<p>Classic, is the fact that you have never worked with a UA engineering grad mainly due to your location?</p>
<p>According to UA’s Career Center for Engineering: Currently, the Career Center database includes 964 companies which recruit engineering majors. * Some are local, however, most are regional or global.* Boeing is a Career Center sponsor and recruits heavily from the U of A.* GE, Microsoft, Apple, Northrop Grumman, <em>and Google, also recruit from us.</em> Additionally, Jacobs Engineering, Michelin, Frito-Lay, Goodyear, and Shaw Industries, among many others, recruit from us.</p>
<p>As for Lehigh, the engineering/business mix is better suited as a graduate degree and there are PLENTY of schools that offer M.S./M.Eng degrees in Engineering Management. So a fresh grad from Lehigh would be competing against folks with M.S./M.Eng in Engineering Management AND WHO ALREADY have experience as an engineer. Pass.</p>
<p>I work in the DC/MD/VA area and do not run into many John Hopkins grads with B.S. degrees. JHU has a HUGE part-time graduate engineering program for working engineers (as well as being aligned with federal agencies to admit employees to the grad programs), so most of the time when you see a JHU grad…they are a graduate school grad. Plus, as the other posters said, I would take a $40K Georgia Tech over a $57K JHU.</p>
<p>University of Alabama is the school as safety net. A school in case money is tight. It is still a good enough school that if you get good grades, you can get into a grad program with a bigger name.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know that MIT truly practices social Darwinism, at least, at a level anywhere comparable to Georgia Tech. While MIT’s workload is indeed exhausting - the education has been compared to ‘drinking from a firehouse’ - the fact remains that 83% of MIT students will graduate in 4 years, which is significantly higher than Georgia Tech’s 6-year graduation rate of 78%.</p>
<p>Sakky, that’s what I meant. Georgia Tech practices Darwinism.</p>
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<p>Sure, but I’ve worked with lots of people from Georgia Tech and that’s about as far away from me as Alabama. That’s the whole point. I think the more respected schools have a broader, national reach. I’m sure the tech industry in Huntsville is filled with Alabama grads.</p>
<p>DS had similar opportunities, including the Lehigh program. Don’t be so quick to discount it. My impression is that Lehigh feeds these students into consultant firms that help start up companies. I may be wrong on the exact purpose of the companies, but the point is that they feed graduates into the startup company process where technical and business skills are required. Does this sound interesting to your S? If so, this would be the best option - not one to be discounted. If he is set on pure engineering, Georgia tech would be hard to turn down. The WSJ article surveyed recruiters and it was ranked #1 for engineering majors. I would rule out any other more expensive option. Alabama offers a great financial package. Graduating from GT or from Alabama with $120,000 in your pocket. Looking at it objectively, I’d rather have $120,000 and have to “fight” for my internships and have to sell my self more at interviews.</p>
<p>Another thing about Lehigh, if you graduate with a really high GPA, then your 5th year is tuition free. You can then finish up the “real” engineering degree.</p>
<p>What about an entrepreneurship honors program during freshman and sophomore years? Would that look bad to potential engineering employers if a student participated in that program, but is seeking engineering (vs. business) jobs?</p>
<p>What I object to is investing my precious time developing students who don’t really want to be engineers and plan to bolt as soon as wall st comes a calling but before I’ve gotten any return on my investment. </p>
<p>I find a true sign of deep interest in engineering is taking advanced engineering electives beyond what’s required. If you don’t have to take it, but just want to anyway because you’re genuinely interested, that’s a good sign to me. On the other hand, if all of your electives are taken up by management, finance or advanced economics classes, that says something else to me. It says that hardcore engineering is not what you’d like to be doing. Nothing wrong with that, but if I can find talented engineers who want to be engineers, why wouldn’t I prefer that.</p>
<p>I work in the DC/MD/VA too and the people I know from JHU are all working engineers in part-time graduate programs. JHU pro is location to the DC job market which is a huge plus.</p>