The counterintuitive side of engineering

sakky
Fri, 04 Mar 2011 21:27:19 +0000

Even engineering students from MIT (if they go into engineering) will make similar amounts to other engineers from lesser schools. I could be wrong but i think this is a point Sakky constantly makes.



Exactly right, and that’s a point that I’ve been driving home in several of my other posts. With the notable exception of CS/software, graduating from a “top”-ranked engineering program seems to confer little salary boost over graduating from a lesser-ranked engineering program if you actually choose to work as an engineer. You may be able to obtain employment at a more “prestigious” engineering employer, or (especially at the very top programs) find top non-employment in non-engineering fields such as the aforementioned investment banking and consulting fields, but that doesn’t translate into significantly higher engineering starting salaries.

On the other hand, see below.



I think if being picky means holding out and searching high and low to find jobs that pay less than Cal Poly graduates (bunch of CSU graduates that have to settle for sub-par jobs) , then I think Cal’s and the other UCs SERIOUSLY need to revisit their job search method or the market valuation of their degrees. Perhaps, they need reminding that it is a race to the TOP, not the bottom.



Well, I’m not quite sure that I can agree with that, as people don’t agree on what it means to be ‘top’ or ‘subpar’. For example, plenty of graduates from the top schools including Berkeley choose to join or found their own startups which often times pay conspicuously low starting salaries - and indeed, sometimes no salaries at all especially if you’re a founder - but have tremendous potential. Similarly, plenty of graduates take jobs that may not pay particularly well, at least to start, but open the door to significant other career opportunities that they want. For example, I can think of plenty of graduates of top schools who took jobs as relatively low-paying research associates because they wanted to eventually enter academia and wanted to build their research credentials to enter top PhD programs. Many of them did indeed enter and complete such programs and are now tenure-track faculty.

The bottom line is that not everybody wants the highest possible pay. {And if you do, then you shouldn’t take a job in engineering at all, but rather head for Wall Street.}