Anonymous wrote:But you can't get a job in investment banking with an engineering degree from Illinois. This seems to be the common fall back of someone who themselves or their kids sacrificed so much to squeeze a bit extra out of their GPA or test scores to be admitted to the most selective schools.

People who insist you need an engineering degree from a top private college to get hired at top companies are basically stuck in their own heads. They only notice the MIT grad at Google or Apple while completely ignoring all the state school engineers killing it at the same companies. Even when you show them that Apple and Tesla hire from everywhere and care way more about what you can actually do, they dig in deeper.

Admitting a state school grad might be just as hireable feels like their sacrifice was pointless. So instead of dealing with that uncomfortable truth, they just keep insisting the elite private college degree matters more than actual engineering skills and problem solving ability. And when called out on this, they throw out a red herring about IB and private equity hiring from top privates while completely ignoring that finance firms hire for prestige and connections, not engineering skills

I don’t think anyone has dug in…you seem to not be able to understand what multiple posters have said…that the top schools provide a ton of optionality in your career, which again is why nearly 50% of grads from top schools don’t end up working in engineering.

The top IBs, PEs, etc particularly love engineering and other STEM majors at those schools which is why the engineering schools are able to place so many grads into those jobs.

I think others also agree that if you just want to get an engineering job at a large company and you really know that’s what you want…then save the $$$s.

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Anonymous wrote:Based on the enginerring discussion in this thread, it appears that most agree that only a small percentage of top students from elite schools see meaningful employment advantages. Given this reality, what justifies paying Ivy League or high-tier private tuition for an engineering degree when state flagships, regional universities, or lower-ranked private schools with merit aid can provide equivalent career outcomes?

They don’t have equivalent career outcomes. Top privates have better outcomes because they are smaller and have higher caliber graduates.

I don’t even understand your point. Small may be great for liberal arts but not for engineering. Think about it. GT, Cal, and Illinois aren't producing great engineers despite their size, they're producing them because of it. When you have 50 faculty members in one department instead of 5, you get cutting edge research, diverse expertise, and opportunities that small programs simply can't match.

This is why the truly elite engineering schools, whether public like Cal and GT or private like MIT and Stanford, are all substantial in size. Even the small elite privates aren't actually small. MIT has more than 11,000 students and Stanford has more than 17,000.

Small programs often mean limited options. Want to switch from mechanical to aerospace? Sorry, we don't offer that. Interested in AI applications in civil engineering? Our one CS professor is already overloaded.

The alumni networks at large schools aren't weaker, they're exponentially stronger. There are more GT grads in engineering leadership roles than graduates from most small programs combined.

Are you arguing MIT, Caltech, and Stanford are bigger than public schools? We are talking about undergraduates here.

Top privates simply have better students on average. That’s a fact.

Define 'better'? Are you defining better to mean slightly higher GPA/test scores at admission? If that is your definition you are stating the obvious that privates can admit the highest stats students because they have no obligation to educate the public in general.

But here's the problem with your logic: admission selectivity doesn't equal engineering competence. You're conflating two completely different things, which are high school performance metrics with professional engineering ability.

Is there any evidence these students are actually "better" while in college, when they graduate, or, really the point, as practicing engineers? Maybe there's a reason state flagships compete strongly and often outrank elite privates in engineering rankings. Could it be because there's no daylight in performance in the workplace?

Constantly stating elite schools are better because they admit better students is intellectually lazy and really just a circular argument that concludes "students are better because they got into elite schools." What you really are saying is that "better" is based on a snapshot of someone at the end of their junior year in high school. I'm naming this the "glory days" argument.

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Anonymous wrote:Based on the enginerring discussion in this thread, it appears that most agree that only a small percentage of top students from elite schools see meaningful employment advantages. Given this reality, what justifies paying Ivy League or high-tier private tuition for an engineering degree when state flagships, regional universities, or lower-ranked private schools with merit aid can provide equivalent career outcomes?

They don’t have equivalent career outcomes. Top privates have better outcomes because they are smaller and have higher caliber graduates.

I don’t even understand your point. Small may be great for liberal arts but not for engineering. Think about it. GT, Cal, and Illinois aren't producing great engineers despite their size, they're producing them because of it. When you have 50 faculty members in one department instead of 5, you get cutting edge research, diverse expertise, and opportunities that small programs simply can't match.

This is why the truly elite engineering schools, whether public like Cal and GT or private like MIT and Stanford, are all substantial in size. Even the small elite privates aren't actually small. MIT has more than 11,000 students and Stanford has more than 17,000.

Small programs often mean limited options. Want to switch from mechanical to aerospace? Sorry, we don't offer that. Interested in AI applications in civil engineering? Our one CS professor is already overloaded.

The alumni networks at large schools aren't weaker, they're exponentially stronger. There are more GT grads in engineering leadership roles than graduates from most small programs combined.

Are you arguing MIT, Caltech, and Stanford are bigger than public schools? We are talking about undergraduates here.

Top privates simply have better students on average. That’s a fact.

But you can't get a job in investment banking with an engineering degree from Illinois. This seems to be the common fall back of someone who themselves or their kids sacrificed so much to squeeze a bit extra out of their GPA or test scores to be admitted to the most selective schools.

People who insist you need an engineering degree from a top private college to get hired at top companies are basically stuck in their own heads. They only notice the MIT grad at Google or Apple while completely ignoring all the state school engineers killing it at the same companies. Even when you show them that Apple and Tesla hire from everywhere and care way more about what you can actually do, they dig in deeper.

Admitting a state school grad might be just as hireable feels like their sacrifice was pointless. So instead of dealing with that uncomfortable truth, they just keep insisting the elite private college degree matters more than actual engineering skills and problem solving ability. And when called out on this, they throw out a red herring about IB and private equity hiring from top privates while completely ignoring that finance firms hire for prestige and connections, not engineering skills

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Anonymous wrote:It depends. If one wants to work at the highest levels of Engineering(top tech consulting, tech startup culture, R&D that requires a PhD), then you need a top school especially in a down economy. School matters more when the job market is slower. Look what is happening to CS: hiring has significantly slowed and unemployment is up...at all but the prestigious names (top privates such as 6 of the ivies, stanford, CMU, MIT and very top publics, UCB, GT, Mich, UIUC...). The same group of schools produces the highest chance of top tier engineering jobs.

Not in my experience. Some of the most successful engineers I know (making 7 figure salaries at faang type companies) have degrees from little known state schools.

Of course engineers can make great money and have a great career and never have gone to the top engineering schools. No one is arguing that. But, it’s nice when your kid does get the opportunity to go to one of the top engineering schools and the opportunities that will present them. Both of these things can be true at the same time.

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Anonymous wrote:You will find a job, correct? My know-it-all brother-in-law states this, he's in his 50's and doesn't except things have changed that requirements are more demanding. Other opinions?

Most people who go to college will find jobs, regardless of the level of school they attend. In some fields, including engineering, nursing, education, and some allied health fields the name on the diploma matters less than in some other fields such as law or investment banking.

I'm so baffled by the idea that people have never talked to their neighbors. Do you know how many successful parents of your kids' friends didn't go to amazing schools?

Anonymous wrote:It depends. If one wants to work at the highest levels of Engineering(top tech consulting, tech startup culture, R&D that requires a PhD), then you need a top school especially in a down economy. School matters more when the job market is slower. Look what is happening to CS: hiring has significantly slowed and unemployment is up...at all but the prestigious names (top privates such as 6 of the ivies, stanford, CMU, MIT and very top publics, UCB, GT, Mich, UIUC...). The same group of schools produces the highest chance of top tier engineering jobs.

Not in my experience. Some of the most successful engineers I know (making 7 figure salaries at faang type companies) have degrees from little known state schools.

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Anonymous wrote:Top engineering firms only really actively recruit grads from the Top engineering schools. Not that other grads won’t eventually end up somewhere. They will just have a different path to get there.

This. Prestige matters for engineering at the top levels. There are about 15 ivy/privates and 5 publics that are far above the rest

Yes but remember there are thousands of students at each of these top schools and top companies will not hire them all, only the top students. So the average Joes there will end up in the same places as students from other colleges.

career outcomes at the 1and 5 yr mark as well as phd matriculation lists indicate the average joe engineer at stanford, princeton, penn, MIT, CMU UCB et al do much much better than the average joe at VT or NC state. Not even close.

For DCuM, that is a fairly precise claim. Source?

DP....most of those schools have data published online. We looked that up when ours was applying to engineering. You can break it down by subfield and degree(BS v PhD ) at many schools. we happen to have family members who are or have been in academia and industry in Engineering and all three came up with almost the same 10-15 schools to target. They said aim for match of peers first and the highest level coursework available. Their collective experience was that teaching is quite different at average public T50 engineering versus elite(UCB/GT/ivy/mit /stanford).

We get it...You need to justify that tuition bill somehow. But your kid will be working alongside Auburn and Cal State grads regardless, and the market doesn't care about your academic pedigree rankings.

Assuming your kid just wants to work at Bechtel or the equivalent…but tell me how many Auburn or Cal State grads you will work next to at a VC fund or a hedge fund or a PE fund or McKinsey…or all the other options available.

Some kids actually want to work as engineers. My kid wants to build things, so Bechtel would be great. Why get an engineering degree if you don't want to be an engineer? If it's just to prove you're smart, isn't an Ivy or an elite private college degree enough? Getting an engineering degree from a school with a weaker engineering program seems counterproductive. If my kid aspired to work for a VC fund or hedge fund, I'd recommend going to the school where employers recruit for those jobs and getting the degree that's most in demand for those roles. If that's Yale or Harvard with their weak-sauce engineering programs, then that would be the ticket.

Why get an English degree if you don't want to be a writer or English teacher...why get a History degree if you don't want to be a historian...the list goes on.

Most of these kids probably do plan to become engineers, but then their horizons broaden and they decide as an example to take their technical knowledge to work at a VC and invest in the next great robotics or space company.

It's funny that the myriad of opportunities available to these kids is now a negative aspect of these schools.

Anonymous wrote:Medical school too.

Agree.

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Anonymous wrote:Top engineering firms only really actively recruit grads from the Top engineering schools. Not that other grads won’t eventually end up somewhere. They will just have a different path to get there.

This. Prestige matters for engineering at the top levels. There are about 15 ivy/privates and 5 publics that are far above the rest

Yes but remember there are thousands of students at each of these top schools and top companies will not hire them all, only the top students. So the average Joes there will end up in the same places as students from other colleges.

career outcomes at the 1and 5 yr mark as well as phd matriculation lists indicate the average joe engineer at stanford, princeton, penn, MIT, CMU UCB et al do much much better than the average joe at VT or NC state. Not even close.

For DCuM, that is a fairly precise claim. Source?

DP....most of those schools have data published online. We looked that up when ours was applying to engineering. You can break it down by subfield and degree(BS v PhD ) at many schools. we happen to have family members who are or have been in academia and industry in Engineering and all three came up with almost the same 10-15 schools to target. They said aim for match of peers first and the highest level coursework available. Their collective experience was that teaching is quite different at average public T50 engineering versus elite(UCB/GT/ivy/mit /stanford).

We get it...You need to justify that tuition bill somehow. But your kid will be working alongside Auburn and Cal State grads regardless, and the market doesn't care about your academic pedigree rankings.

Assuming your kid just wants to work at Bechtel or the equivalent…but tell me how many Auburn or Cal State grads you will work next to at a VC fund or a hedge fund or a PE fund or McKinsey…or all the other options available.

Yes, because working for a hedge fund is what they should aspire to do.

It's not what all aspire...but it's great to have the option. Nearly 50% of engineering grads from top schools don't work directly as engineers. They take advantage of the other options available to them.

Anonymous wrote:What is with the demeaning comments about BSN nursing as a profession? If you don’t want to go to med school or have a strong desire to do direct patient care you are somehow less than everyone else in the medical field? Grow up.

+ 1 .

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Anonymous wrote:Top engineering firms only really actively recruit grads from the Top engineering schools. Not that other grads won’t eventually end up somewhere. They will just have a different path to get there.

This. Prestige matters for engineering at the top levels. There are about 15 ivy/privates and 5 publics that are far above the rest

Yes but remember there are thousands of students at each of these top schools and top companies will not hire them all, only the top students. So the average Joes there will end up in the same places as students from other colleges.

career outcomes at the 1and 5 yr mark as well as phd matriculation lists indicate the average joe engineer at stanford, princeton, penn, MIT, CMU UCB et al do much much better than the average joe at VT or NC state. Not even close.

For DCuM, that is a fairly precise claim. Source?

DP....most of those schools have data published online. We looked that up when ours was applying to engineering. You can break it down by subfield and degree(BS v PhD ) at many schools. we happen to have family members who are or have been in academia and industry in Engineering and all three came up with almost the same 10-15 schools to target. They said aim for match of peers first and the highest level coursework available. Their collective experience was that teaching is quite different at average public T50 engineering versus elite(UCB/GT/ivy/mit /stanford).

We get it...You need to justify that tuition bill somehow. But your kid will be working alongside Auburn and Cal State grads regardless, and the market doesn't care about your academic pedigree rankings.

Assuming your kid just wants to work at Bechtel or the equivalent…but tell me how many Auburn or Cal State grads you will work next to at a VC fund or a hedge fund or a PE fund or McKinsey…or all the other options available.

Yes, because working for a hedge fund is what they should aspire to do.

I sure hope that's sarcasm. As an engineer, even the thought of working for a hedge fund makes me nauseous and so not what I would've gone into engineering school "aspiring" to.

If not, you do you.

Yes, projects need money to be built but the two pursuits are not the same. Shove a person with a passion for engineering into finance and they'll likely be miserable (but rich?).

Yes, it was.

🤓 Whew!

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Anonymous wrote:Top engineering firms only really actively recruit grads from the Top engineering schools. Not that other grads won’t eventually end up somewhere. They will just have a different path to get there.

This. Prestige matters for engineering at the top levels. There are about 15 ivy/privates and 5 publics that are far above the rest

Yes but remember there are thousands of students at each of these top schools and top companies will not hire them all, only the top students. So the average Joes there will end up in the same places as students from other colleges.

career outcomes at the 1and 5 yr mark as well as phd matriculation lists indicate the average joe engineer at stanford, princeton, penn, MIT, CMU UCB et al do much much better than the average joe at VT or NC state. Not even close.

For DCuM, that is a fairly precise claim. Source?

DP....most of those schools have data published online. We looked that up when ours was applying to engineering. You can break it down by subfield and degree(BS v PhD ) at many schools. we happen to have family members who are or have been in academia and industry in Engineering and all three came up with almost the same 10-15 schools to target. They said aim for match of peers first and the highest level coursework available. Their collective experience was that teaching is quite different at average public T50 engineering versus elite(UCB/GT/ivy/mit /stanford).

We get it...You need to justify that tuition bill somehow. But your kid will be working alongside Auburn and Cal State grads regardless, and the market doesn't care about your academic pedigree rankings.

Assuming your kid just wants to work at Bechtel or the equivalent…but tell me how many Auburn or Cal State grads you will work next to at a VC fund or a hedge fund or a PE fund or McKinsey…or all the other options available.

Yes, because working for a hedge fund is what they should aspire to do.

I sure hope that's sarcasm. As an engineer, even the thought of working for a hedge fund makes me nauseous and so not what I would've gone into engineering school "aspiring" to.

If not, you do you.

Yes, projects need money to be built but the two pursuits are not the same. Shove a person with a passion for engineering into finance and they'll likely be miserable (but rich?).

Yes, it was.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top engineering firms only really actively recruit grads from the Top engineering schools. Not that other grads won’t eventually end up somewhere. They will just have a different path to get there.

This. Prestige matters for engineering at the top levels. There are about 15 ivy/privates and 5 publics that are far above the rest

Yes but remember there are thousands of students at each of these top schools and top companies will not hire them all, only the top students. So the average Joes there will end up in the same places as students from other colleges.

career outcomes at the 1and 5 yr mark as well as phd matriculation lists indicate the average joe engineer at stanford, princeton, penn, MIT, CMU UCB et al do much much better than the average joe at VT or NC state. Not even close.

For DCuM, that is a fairly precise claim. Source?

DP....most of those schools have data published online. We looked that up when ours was applying to engineering. You can break it down by subfield and degree(BS v PhD ) at many schools. we happen to have family members who are or have been in academia and industry in Engineering and all three came up with almost the same 10-15 schools to target. They said aim for match of peers first and the highest level coursework available. Their collective experience was that teaching is quite different at average public T50 engineering versus elite(UCB/GT/ivy/mit /stanford).

We get it...You need to justify that tuition bill somehow. But your kid will be working alongside Auburn and Cal State grads regardless, and the market doesn't care about your academic pedigree rankings.

Assuming your kid just wants to work at Bechtel or the equivalent…but tell me how many Auburn or Cal State grads you will work next to at a VC fund or a hedge fund or a PE fund or McKinsey…or all the other options available.

Some kids actually want to work as engineers. My kid wants to build things, so Bechtel would be great. Why get an engineering degree if you don't want to be an engineer? If it's just to prove you're smart, isn't an Ivy or an elite private college degree enough? Getting an engineering degree from a school with a weaker engineering program seems counterproductive. If my kid aspired to work for a VC fund or hedge fund, I'd recommend going to the school where employers recruit for those jobs and getting the degree that's most in demand for those roles. If that's Yale or Harvard with their weak-sauce engineering programs, then that would be the ticket.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top engineering firms only really actively recruit grads from the Top engineering schools. Not that other grads won’t eventually end up somewhere. They will just have a different path to get there.

This. Prestige matters for engineering at the top levels. There are about 15 ivy/privates and 5 publics that are far above the rest

Yes but remember there are thousands of students at each of these top schools and top companies will not hire them all, only the top students. So the average Joes there will end up in the same places as students from other colleges.

career outcomes at the 1and 5 yr mark as well as phd matriculation lists indicate the average joe engineer at stanford, princeton, penn, MIT, CMU UCB et al do much much better than the average joe at VT or NC state. Not even close.

For DCuM, that is a fairly precise claim. Source?

DP....most of those schools have data published online. We looked that up when ours was applying to engineering. You can break it down by subfield and degree(BS v PhD ) at many schools. we happen to have family members who are or have been in academia and industry in Engineering and all three came up with almost the same 10-15 schools to target. They said aim for match of peers first and the highest level coursework available. Their collective experience was that teaching is quite different at average public T50 engineering versus elite(UCB/GT/ivy/mit /stanford).

We get it...You need to justify that tuition bill somehow. But your kid will be working alongside Auburn and Cal State grads regardless, and the market doesn't care about your academic pedigree rankings.

Assuming your kid just wants to work at Bechtel or the equivalent…but tell me how many Auburn or Cal State grads you will work next to at a VC fund or a hedge fund or a PE fund or McKinsey…or all the other options available.

Yes, because working for a hedge fund is what they should aspire to do.

I sure hope that's sarcasm. As an engineer, even the thought of working for a hedge fund makes me nauseous and so not what I would've gone into engineering school "aspiring" to.

If not, you do you.

Yes, projects need money to be built but the two pursuits are not the same. Shove a person with a passion for engineering into finance and they'll likely be miserable (but rich?).