Stevens and Umass Amherst for civil engineering

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1

As a parent of an international student my DS cannot seem to choose between Stevens and UMass Amherst for civil engineering. Is the extra $6,500.00 at Stevens worth it? Will he really get more internships and co-op opportunities at Stevens?

2

International students will be limited in ability to work in the US.

In countries where the student has or easily can get the ability to work, does school name matter between these two schools?

3

I doubt the school name would matter in those countries. But I guess you are saying there will not be much opportunity as an international student?

4

IMO, no it’s not worth $6500 per year (as well as the higher cost of everything in the NYC metro area like transportation and sometimes food on trips into the city).

I have a civil engineer who went to a much smaller and lower ranked school than these two (although with a lot of international students) and I don’t think her job prospects or salary is lower because of that. However, many civil engineering jobs are with state and the federal government and citizenship is required. She works for a private firm, but some of their projects are for governments and those billing have to be citizens.

UMass has a lot of opportunities like taking classes at Amherst. And great dorm food.

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5

Your student can do internships and co-ops (except in roles that require citizenship). The challenge will be getting a full time job post-graduation as that requires employer sponsorship. That is not easy and you should not count on it.

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6

Thank you so much - this makes it simple.

7

He should definitely use the opportunity of taking classes at Amherst over his 4 years if he can. UMass Amherst will also have vastly better food (restaurant-quality food as part if your meal plan!) and will be cheaper for entertainment than NYC, while concentrating about 50,000 students from several colleges, so no shortage of activities - most low cost or discounted for students.
As for internships&co-ops: co-ops don’t get deducted from post-graduation OPT but you would need to email UMass to ask about how frequent a co-op semester is for their engineering majors, and how easy to arrange it is.

8

We will look for the opportunities with Amherst and I did email the school and they provided some information on firms that do the co-ops but not about frequency. Will have to work on that now. Thanks again.

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