Engineering- importance of going top 10

[Anonymous]

Clearly DCUM posters are wedded to the pursuit of top20 or top10 universities to justify the time, money, effort and misery they put their children through to achieve this mostly pointless goal.

Can someone point me to an engineering job that would be open to Penn graduate but not to a Penn State graduate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Clearly DCUM posters are wedded to the pursuit of top20 or top10 universities to justify the time, money, effort and misery they put their children through to achieve this mostly pointless goal.

Can someone point me to an engineering job that would be open to Penn graduate but not to a Penn State graduate?

Sure, finance/banking will hire engineers from Penn but not Penn State, at least not right at graduation.

But if you actually want to work in engineering, the Penn State alumni network is probably much larger and more beneficial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Got my PhD from Georgia Tech in ChemE but at work, folks only care about if you are from an Ivy, Stanford. I work in Government as a civilian and we spending so much money on DEI and still only Ivy folks get selected.

Are your colleagues engineers? Do you mean ivy engineers are picked over Georgia Tech? That shocks me only because GT is a top tier engineering school

With any Tech degree - you need soft skills as well; guess what got kids into Ivy Grad School? With a tech degree the two highest paying jobs start at the people end - Sales Engineering, then consulting, then engineering, ... I went to interviews where they said they prefer Ivy over MIT or Caltech because they find better people skills. I've hired/rejected UVA CS Grads because of people skills.

If you are outside Georgia - GT is ranked up there; you probably need an MBA network class or such.

You are correct - when you are blindly sending resumes right before graduation then yes - the Ivies matter. After 1-2 years, if you have "Ivy" on your resume then you have a target to hit. The expectation is that you need to perform better than a GMU or VCU kid. The GMU/VCU kid might make lower than you - initially, so you better bring it.

Not true. I work in consulting and make half of what engineering make. Sales engineering is commission based and could have very bad quarters if no sales.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

Actually for undergrad it's still similar. UIUC and Purdue still in the top 10. UT Austin just barely misses top 10 at #11.

As pointed out above, USNWR undergraduate engineering rankings are based 'solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty at peer institutions who participated in a peer assessment survey." It is not clear whether those evaluations gibe with those of employers or even on what standards (other than their limited knowledge of other institutions) the deans and faculty are basing their judgment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Got my PhD from Georgia Tech in ChemE but at work, folks only care about if you are from an Ivy, Stanford. I work in Government as a civilian and we spending so much money on DEI and still only Ivy folks get selected.

Are your colleagues engineers? Do you mean ivy engineers are picked over Georgia Tech? That shocks me only because GT is a top tier engineering school

With any Tech degree - you need soft skills as well; guess what got kids into Ivy Grad School? With a tech degree the two highest paying jobs start at the people end - Sales Engineering, then consulting, then engineering, ... I went to interviews where they said they prefer Ivy over MIT or Caltech because they find better people skills. I've hired/rejected UVA CS Grads because of people skills.

If you are outside Georgia - GT is ranked up there; you probably need an MBA network class or such.

You are correct - when you are blindly sending resumes right before graduation then yes - the Ivies matter. After 1-2 years, if you have "Ivy" on your resume then you have a target to hit. The expectation is that you need to perform better than a GMU or VCU kid. The GMU/VCU kid might make lower than you - initially, so you better bring it.

Not true. I work in consulting and make half of what engineering make. Sales engineering is commission based and could have very bad quarters if no sales.

It all depends on who can do your job. Where I'm at - we have to take a pay cut to work in Pure Engineering unless you roll in as a Senior Engineer or higher. A lot of these guys don't want to interact with strangers or go to client sites. I had people try to switch and find out they are not qualified for the position that their salary translates to. I can do an Engineer's job it doesn't work the other way.

As per Sales Engineers - the base salary is comparable (or they would be consultants) and the commissions get them over. They are not stupid if its not worth the added stress they wont do it. And if you are good at your job then you are way way better-off. I'm talking about driving a Porsche better off.

Pure Sales their base salary is higher and the commissions are much higher - I'm talking about: Country Club with Senators rich. These guys usually have an MBA - a few from the ivies where I work at.

I did hear the FANG engineers do make like $500K to $1M+ with stock options. I also heard this is not the norm. The ML and Data Science guys are killing it at all positions as a recent trend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The land grant colleges typically have good engineering programs and are well supported.

Which ones are these?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The land grant colleges typically have good engineering programs and are well supported.

Which ones are these?

https://www.nifa.usda.gov/about-nifa/how-we-work/partnerships/land-grant-colleges-universities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

Actually for undergrad it's still similar. UIUC and Purdue still in the top 10. UT Austin just barely misses top 10 at #11.

As pointed out above, USNWR undergraduate engineering rankings are based 'solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty at peer institutions who participated in a peer assessment survey." It is not clear whether those evaluations gibe with those of employers or even on what standards (other than their limited knowledge of other institutions) the deans and faculty are basing their judgment.

Ok, so when the OP says "top 10"--exactly which 10 are considered "top?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know conventional wisdom is that it doesn’t matter where you go as long it’s abet certified, but beyond that, what really is the difference between a Purdue or Michigan vs Ohio state or Penn state vs Pitt. Are the top 10 worth striving for and then beyond that it doesn’t matter? Should you go to Penn state rather Pitt because of ranking? Surely the “top” schools offer something more? Or are rankings in this area basically meaningless?

I went to UIUC and the US News rankings show MIT, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, Cal Tech, UIUC, Michigan, Cornell, Purdue, and Carnegie Mellon as the Top 10 engineering programs.

I think that GT, UC-Berkeley, UIUC, Michigan and Purdue are more similar to each other than the others. I think the schools in the Top 25 or so that are peers include Penn State, Maryland, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Virginia Tech, etc.

The main difference between UIUC and the top 10 public universities versus the other top 25 publics in engineering is really the size and quality of the programs. They just good in the big disciplines like EE, ME, CS, CE, etc. They are good at all of them and have some of the top faculty, researchers, facilities, and graduate programs. While other schools will have very strong programs in some, and then others might be more luckluster or nothing special, or even tiny.

The other is that top 10 public universities have HUGE PhD programs. Very big and an insane amount of PhD candidates from all over the world. So the research is much more varied, it is better funded and has more diversified funding. The type of research you can do when you have a monster sized budget and 500 PhDs in EE and CE is much different if you only have 12 PhDs.

So what is the benefit to undergrads?

1) Recruiting is nationwide and they will go much deeper into the classes at those schools. The further you go down in the rankings it is much less varied job opportunities and it is more regional.
2) It is really easy to get research. It is to the point they professors and PhDs are begging for research help and will pay and compete for the best students. As a result, it is really easy to find people to network with to help you if you plan on graduate school or academia.
3) The breath of classes is more varied your junior and senior years. The size of the faculty and undergraduate population, the funding the facilities just lets them to create more interesting classes, activities, do more competition teams, etc.

But make no mistake, it wasn't like UIUC was like a gatekeeper for some types of jobs. This wasn't like investment banking or stuff like that. Also, not every student got great jobs. If you were really smart, hardworking, and diligent, you were going to do well. But I knew guys that had mental health issues, kids that got burned out, lacked motivation, didn't do well in class and struggled to get jobs. I remember my junior year, they took in a ton of community college kids and many of them struggled. I knew a ton of them transferred to liberal arts or business, many took like IT jobs or worked in software related consulting or basically sales jobs.

The top students at schools like UIC (Illinois-Chicago) got better jobs than a lot of the bottom 1/3 at UIUC.

UIUC, Purdue, Michigan, Cal, and Georgia Tech gave you more opportunities and the better students could take advantage of them. But it wasn't a guarantee.

I visited VT (looked like a very good engineering program) for their open house and talked to a lot of the students in EE and CE. They seemed to have very similar experiences as I did, but I just thought there were more of everything at UIUC (including stress and competition).