The counterintuitive side of engineering

ucbalumnus
Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:40:25 +0000

NegativeSlope:

Finally, what happens to those students who go straight to grad school without work experience? It would seem that you’re in the position where you’d be overqualified for entry level jobs but don’t have enough experience to take the higher level jobs.



Cal Poly SLO’s survey does include master’s degree graduates in some majors (listed separately from bachelor’s degree graduates). You can compare the effect of a master’s degree versus a bachelor’s degree in these cases, within the limitation of the survey (based on self-response, etc.). Of course, it does not say whether the master’s degree graduate studied to the master’s degree immediately after the bachelor’s degree, or with some amount of work experience between finishing a bachelor’s degree and starting master’s degree study, so the comparison may not be a straightforward one for someone asking “will getting a master’s degree right after my bachelor’s degree help my job and career prospects?”.