General Chat / College Thread

It depends on the field. 

Agreed with itm. In structural, you almost need it to be a designer and do anything cool. BS's get stuck doing construction management or inspection the rest of their careers. 

tbh getting a masters in engineering is the best way to increase your clout for higher-paying jobs. I'm in CompSci/CompEng and I definitely don't want to be a code monkey so getting a masters is really my only option. Especially since everyone and their dog is getting into CS these days

It also depends on what you want to do out of college and what type of job you want.

I'm a civil engineer working for a local consulting firm in the midwest, so yes saxman's comment about masters degrees and structural engineering (a specialty branch of civil engineering) is true. However for me, I am content on the construction focused area of civil, where a bachelor's is all you need at the moment. It will be important to obtain my professional engineering license for career advancement.

My father is a Mechanical Engineer. He works for a equipment enclosure and protection company. Initially working in refrigeration in appliance manufacturing, he obtained a master's while at his first job, but not a master's of mechanical engineering, interestingly. He opted for a master's of engineering management. He also obtained and maintains his professional engineering license.

My brother is a biomedical engineer. He landed a job in the medical device manufacturing industry with a bachelor's. As far as I know he isn't licensed, but did pick up a MBA shortly into his professional career.

My sister is a computer science major that landed a full time job at the company she had an internship with, also has a bachelor's degree.

A friend of mine is an electrical engineer like Coupon plans to be, and he opted for a job with a private utility. He had an internship and was offered a full time position with a bachelor's once graduated. He works in power distribution and transmission planning. As far as I know he's not licensed.

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So my advice would be to fight as hard as you can for an internship if you don't already have one under your belt. there's a decent chance that firm will want you once you have your bachelor's. That opens the gate to getting your firm to help pay for your master's degree should you choose to pursue it, which saves you a lot of money in 2 ways:

1) most obviously you're not paying the exorbitant tuition fees.
2) you start earning a paycheck 2 years sooner, also contributing to a retirement plan.

I'm starting my 4th year in industry and so far there's been zero push for me to earn a master's, and none of my former classmates and coworkers are interested in one either. the focus here is definitely experience and getting licensed.

Good luck!

EDIT: Auto-correct is a B....

 

However for me, I am content on the construction focused area of civil, where a bachelor's is all you need at the moment. However for me, it will be important to contain my professional engineering license for career advancement.

 

Ughh, I read this and realized how much of a dick I sounded like in my post. I've got the utmost respect for anyone in construction management/inspection, I just phrased it as "stuck there" because I personally would not want to do it. In fact, my reason for having the utmost respect for them is the same reason I wouldn't want to personally do it. Lots of travelling, long hours, stress when things on the job site don't go the right way, etc. 

But Seph's comments overall line up with my view completely. A comment on Seph's item 2), I'm currently not sure if me spending 3.5 years full-time getting my PhD was worth it as far as making money and retirement savings go. I was fortunate in that the vast majority of my research studies were funded through a research assistantship, but that's not the case for everyone. It's also really difficult to get funding like this for a master degree (because most of the time profs don't want to spend the time training someone and getting them involved if they'll be leaving in 1-2 years anyway). For my case, two of those years could've been spent making money and saving. I think I'll make it up in the future (as PhDs in my industry tend to move up the command chain a bit faster), but that remains to be seen. Getting my license (hopefully testing in October) will probably help too.

I think Seph hit it on the head there though. Really depends on what you want to do in your industry and what the requirements are. I did two internships during my undergrad years, and I do think they were very helpful, even if it didn't turn into a job opportunity for me.

This thread was created because my class (Coups, shogo, MorganFan, dr dirt, others) was trying to decide where to go to college. Now that four years are over, how did it work out for everyone?

I graduated on time with my bachelor's in civil engineering from Purdue, with a respectable GPA and good internships. I'm heading to Virginia Tech in about 2 months to get my master's in geotechnical engineering. College was a very positive experience for me overall, and I'm excited to keep learning, move to a new state, and drink even more than I did in undergrad at VT. 

it worked out pretty well for me; it's crazy that 4 years have passed since the beginning of this thread!

i also graduated on time with my bachelor's in electrical engineering from rice with an eh gpa lol. i'll be in fort collins colorado for the medium-term future doing custom analog VLSI design for one of the semiconductor companies in the area. i managed to scrounge a position that usually requires a masters or phd so i'll be holding off on my masters for the near future, or at least not get one unless my career starts flat-lining. 

looking forward to hearing from the rest of our class!

Finished my BA a few months ago <3

Going to art school in a massive city has taught me a lot. The real education is the inspiration I found within the city, from the DIY subcultures to the artists living here. If anyone has the opportunity and interest in pursuing something in the art world/industry, be sure to find the right people who advocate for your work/voice. Those vital relationships can get you far and awesome opportunities you think would never happen to you. Also just have good taste, don't create art similar to your peers. 

I'm now a full time freelancer in Chicago, hopefully moving to New York within the next year or so when covid calms down. 

So nice to see everyones accomplishments, crazy how my four years are now over !! Excited for life!