<p>Engineering is almost a “safe” career. It doesnt really matter if you went to Community College or a state school or MIT, everyone is basically going to end up getting the same job since it really isnt that competetive. It’s not like Law school or an academic discipline or filmmaking where graduating from top private schools matters because of the competetion. People go into engineering because of the percieved “safety”. Engineering as a profession isnt really all that competetive, so why does it matter?</p>
<p>Take some time to review the success of students that have graduated from Princeton, Stanford, Cornell and MIT with “Engineering” degrees, then come back and ask the same question.</p>
<p>Because top schools/departments have a lot more resources and connections with industry.</p>
<p>In a way, I can agree with the OP. At the same time, there will always be folks who thrive on the competition for the few elite/faster-progressive career path that a few engineering jobs and finance jobs may offer. PERSONALLY, I am not into all of that competition because I “work to live” not “live to work”.</p>
<p>Yes, safety was one of my factors for going into software engineering (along with doing defense contract work). I rather KNOW that my paychecks are pretty much guaranteed than go for the riskier path and burn out and get nothing.</p>
<p>Hahaha @jamiebrown great answer and so true</p>
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<p>Well, I’m not sure that I can agree with the premise of the question: how many people truly ‘know’ - at age 17-18 when they’re high school seniors choosing their college - that they will want to work as engineers? Many engineering students - at least at the top schools such as MIT - apparently are not particularly sure as a large fraction of them do not end up taking engineering jobs upon graduation at all, but instead opting for careers in finance or consulting, or head for law or medical school. Perhaps the most egregious case would be those students who earn their bachelor’s in engineering from MIT, stay at MIT to earn their engineering PhD’s…only to then switch to a different field (such as the aforementioned consulting/banking). </p>
<p>And even many of those who do actually work as engineers do not stay in the industry for more than a few years, but instead will switch careers, with MBA programs being a common pathway. Numerous former MIT engineering undergraduates will later take MBA’s at the MIT Sloan School or Harvard Business School with the express intent of switching to a different field. </p>
<p>But even if you were sure about working as an engineer, I would still argue that some reasons exist for preferring top engineering schools (albeit I agree that the argument is certainly weaker than that for top law schools). Many MIT engineering undergrads will eventually enter engineering academia, and like it or not, academia is arguably the #1 most prestige-conscious industry in the world. People in academia are constantly being judged by their university affiliation, to the point that it’s become socially expected for them to list their degrees and current faculty positions as one of the very first bullet points on their CV (often times even before their pubs). MIT in particular is also notoriously incestuous, such that one popular saying is that by far the easiest way to get into MIT for grad school is to go there for undergrad and just stay there. Heck, MIT even has certain highly popular graduate programs such as the MEng EECS program which is specifically reserved for MIT undergrads only - outsiders can’t even apply at all. {And note, MIT doesn’t accept students for the MS EECS program but generally only awards that degree to students already in the PhD program.} </p>
<p>The other major engineering field in which status holds sway is entrepreneurship. MIT (and also obviously Stanford) is one of the main centers of tech entrepreneurship in the nation. And surely one of the major reasons for that is the highly elitist nature of venture capital. The truth is, if you don’t have access to an elite university brand name and social network, you’re probably not going to get a meeting with a VC firm. Like it or not, that’s how VC works. </p>
<p>Even if you don’t intend to become an entrepreneur yourself but would rather join a startup, you will find that many of the more famous ones are also notably elitist. For example, during its pre-IPO days, Google was notorious for considering only applicants from name-brand universities. Facebook does that today. And let’s face it, it is before the IPO that is exactly the best time to join Google (or Facebook). Practically everybody at Google before its IPO is rich, but you’re not going to become rich by joining Google now. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I agree that if you’re sure you want to be an engineer and don’t really care about engineering academia nor about startups/entrepreneurship, then it probably doesn’t really matter where you obtain your engineering degree.</p>
<p>I agree with you but in a different sense. There are a lot of smaller schools that have incredibly high engineering rankings. For example, Rowan University, in NJ, is just your average school, a 1150/1600 is the average SAT, but if you want the #16 in the nation Engineering (#3 in Chem Eng) then the average scores bump up to a 1450/1600. You don’t need to go to MIT and pay 55k a year when you could go to Rowan for Chem Eng and get one of the best educations out there for half the price.</p>
<p>My opinion (PhD mech engineer with 20+ years experience who hires a lot of engineers and scientists) is that if you go to one of the top few scehools that it will open doors that would not otherwise be opened for you. The more prestigous schools attract the higher-end companies for career fairs. However, I do agree with a lot of the original post in the sense that if your measure is ROI, it is hard to justify an MIT (and potentially lower GPA) at $55k/yr with a solid state school at < $20k/yr and potentially higher GPA.</p>
<p>Well, to be fair, MIT is one of the wealthiest universities in the world and can thereby provide an excellent education for poorer students for a cut-rate price. For example, I can think of plenty of people who found it cheaper to attend MIT than to attend their flagship state university. </p>
<p>But I agree that if you don’t qualify for aid, and you’re sure about working as an engineer (and don’t care about those ‘specialty’ engineering career paths mentioned above), then you may want to attend a cheaper school. Perhaps better yet, you may want to attend Olin or Cooper Union that, as a matter of policy, offer partial/full tuition scholarships to every student.</p>
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<p>GlobeTraveler</p>
<p>The idea behind going to one of the top Engineering schools like Stanford/MIT/Princeton is to get a taste of other areas to see if you like them so much that you actually ENJOY your work and don’t mind working the extra hours. The added bucks is just a benny to the equation.</p>
<p>regarding this comment by you:</p>
<p>“I rather KNOW that my paychecks are pretty much guaranteed than go for the riskier path and burn out and get nothing.”</p>
<p>an engineering degreed investment banker or hedge funder that burns out, typically burns out with millions of dollars in the bank (sometimes tens of millions), which would be a lot more than the “average engineer” that you state is simply satisfied with his bi-weekly check.</p>
<p>The average investment banker who “burns out” probably makes less than a million dollars and has already spent most of it. Not a bad place to be, but hardly set for life.</p>
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<p>True enough, many of those burnouts, while certainly far from poor, aren’t quite set for life. </p>
<p>But I think more importantly, if nothing else, they leave after 2 years with a gold-plated brand-name on their resume that they can leverage to a wide variety of other careers or entree to a top business school. Sadly, no such comparable opportunities are available to somebody who just worked as a regular engineer for 2 years.</p>
<p>You can participate in more interesting research, that’s one good reason.</p>
<p>But I’d say the gap in resources between MIT and Big State University is smaller than it used to be, as far as an undergrad (even one who wants to plug into undergraduate research) is concerned.</p>
<p>I think once you reach a certain level it’s not that huge a difference (there’s a big difference between studying engineering at South Dakota State U. and Ohio State U., but less of a difference between Ohio State U. and MIT for undergrad, IMHO), unless there is something especially good about X university’s program in Y engineering.</p>
<p>And, of course, if you plan to go to grad school, even “just” for a MS, your top undergrad school makes you a shoe-in for a top grad school.</p>
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<p>While I understand the “bennys” of working in IB, it’s the PROCESS of just getting into IB which did not make it attractive to me. I prefer a more “leisure” life where work is just a means to survive and I can make that work (and the process of obtaining work) as easy as possible. The image of “prestige” and “constant competition” did not drive me. I realize that for many so-called high-paying and/or prestigious positions, one has to pretty much eat and sleep it 24/7 (like IB). I wasn’t a 3.999 student and I am not social enough to always “network”.</p>
<p>Me?..I have to be downstairs in the “mancave” of my house on Saturdays and Sundays of the fall watching college and pro football…or taking 3-day getaways to the Caribbean for golf without thinking about a job. I wanted (and did) party hard in college. It was cool to know that just being a decent math/CS student at a halfway decent school pretty much got you hired. Now I don’t make millions, but I have been 6 digits for now more than half of my career.</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that your department may be really good even if your actual school isn’t at the very very top. Some departments are just a force of nature unto themselves.</p>
<p>Taking my own school (the University of Washington) as an example, biomedical engineering and computer science are both top 10 programs that are very well known within their respective fields and clearly much better than the university overall (not that it’s bad; some departments just stand out).</p>
<p>My own experience in computer science has been access to a lot of fantastic professors as well as unbelievable industry connections. Tech talks + dinner sponsored by various companies happen all the time – Amazon and Zillow were here just this week – and interviews for internships and full-time jobs are thrown around like candy. We have career fairs every quarter where 40-50 companies come to our department to try and court us (also lots of free swag). Not to mention unbelievable internship salaries; some people have reported earnings in excess of $40/hour, although this is at the very high end of the spectrum (Google et al.).</p>
<p>Anyways, maybe this is just a CS thing, but prospects within my field have never looked better. I’m sure the general experience is much the same at many other CS departments. I’m not at all interested in going to Wall Street when there’s so much great stuff going on within the tech industry.</p>
<p>tl;dr - Become a CS major!</p>
<p>Don’t better Engineering programs attract better students , which are more competitive and get better internships ? I suppose if you don’t care much , will you be happy with the least interesting work ?</p>
<p>The thing is not everyone…hell, not even 10% of all the so-called more competitive students will make it to IB. You have 100,000 applicants vying for 10000 job openings…then the competition WITHIN the work. Me?..I rather be in a position with 100,000 job openings with 10,000 applicants (when you add in certain software skills, security clearances, etc). Makes it easier to switch jobs, have nicer supervisors (lol) and less overall stress.</p>
<p>I’m so incredibly turned off by the investment banking discussion that seems to pop up every day now… on the engineering forums.</p>
<p>The proportion of people on this forum who would ever be competitive for an investment banking job is miniscule. If you’re talking about the big-league investment banks and not the boutique firms, you are very likely not going to get a job unless you went to Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, or Stanford - specifically. Other Ivy League undergrads, even above average ones, don’t have nearly as much of a shot. To think that these firms would, for some reason, prefer engineers is insane. Do you honestly believe that kids who were competitive enough to get into these schools don’t have the quantitative and analytical capacity to perform the addition and subtraction, and occasionally multiplication required as an investment banker? When they hire someone who didn’t go to one of these schools, there was probably some world-class networking going on.</p>
<p>Investment banks don’t disproportionally hire engineers as investment banking analysts. They hire MIT engineers just like they hire Harvard history majors.</p>
<p>Quants, software engineers, and IT people among others are all employed by such firms, sure. The difference between their prestige is like the difference between a civil engineer working at a football stadium and the football players themselves.</p>
<p>To understand this, you have to understand their business model. Investment banks rely on trust - and they get that trust by convincing their investors that they are deserving of that trust because they employ the best and the brightest. Unfortunately, regardless of what kind of mental horsepower you have, a firm can’t use the name of your public school to immediately gain that trust.</p>
<p>Engineers have an immense amount of opportunity to achieve great success, unless your idea of great success is in finance. The importance of the school you go to is probably a function of your ambition. An average engineering student with average ambition will probably achieve their goals at a typical engineering school. For the very top students, school prestige opens doors.</p>
<p>Investment bankers don’t make that much money when you consider their credentials. Burning out with tens millions in the bank? What movie did you see that on?</p>
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<p>Wouldn’t we all, but that only raises the question that I had asked before on other threads - how do you actually do that? That is to say, what are the actionable but non-obvious steps (especially regarding what you shouldn’t do) to become one of those vaunted and cossetted 10,000? </p>
<p>I ask only because there seem to be plenty of practicing engineers - especially non-software engineers - who never seem to enjoy anywhere near to those 10:1 jobs to applicants ratios with nice supervisors and low stress. Heck, we seem to have one rather voluble such poster (Mark77) who seems to be treating these forums as a plead for help. What are all these engineers doing wrong? Specifically, what may they be doing that they perhaps shouldn’t be doing?</p>
<p>Consider this: Most people who want to go to top engineering schools do not want the regular 9-5 engineering job. They actually want to make a difference through science by applying their talents.</p>
<p>I understand your point, but the difference between the engineering major at ‘any’ school and engineering at Cornell, MIT, Caltech, or Harvard is obvious. Students who study engineering at top schools are going to get the BEST engineering education to MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the world. </p>
<p>That’s just my two cents. :)</p>