges is a fool’s errand. Plus I don’t particularly like average as a metric. When one salary is $400,000 it can become sort of meaningless. I prefer a full range of statistical data including median at the very least, gathered by the same researchers using equivalent methodology and controls.</p>
<p>Plus, I have actual real work to do. But if you have a link to a reputable and relevant controlled study, I’ll certainly look at it.</p>
<p>BTW-
The claim that it is better to go to a more prestigious school assuming you have the choice, which not everyone does (because, face it, not everyone can get into MIT) falls under the category of “duh” as far as I’m concerned. The question is how much of a benefit is it, and to what degree does the school pedigree overcome a poor GPA or other factors. Also, what are the dividing lines as far as prestige? I’m a big fan of the Ramblin Wrecks, but I frankly think posting about the wonders of a Georgia Tech degree for getting a position on Wall Street would draw some fairly incredulous responses from certain segments of this message board. Same with UIUC - which I believe is a real powerhouse for Civil Engineers, but doesn’t seem to get the same sort of respect as a place like Cal, for example…</p>
<p>^But five years after you get a job, it becomes what experience you have, not what school you went to. You won’t have as much advantage over someone who went to a top 100 school then. Or would you, since, if you do well at a top 10 school like Georgia Tech, you get a better start than them?</p>
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<p>The sentiment of your last sentence is correct. Attending a top school gives you a better (not guaranteed, but better) shot at a better employe who can provide you with more valuable experience. Hence, advantages tend to accumulate. </p>
<p>Naturally, you have to actively pursue those opportunities. If you graduate from MIT only to take a mediocre engineering job that provides little useful experience, then you’ve squandered much of the value of the MIT experience. </p>
<p>However, it should also be said that much of the value of a name-brand college is in the networking. Graduating from MIT provides access to an alumni network that is well connected throughout the top tiers of the world’s engineering industry. That alone may provide entree to career opportunities that graduates from lower-ranked schools won’t even know about. For example, I recently met an entrepreneur who obtained funding from a VC firm where one of the partners just so happened to be his old MIT dormmate from years ago. Other entrepreneurs may have had ideas just as impressive, but they don’t know the venture capitalist in question, so they’re not funded.</p>
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I would say the advantage of the name fades as you get into your career. But I make no claim to be an expert on this. IMO, everything else being equal, I would opt for the school with the better reputation. But I question the marginal benefit between, say, UCLA and Cal Poly SLO. And I know about zero about UF. I do some hiring, but what I look for is not necessarily what other employers look for so I wouldn’t make a claim to any special knowledge, so my input woudl be the usual anecdotal noise you find on these types of message boards. Since nobody knows who anybody else is, and whether they speak from any authority, it’s difficult to filter out the valid information…</p>
<p>I personally haven’t seem a lot of actual statistical data on this, but I haven’t looked for it, nor am I likely to. I agree there is information to be found in those employment surveys, but I just don’t see it as ironclad proof of anything. That’s all.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>I graduated from MIT and worked as an engineer for over 30 years. Even later in my career when people I just met found out I went to MIT, they got that WOW look on their faces; FOR ABOUT 3 SECONDS. It was what you said for the next hour that either impressed them or left them shaking their heads.</p>
<p>^Funny stuff my fellow beaver. My first job out of MIT was working for a consulting group employed by lobbyists for the nuclear industry. Our main task was to meet with senators and congressman and convince them of the industry’s viewpoints for a number of different issues. Our work was totally boilerplate and required almost no engineering skill. What was important was that we could be introduced to government officials with “MIT” or “CalTech” behind our names. Prestige was everything. You had to be from a very elite private…No public school graduates need apply. It didn’t even matter what your degree was in or if it was an advance degree or not. The people we were dealing with wouldn’t know the difference anyway. It was all about impressions. It was truly depressing work, albeit financially rewarding.</p>
<p>Such a relief when I left that world for research and development, where, like you say, it very quickly became your contributions that mattered. Moral: sometimes prestige is everything, sometimes not so much.</p>
<p>good pts rogracer.</p>
<p>Engineering hiring seems very regional. Go to school where you might want to start your career as your internship will probably morph into your first job.</p>
<p>Prestige may matter if you go from engineering into management later on in your career. But by then you should have picked up your MBA from a name school.</p>
<p>Mikhail Botvinnik, World Chess Champion 1948–57, 1958–60, and 1961–63. Defeated by World Chess Champion of 1957, Vasily Smyslov and Mikhail Tal in 1960. He was also an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time.</p>
<p>Anybody here more “prestigious” than Botvinnik?</p>
<p>i don’t think it matters much. i go to a public school and i beat out applicants from cornell for a great co-op position.</p>