<p>Do those employers usually offer considerably higher starting salaries, then grads from lets say a lower UC like davis or similiar school?</p>
<p>The ones I know limit themselves mainly to the Ivies, MIT & Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, and that’s mostly it.</p>
<p>But please bear in mind that this changes with further schooling or work experience!</p>
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<p>I know exactly what you are saying, and it is precisely that which I am disputing. Your basic premise is that Yale History students are considered to be somehow better prepared that Yale engineering students for Wall Street or McKinsey or whatever. This is an assertion that I would hotly dispute. </p>
<p>The truth is, engineering anywhere is going to be difficult. Yale’s engineering ranking is low basically because the department isn’t a huge research machine, not because there is anything deficient with the students themselves. Like I said, Yale undergrad engineers have to survive the same admissions process as every other undergrad. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I am not aware of any ‘break’ that weaker students have towards lower-ranked departments. Just because a department has a high ranking does not necessarily mean that it’s going to have better undergrad students. George Bush and John Kerry are only point examples - I doubt that many of their drunken frat brothers back in those days went to Yale engineering because it was ‘easy’. Even today, Yale still has a lot of rich trust-fund babies who are there coast their way to a degree before they end up working for their fathers. You said it yourself - Yale engineering is small. Well, if Yale engineering was really so easy, then why wouldn’t all these quite lazy trust-fund babies (of which there are many) major in engineering in order to coast? </p>
<p>From what I have seen, you CANNOT presume that somebody who got an undergrad degree from a highly ranked school has picked up a high level of skills. I think back to Berkeley. Berkeley has a wide plethora of extremely highly ranked liberal arts departments … and also a lot of quite lazy liberal arts students. Some of them are obviously superstars, but some of the others, not so much. For example, I treat history as a hobby and I once found myself talking about History with a bunch of people with Berkeley History degrees, and I found that in some cases, I actually knew more about History than they did, to the point that they thought I was a History major myself (which I was not). I say that not because I am bragging that I know a lot about History, but really to point out that they knew EVEN LESS about history. And they actually held degrees in History. How embarrassing is that? You have a degree from the #2 History department in the country, and some dude with no history degree at all ends up knowing more than you do. </p>
<p>The truth is that just because a department is top ranked does not mean that it is rigorous at the undergrad level. You can have a department that has a high ranking AND runs a relatively easy undergraduate major. Keep in mind that departmental rankings mostly have to do with the GRADUATE school and don’t have a lot to say about the undergraduate program, and in particular, has very little to say about the rigor of the undergraduate program. </p>
<p>In the case of the Berkeley History department specifically (and most liberal arts departments), the problem is that these departments almost never give out truly bad grades. As long as you do the work and put in some minimal effort, you know you’re going to pass. Maybe not with top grades, but at least you’ll pass. In many cases, you’ll pass with quite a decent grade even if you didn’t do very much work and did not demonstrate very much knowledge. </p>
<p>Consider this quote:</p>
<p>"Rine described the shock he felt during his three years on the Committee on Teaching from roughly 1998 to 2000 when he reviewed teaching records for large undergraduate classes, with more than 100 students, in which no one got less than an A-, year after year. At the time, Rine asked Associate Registrar Walter Wong to assemble some data looking at upper division and lower division grading in the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering, so that he could distinguish trends from anecdotal exceptions. The results were clear. “The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, “while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-,”</p>
<p><a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/new/05/grades.html[/url]”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/new/05/grades.html</a></p>
<p>This is particularly so for a major like History. Let’s face it. The vast majority of History students have no intention of becoming historians. Plenty of people simply choose History out of general interest, or just because it is a relatively easy way to pick up a degree, or as preparation for later professional school like law school. Speaking of law school, if History was such a rigorous and tough major at Yale, then fewer Yalies would want to major in it because we all know that law school admissions is highly GPA-oriented. If History graded harshly, then Yalies who are gunning for law school would choose to major in something else to keep their GPA’s high. So why not Yale engineering, if it is so easy? </p>
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<p>And this gets back to what I have been saying. I can accept that Wall Street firms may know where the smart and the dumb ones in the Ivy League are. However, I do not accept that the dumb ones in Yale are in engineering and the smart ones are in History. If anything, I would say that the reverse is true - the dumb ones are more likely to be in History than in engineering. Again, if you happen to be one of these trust-fund babies who isn’t interested in working hard and just wants to get a degree before working for his Daddy’s company, and you had to choose between engineering and the liberal arts, which would you choose? You can actually coast by in the liberal arts, as Bush and Kerry clearly did at Yale, as the Kennedy’s and Al Gore did at Harvard. But engineering will actually require that you put in some effort. </p>
<p>However, in any case, the point is, I dispute the notion that Yale engineering somehow attracts the bad students. Just think of it this way. Yale engineers almost certainly make a higher starting salary than do Yale History students, for the simple reason that engineers at a no-name school makes more than the average History student coming out of Berkeley, despite the fact that Berkeley has the #2 ranked History department in the country. So if it’s really true that the Yale engineers enjoy a higher starting salary AND Yale engineering is easy, then why wouldn’t more Yalies choose to major in engineering? Are these Yale students being dumb? </p>
<p><a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Hist.stm[/url]”>http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Hist.stm</a></p>
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<p>No, they offer the same salary to everybody who gets hired for a certain position, regardless of where they went to school. Goldman Sachs gives the same analyst offer to the guy from Harvard as the guy from CCNY. </p>
<p>The trick, of course, is that it is far more difficult to get that offer in the first place if you come from a low-ranked school. Most of the recruiting is done at the top-ranked schools, most of the spots are available only to those who came from top-ranked schools.</p>
<p>Well, Sakky, you can argue until you are blue in the face about what SHOULD be the case. I am telling you what IS the case in from what I observe, which may not be valid for every Wall Steet firm, but is what I observe. I live and work there.</p>
<p>Also, I am not sure that we disagree, your argumentative posture notwithstanding. I have no problems with the assertion that the AVERAGE Yale engineer works harder than the AVERAGE Yale history major, and makes more money after graduation. That is not inconsistent with top investment banking firms going to Yale for its top history majors, and MIT/Stanford for its top engineers. Bear in mind that MOST Yale history majors do NOT get those top investment banking jobs, either, and in that sense, are worse off than the average Yale engineer, who at least can get an engineering job. THAT is actually your old argument.</p>
<p>To finish answering tivesrx, in my previous post I answered mostly for generic hires. For openings of a more quantitative nature, there are firms that ONLY recruit at MIT, Harvard (mostly for math and science, though engineers show up occasionally), Stanford, and Princeton. Caltech is not seen often, but always gets attention when it shows up.</p>
<p>That is definately not true. A Yale Engineer will have at least as good of a chance, if not better, to get recruited into an Ibank as a Yale History major.</p>
<p>What about engineers from places like Cornell or Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>Because if you are recruiting engineers from all these ivys why wouldnt you recruit them from Cornell since they have arguably the best engineering department in the ivy league system</p>
<p>Please bear in mind that I cannot, and don’t claim to, speak for all Wall Street firms – I don’t think anyone can. So I will tell you what I see, and if the information is helpful, that’s great, but if it is not believed, that’s fine with me too. (In the same vein, Aurelius, I will not argue with those that see, claim to see, or hope to see, different situations from what I see.)</p>
<p>Cornell engineering and CMU computer science are highly respected, but there are costs to recruitment, and there are many available, highly qualified applicants for each opening, so the firms I speak of will simply not make that effort. On the other hand, if you are at Cornell or CMU, you should make an aggressive effort to contact those firms, and because Cornell engineering and CMU CS are highly respected, yes, you will get attention.</p>
<p>UC Davis is probably a much more difficult place from which to get attention.</p>
<p>So just because they dont recruit from a certain school doesnt mean that people from the school wont get hired simlpy because they went to Cornell</p>
<p>Yes indeed, in my experience. Just happens less frequently, but does happen.</p>
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<p>I am not even saying that this SHOULD be the case, I am also saying that I strongly suspect that it IS the case. From what I have seen regarding Yale IB recruiting, the IB’s basically just open their recruiting to any Yalie, regardless of major, and then subject all the candidates to the same interview process. I find it extremely doubtful that an IB would get a resume from a Yale engineer and throw it away, or even cast doubt on the guy’s competence, simply because he is an engineer, or look at some other candidate with a History major with great admiration. Basically, the IB’s are looking for sharp and hard-working people, which can be found throughout the gamut of Yale. </p>
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Also, I am not sure that we disagree, your argumentative posture notwithstanding. I have no problems with the assertion that the AVERAGE Yale engineer works harder than the AVERAGE Yale history major, and makes more money after graduation. That is not inconsistent with top investment banking firms going to Yale for its top history majors, and MIT/Stanford for its top engineers. Bear in mind that MOST Yale history majors do NOT get those top investment banking jobs, either, and in that sense, are worse off than the average Yale engineer, who at least can get an engineering job. THAT is actually your old argument .[ /quote]</p>
<p>No, your argument is that Yale engineering somehow attracts bad students. I am simply pointing out that if that is really true, then those ‘bad’ Yale students are actually getting the best deal of all, as the ‘bad’ students end up with the highest average starting salaries. Clearly this is a violation of market principles and would therefore be expected to be corrected over time. All of the ‘good’ Yale students would eventually notice that the ‘bad’ students are consistently beating them on salary and would eventually move over to engineering themselves in order to correct this market imperfection.</p>
<p>That is, of course, if it is really true that Yale engineering really does attract bad students. Consider this a proof-by-contradiction. I take your working assumption (which is that Yale engineering attracts bad students) and I analyze it to its logical conclusion, which appears to be an unlikely conclusion (that those ‘bad’ students actually become better off than the ‘good’ students), which then indicates that the assumption was probably false.</p>
<p>This thread is attracting bad arguments! LOL. Enuf said.</p>
<p>Here’s your old quote</p>
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<p>So YOU said that the Yale engineering students are not going to be as smart as the Yale History students, and that’s why McKinsey would rather recruit the latter and not the former. I would strongly dispute both assumptions - that #1, the Yale History students really are smarter than the Yale engineering students, and that #2, that, regardless of whether #1 is true, that McKinsey will prefer to recruit Yale history students over Yale engineering students.</p>
<p>If anything, I have found that engineering students tend to be smarter than history students at practically every school, if, for no other reason, that history departments often times tend to attract slackers who just want to get an easy degree without doing much work. I.e. George Bush. Very very few engineering departments at any school attract the lazier students who just want to get an easy degree. When was the last time you ever heard anybody say “I just want to get an easy degree, so I’ll study engineering.” Never happen. </p>
<p>Hence, I can agree that the top History students at Yale or anywhere else will match the top engineering students. However, History departments often times have a long tail-end of not-so-good students.</p>
<p>I agree with what Sakky is saying. From my experience, I can say that at the University of Pennsylvania, a ton of business firms come to recruit engineering students. I can tell you that engineering students here have a notably better chance at top business firms than Arts and Sciences majors, except for maybe econ - even though Penn engineering is ranked around 30th whereas departments like Anthropology and history are better respected. </p>
<p>I can also agree with Sakky that engineering students tend to be smarter than history students. While “smartness” has huge overlaps between programs, I know as a fact that the Engineering school at Penn has the highest avg SAT scores among the schools at Penn, even higher than Wharton’s. - Despite the fact that many of you from Stanford or MIT will claim that Penn Engineering “isn’t that good.”</p>
<p>In actuality, the recruiters for business/finance firms don’t really care about your background and the rank of your program as much as you think. The just want brilliant people.</p>
<p>Well, if you aren’t at the top of engineering, you’re not getting an IBanking job, just like you aren’t unless you’re a top history student.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t even really say that it’s a matter of being ‘top’. From what I’ve seen, it really comes down to whether you have that certain personality, that savoir-faire that the IB’s are looking for. I’ve known people with coming out of Berkeley with a hodgepodge of liberal arts degrees with quite unimpressive GPA’s who nonetheless landed IB offers with Goldman Sachs and other major players. However, I can definitely say that they have ‘the look’ and the charisma that the banks want. I’ve also known people with killer GPA’s from the Berkeley Haas School who not only couldn’t get a single IB offer, in some cases, couldn’t even get past the 1st rounds of any of their IB interviews. From what I’ve seen, IB hiring is only tangentially related to your GPA.</p>
<p>One thing that I have noticed with regards to IB hiring is the very strong prevalence and success of college athletes. For example, at Stanford, one of the more common tracks for the football and basketball players who weren’t good enough to make it into the pros (but who were still reasonably intelligent) is to go to the world of finance. I’ve also seen the same thing at Harvard and Yale. At the MBA program at the MITSloan School, one guy who has, by his own admission, quite weak grades has nonetheless been able to snag basically any banking offer that he wants. Of course it doesn’t hurt that he’s an extremely handsome and smooth former professional basketball player (from the European leagues).</p>
<p>I’ve heard it explained that banks love former athletes because they have a lot of physical stamina (crucial for those 90 hour workweeks) and they have been trained to prize winning, which is crucial in the highly sales-oriented culture of IB. Not only that, but successful athletes exude confidence and leadership, which are highly prized attributes in any business setting, but especially in banking.</p>
<p>Ok, then to what does the “topness” apply? Who cares? Law/med school? Beyond that?</p>
<p>What is the starting salary for a graduate student who completed his masters degree in EE from Caltech? The masters degree is leading towards a job in semiconductor industry</p>
<p>even a rough figure would be helpful as i am worrying about paying off the loan taken against the education cost</p>