evan_aggie said:
TXTransplant said:
Definitely yes. Mine applied to Auburn, too, and they offered him just enough scholarship money to make the tuition about the same as in-state at TAMU.
Some of his scholarship money at MSU is specific to children of alumni.
He wants to do engineering, so that levels the playing field a lot. I have to say though, it's gonna irk me if I have to pay anything. But I guess I can look at it as that's where all the refund checks I got back in the day are going.
Not sure of your exact situation, but in my industry, it has become apparent that where you go to school for bachelors, even at a state school, actually matters quite a bit.
I see hiring events and preferential focus to a small subset of universities in computer engineering. This is really difficult to look that far ahead, given 70% of freshman change their majors, so how could they know what they'll end up in?
But if I'm being honest, I definitely would have done my masters degree elsewhere, and potentially my bs depending on financials.
-University of Michigan
-Unversity of Illinois Urbana Champagne
-Georgia Tech
-Purdue
Chemical engineering. Since there are so many jobs for us in the south, with Houston being a ChE's version of Mecca, most of the SEC schools have a strong presence at all of the majors (XOM, CVX, Shell, Dow, etc).
It's more difficult if you want to get into biotech, but after that first job, work experience trumps most everything.
I would not recommend anyone get a Master's in ChemE. Our annual salary survey has shown year over year that it's not valued from a monetary standpoint. Average salaries are pretty much equal for BS and MS professionals.
The PhD is a whole other animal. If you want to go into academics, that's where degree pedigree matters. But even I was able to get an assistant prof job. Unless you want to do research and/or pursue an academic career, there is no need to pursue a PhD, though. There are many days when I think I should have just gone to law school, based on what I do now.
Industry would be more difficult to break into right after finishing the PhD, as the few companies who even recruit PhD chemical engineers do so at very specific schools. But I'm in industry now, and degree and work experience got me here (not the school name on the diploma).
Your point about recruiting is a great one, though. Back when I was in academics, I used to tell potential students and their parents to specifically ask what companies recent graduates went to work for.
I worked at a small university in a heavily DOD-dependent area. VERY few students went to work in the chemical industry, and most would up working for the government or a government contractor. Needless to say, it's not a school I would recommend for chemical engineering.
