I recently was accepted as a transfer student to Middlebury college from UVM Honors college. I am paying no tuition at UVM and will likely graduate with all of my college fund left over for me to spend how I please. I am doing well and currently majoring in Mechanical engineering but I am also very interested in CS Math and Econ. If I go to Middlebury college it will likely use up all of my college fund and I will have nothing left over when I graduate (but no debt). I don’t want to throw away 100k and an engineering degree for something that isnt necessarily guaranteed so I was wondering if anyone has any insight on how a Middlebury degree might help me in future salary or job growth as opposed to a UVM Honors college degree. I would be interested in a field related to CS, Cybersecurity and maybe Finance but I’m still figuring that one out (Ive heard the hours are miserable and some have told me its a soul crushing immoral job). Any insight or advice about any of these careers or schools would be greatly appreciated .
Are you happy at UVM? Do you enjoy your current major? If so, I’d stay put.
Plus Middlebury slashes budget by over $10 million, imposes partial hiring freeze - The Middlebury Campus
You’ve practically answered your own question. Why do you want to transfer from UVM?
Your remaining college fund will leave you with more options after undergrad than Middlebury is likely to open. Grad school, not accepting a position solely based on salary, geographic flexibility, time for career exploration, etc.
I do not see any reason to transfer to Middlebury College.
One obvious issue is that Middlebury does not have mechanical engineering, and as far as I know does not have engineering.
For CS or economics, I don’t think that it will matter which of these two very good schools you graduate from, except that your bank account will be better off if you stay put.
Also, you are doing well where you are and are happy where you are, and UVM is a very good university. There are risks with transferring.
I would stay put.
Considered by Career Outcomes, Middlebury placed 124th nationally in this analysis and UVM placed 219th:
However, this analysis provides no specific information on UVM honors graduates. In any case, while I might often recommend Middlebury when compared to many other schools, Middlebury doesn’t seem to align especially well with your interests and circumstances. The exception to this would be in economics, for which I’d highly recommend Middlebury.
It also doesn’t filter for engineering students.
I think that Midd is an amazing college, but if you are doing very well in ME, I see no reason for you to transfer.
AN engineering degree from an ABET accredited university will do a lot in helping you get a job, and while your college MAY, in some cases, affect your starting salary, after a few years, all any engineering company cares about is what you have done at work, and you’ll catch up pretty quickly.
Financially, staying at UVM is the far smarter choice.
That won’t affect the OP’s employment chances and starting salary one way or another. The OP has been accepted and presumably already has a financial aid offer, which won’t change, regardless of whether Midd has some financial bumps.
I’d stay the course with the engineering foundation and use that money for a grad program instead. For one example of how an engineering background can get you into the finance/econ sphere, check out the programs in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech - specializations like Quantitative & Computational Finance, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering or Computational Science & Engineering might appeal to you. H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering | Georgia Tech Catalog
Thanks for all your replies! I have gotten conflicting answers about this From several sources. The main reason for going to mid would be getting into Investment Banking or finance which I believe would be harder from UVM. Does anyone have any insight into how possible it would be to get into IB from Middlebury as a junior transfer as opposed to UVM Honors College?
IB/finance and Mechanical Engineering are two very different careers. What do you want to do? Have you checked the course catalog to be sure you can graduate Middlebury in four years (especially with changing your major)?
Getting into IB/finance as an undergrad is never a sure thing. @catcherinthetoast may have thoughts.
I will review the course catalog again but I belive I would be able to graduate in four years. I was under the impression that it was very likely to land a high paying IB job coming from Middlebury. Is it really still a crapshoot?
I don’t think anyone from any college is “very likely” to get a high paying IB job. Those jobs are few and far between. Hopefully @Catcherinthetoast can opine.
Getting an IB analyst job even as a 4 year student from a school like Middlebury can be challenging. The process tends to be very selective and a bit idiosyncratic from LACs which aren’t traditional targets but often semi targets.
In practical terms this means that IBs will hire students from these elite schools but the student will have to do a lot of the foundational work to get on the IBs radar screen to secure the all important summer internship as a rising senior. To accomplish this successfully the student has to tap into all of the schools resources (class selection, finance and investment clubs, alumni network, professor support, etc) almost immediately upon arriving on campus as a freshman.
While certainly not impossible this integration and leveraging of the full Middlebury brand and community will be tough to achieve as a junior transfer in my opinion. You will be trying to catch up with students who have spent two years as active members of clubs, who have attended alumni events and who have created personal connections.
I am sorry for my pessimistic tone and I don’t want to dissuade you from trying but I suspect it may prove challenging. I would not base your decision to transfer primarily on an IB career goal that will likely remain as elusive as a “crap shoot”.
Please pardon any delay in responding as I am traveling abroad for business but I am happy to try and answer any follow up questions.
On a more optimistic note Middlebury boasts alum like Goldman’s John Walderon so the school certainly has deep ties to IB.
That is exactly how we describe it in our recruiting info pamphlets😀
I do not think that I would have used the word “immoral”. Finance is needed, and there are lots of retired Americans who worked hard for their entire lives but are now depending upon the good work of financial professionals. However…
I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MIT. My understanding is that some investment banking / finance jobs do end up going to math majors graduating from highly ranked universities. I personally would not want to work in that environment. My understanding is that the stress and long hours are an issue. Life is too short. There are also a lot of other things that you can do with a degree in mathematics, and most of them are less stressful.
However, there are also a lot of types of finance jobs.
In life there are a lot of tradeoffs all over the place, including tradeoffs between working environment and job stability and pay. It can be tough for each of us to know which tradeoffs are right for us. Sometimes we just need to try a bit of this and a bit of that before we figure it out.
I personally would not plan on being able to get into high end investment banking after transferring into Middlebury half way through. You would for example need to compete with students who were at Middlebury for a full four years with the same intentions, as well as graduates with degrees in mathematics or other relevant fields from MIT and Harvard and Princeton and Williams and a number of other top schools. Whether or not you would like the job if you were to get it is another thing to think about.
Hot take here but I would argue the 100K will do more for you to have a successful outcome than the degree from either UVM or Middlebury. So many options with that. Another Hot Take is in the mid to long run a degree from Middlebury or UVM is just the same background noise of where you went to college as 99.99 percent of every other college out there. After 2 minutes on whatever job you take no one cares. Save the money, take the free ride. Plus Burlington is way more fun than Middlebury.
Finish your engineering degree at UVM, work for a couple of years and then use the funds for an excellent MBA program. Or maybe you will change your mind by then and go in a different direction.
Agree completely and IMHO, this is a perfect illustration of why people, even some STEM oriented people, attend LACs. It’s because they’re not sure if they want to commit to a pre-professional degree and appreciate the wriggle room that an extra 18 months before declaring a major gives them before deciding what final direction their choices need to take. IOW, even a pre-med at Midd would be able to course-correct by sophomore year, if they decided that wasn’t what they wanted to do.
Thanks again for all the advice. One last question that has I have is about the quant job. I recently found out about this job and it seems rlly interesting to me and I was just wondering if my chances would be at all greater at Middlebury college than at UVM to be a quant for any reason? I suspect I would have to go to grad school in either case but I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be missing out on any quant recruiting opportunities from Middlebury as an undergrad.
I think you are missing the broader point here.
Getting a job as a quant is statistically unlikely from ANYWHERE. These jobs represent a tiny, tiny proportion of the jobs in the financial sector. You can up the odds a bit by majoring in math at MIT or U Chicago, just to name one well known path from college to quant.
I don’t think either Middlebury or UVM give you a leg up-- i.e. help you, or hurt you- in your very, very tough road to working as a quant- if in fact, that’s what you decide you want to do after actually learning enough of the skills that are required.
It’s like taking ballet lessons in the second grade and deciding that you are going to become a Prima Ballerina dancing for the Bolshoi. That’s a nice narrative to have, but the likelihood of that happening isn’t enough to start making life decisions based on that second grade dream. Don’t stop paying attention during math class because once you are a famous ballerina you won’t need to be able to multiply.
There are so many other interesting jobs using financial principals and that require great computation skills- why not spend time exploring those instead of grinding on Middlebury (not a well trod path to becoming a quant) vs. UVM (another not likely path to becoming a quant).