Need Admission Decision Counsel and Perspective

JHS
Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:54:29 +0000

There’s really an important threshold question here: Does he want to be an engineer? Does he want his launching pad into the business world to be engineering expertise?

There’s no right answer to those questions, but once you have answered those questions there may be a right and wrong answer as far as going to the University of Chicago is concerned. If you want to be trained as an engineer, if you want that to be part of your identity, go to an ABET-accredited engineering program. Which Chicago very much isn’t. Chicago will provide a superb liberal arts education, including very strong programs in math and physical sciences if you want that, with some engineering elements, including one new sort-of engineering major. But University of Chicago graduates are not engineers and are unlikely to be hired for mainstream engineering jobs.

There are lots of jobs in the world that are not mainstream engineering jobs, of course. Becoming an engineer is not a golden ticket to happiness or long-term financial success, although it certainly cuts down on the risk of having to survive on part-time barista work after graduation. Science- and math-focused Chicago graduates are not likely to be working as baristas, however. MBA programs take lots of engineers, but they take lots of non-engineers, too; getting an engineering degree is not even remotely a requirement for MBA programs.

So you can succeed as en engineer or as a non-engineer, but it’s really difficult to succeed as an engineer if you start at Chicago.

By the same token, if you don’t want engineering training and experience to be part of the core of what you offer – if you don’t want to spend the next 6-7 years living and breathing engineering before shifting into an MBA program – then you shouldn’t really be considering going to an engineering program, prestigious or not. That’s not a smart plan at all. If these are your only three choices, and you don’t want to be an engineer, Chicago is almost certainly the best choice.