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I studied chemical engineering, but I'm mostly a biologist now. It's funny how life works out.
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Oct 2, 2009 01:20
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The Wensey posted:Any Chemical Engineers in the house? I'd seriously considering it, as well as straight-up Chemistry. Care to enlighten me? I have a bachelors and masters in chemical engineering (currently working on a PhD); feel free to ask any specific questions and I'll try to answer them.
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Oct 3, 2009 14:23
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Blobbo posted:Same with Oxford and Cambridge in the UK - I believe they only issue BAs at undergraduate level. Seems to be a trend with older universities. Princeton only hands out BSEs in its engineering school (likely due to the sort of attitudes illustrated above). Everything else is an AB at the undergraduate level.
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Oct 3, 2009 22:09
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Realjones posted:I know I'm not the only person here who shares this sentiment: don't bother with bioengineering. A lot of biomedical engineering departments discourage students from picking it up as an undergraduate degree unless they're planning on either going to graduate or medical school. It's just too new of a field. I pretty much did what you recommend (majored in chemical engineering, but did all my upper electives in advanced bio-courses), and am pretty happy about it.
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Oct 4, 2009 02:48
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Magnificent Quiver posted:The point is to learn math, not be good at it already. You can start off an engineering curriculum with Calc 1 if you want to. I did this and was absolutely fine.
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Oct 7, 2009 14:16
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Thoguh posted:When I'm recruiting I am much more impressed by someone with a decent GPA that I can have a conversation with than someone with a 4.0 that has no personality. What about the 4.0s with awesome personalities? Seriously, this false dichotomy drives me nuts. Having a high GPA doesn't mean inversely having a low set of social skills. People prejudge perfect/high GPA engineering students way too much; thankfully, most of them just stay in academia or go to medical school where they don't have to deal with these sorts of attitudes. Edit: Not trying to harp on you exclusively or anything, it's just I see this idea floated around all the time and it's never made any sense to me. I know a lot of people with really high GPAs in engineering who are awesome to hang out with, have normal social lives, and are extremely successful. I guess maybe it's just my anecdotes against everyone else; maybe I was lucky enough to go to universities that didn't attract whiny over-achieving nerds with no personalities. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Oct 11, 2009 |
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Oct 11, 2009 01:14
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Thoguh posted:When I'm at a career fair, people have about 30 seconds to make an impression on me. When someone hands me a resume I scan it and try to start a quick conversation. Having a 4.0 isn't going to hurt you in any way, but having a 4.0 and having no questions about my company or being able to idly chat with me for a short time means they aren't going in the "invite to interview" pile. Have you noticed a disproportionate amount of 4.0 students who can't hack your personality test compared to other students? I'm honestly curious, just because my experience has been so different. It's usually the ones with lower GPAs who I find dull and somewhat sparse in the way of interesting chit-chat. Then again, I'm not a recruiter. Joiny posted:What's a bad GPA for engineers? Mine is a B- but I pick things up pretty fast, have a good personality, and have had a relevant internship (mostly just doing QA.) I'm worried when I start applying for jobs in December my GPA will just screw me, but hopefully a B- isn't all that bad. I've usually heard that anything below a 3.0 is bad news, but I had plenty of friends in the 2.6-2.7 range get good jobs. Then again, it was a decent economy when I graduated. Where you went to school can sometimes matter too, but not as much as a lot of people think (at least with regards to undergrad).
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Oct 11, 2009 05:29
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Thoguh posted:If those I wouldn't necessarily say that they are any worse than any other group in failing the personality test, it's just that a lot of them who do fail make it pretty obvious that they feel that their GPA means they don't have to act interested or try to get an interview. They'll hand me the resume and then just stare at me and just give me a "yes" or "no" even though I purposely ask open-ended questions. I can dig this I guess, some people really do become married to their GPAs. I certainly was when I was in undergrad, but then again my goal was going to graduate school so I didn't interview for jobs. I was mostly just attacking the idea that all 4.0s/high GPA students are somehow incapable of interacting with human beings, but it seems that you don't inherently believe this. Not too surprising that you don't see as many with high GPAs, as most who work that hard to maintain them have graduate/professional school plans. Thoguh posted:Your GPA only matters for that first job though, after that nobody cares and it's all about your experience and networking on the job. On this we can both agree. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Oct 11, 2009 |
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Oct 11, 2009 19:06
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davepsilon posted:any financial engineers out there? What schools offer this major?
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Oct 12, 2009 19:22
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Roumba posted:I royally hosed myself hard the last two semesters and dropped my GPA to ~2.25 at the end of my sophomore year. Because of this I've no hope of getting any kind of intern/coop because every one I see requesting Nuclear Engineering has minimum GPA requirements that I don't meet. Should I just switch majors now, or try to claw my way back up and hope that by the end of the next 2/3 years I'll be an attractive candidate for a job? Yikes, is there any way you can retake courses or correct why your GPA crashed so hard? If you were around a 2.6-2.7 I'd tell you to stick in there, but you might want to consider other options.
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Oct 20, 2009 03:12
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Dangbe posted:-Is the school that I attend all that important for the degree? Some companies tend to recruit only at certain universities, and there will always be a certain sheen to a degree from a place like MIT/Stanford/etc. It can make a difference if you're planning to apply to graduate school, though even here it's somewhat arbitrary.* However, for the most part like many posters have already said, after getting your first job and working for a while it won't be anything more than just another line on your resume. It's certainly not as important as some universities make it out to be; it's amazing the sort of braggadocio that comes from some current student bodies with regards to their US News ranking (I'm looking at you Rose-Hulman). Really, any half-way decent four-year public university with an engineering program should be fine. This doesn't mean though that you should scrimp when it comes to picking a school. The quality of a department can make or break how much you enjoy what you study (not to mention how well they actually prepare you), and universities with good reputations for educating their students tend to be worth it. I'm not even mentioning all of the aspects of a university which are beyond the immediate academic realm (though as a non-traditional student you likely won't care as much about that). You should definitely do some research before committing yourself anywhere. See how good their hire rates are out of the program, what sort of companies their graduates work for, and if you can talk with some of their students to get an impression what they think about the school. How good is their alumni network (this is the real value of an Ivy League degree, by the way)? How about career services? Is it just a website they hand out to students with random job listings, or is it a real office with staff that can review resumes and cover letters? *Where you go to graduate school DOES matter, quite a bit. This advice is only for undergraduates.
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Oct 20, 2009 14:17
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hobbesmaster posted:For a PhD its who your adviser is, not what school you're at. I'd say they both play an important role. It just so happens that quite a few of the top scientists in the field happen to be at mostly the best universities. Certainly there are stars in every department, but you're far more likely to run into them at MIT than at Nebraska. It's all really case-by-case though right? It's not like you typically have to choose between an awesome school but crappy advisers, or a lesser-known school with great people you want to work for. It's really hard to say hard and fast what's more or less important. DNova posted:I'd rather do research I really enjoy at a no-name school than do research I dislike at MIT or Caltech (my favorite schools). Sure, but life doesn't usually hand out these nice sort of dichotomies. These sorts of hypotheticals are really only true for a few people; most people when they apply to graduate schools pick them based on someone's work in the department. After visiting each one, you get a sense of where you want to go and choose. There are a huge number of topics nicely spread out amongst the elite universities, and most people who can get into them find something they'd love to work on. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Oct 20, 2009 |
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Oct 20, 2009 21:10
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WyrmHunter posted:All right, well I got tired of not hearing back from any of my job apps and signed up last Friday to take the GRE today. Your GRE scores are fine* (they are often the least important part of your application), but your GPA is just a smidge low to be a solid lock into top ten programs. It's not impossible at all though; what kind of undergraduate research experiences have you had? It doesn't matter if what you did isn't what you want to pursue in graduate school, just that you did something. Do you have solid letters of recommendation (sometimes just as important as GPA)? There's nothing wrong with getting a PhD if your ultimate goal is working in the industry. Plenty of PhD chemical engineers work for big oil, the pharmaceutical industry, bulk chemicals, etc. It's a great terminal degree and will open a lot of doors (it will close a lot of doors too, like entry-level process/floor engineering-type stuff). The vast majority of my friends who graduate go into industry rather than academia. You might find your preferences will change over five years though. The real question is this: do you like research? If the answer is 'yes,' then go for a PhD. If not, stick with the masters (which really won't give you much of a leg-up but is nice to get out of the way). A PhD is about three things really: research, research, and research and anyone who tells you differently has no idea what they're talking about. Will you do research once you finish? Not necessarily, but then you just might as well had gone for an MBA if your goal was management. UT Austin is amazing for petroleum engineering. Back when I applied to graduate schools Stanford had lost a lot of faculty and it was not a place you wanted to go. I hear it's better now though. Berkeley is cool too. I don't know anything about USC besides their horrible football program and stupid fight song and stupid glib fans that don't ever shut up about how great they are. *Some people might tell you that in order to get into a top engineering program, you need an 800 on the quant. This is complete bullshit; I got into several top-ten chemical engineering PhD programs with a lower score than you (I had a high GPA and good letters to compensate). Just get above a 700 and you're usually fine with most departments. Phlegmbot posted:I would say it's worth it, though, to be frank, you look rather uncompetitive from this brief portfolio. Get very strong reference letters and write dynamite research statements. Every time these sorts of stats pop up and my first thought is "no way, what's he/she thinking when they want to apply to MIT with a 3.0," some dude posts an anecdotal story about the guy who got into Hopkins with a 2.6. I don't even try to predict admissions committees anymore. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Oct 22, 2009 |
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Oct 22, 2009 03:06
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OrbitalHybrid posted:After filtering through this thread, I didn't see much of what I should expect as an entry level ChemE. Just for kicks, I have a 3.5 GPA from one of few the ChemE schools in NJ. What's up, fellow NJ ChemE grad.
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Oct 30, 2009 14:26
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spwrozek posted:Not all engineering is mech/elec... I have have never 'torn something apart to see how it works'. There are a lot of engineering disciplines out there. I don't like tearing things apart either, but I do enjoy mixing chemicals together and watching what happens (of course safely and following SOP).
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Nov 7, 2009 21:12
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Muir posted:Unless you're making Piranha, then you add the hydrogen peroxide to the sulfuric acid. I had to make that once to clean some glass coverslips, and I hated every second of it. That stuff scares me. Still, for acids you can't beat aqua regia (unless you're made out of tantalum or something). Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Nov 9, 2009 |
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Nov 9, 2009 04:11
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SneakySnake posted:I've always liked biology, and I find biomed a really interesting field. I'm shooting for Drexel hard at the moment because I really like their co-op program, and hoping to use it as a strong foot in the door. I'm particularly looking to specialize at neuroengineering with a master's from UCONN. That's basically the long-term goal of it and is getting a bit ahead of things. Right now I'm still sitting around step one or two. Like others have said, getting a bachelor's in biomedical engineering is not a great idea. I love biology, I've taken plenty of graduate courses at the biomedical department, and I work in the field of tissue engineering. Before that I worked on developing sensors for hormone agonists/antagonists using engineered bacteria. When I was an undergrad, I got to take 5-6 pure bio courses as electives. However, my degrees are all in chemical engineering. So see, you can explore and do all those great bio things, but still do it in the context of a different degree program (and one with much better job prospects). If your plan is grad school, then go for it, but you'd better be committed. A lot of departments will actively discourage you from taking on the degree if you're not planning for some sort of advanced degree afterwords (or medical school). Edit: There seems to be a glut of people that like the neuro thing. If you're gonna do biomed, I hope you like learning about bone (which is a nifty tissue in its own right).
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Nov 14, 2009 15:01
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Muir posted:Chemical engineering is first and foremost engineering, not chemistry (it's called chemical engineering because originally it was the study of any and all engineering relating to chemical production processes). As such, there is a lot of overlap between chemical and mechanical engineering: fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and thermodynamics primarily. However, ChE and ME have their own approaches to and spins on these subjects, as well as their own fields that the other doesn't address (reaction engineering and mass transfer for ChE, statics, dynamics, and materials for ME come to mind as examples). MechE thermo classes usually don't even go into phase transitions, which is the best part of the class. Still, due to my lack of ME classes like statics and dynamics I don't really feel like a 'real' engineer despite my degrees in ChE.
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Dec 14, 2009 04:53
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canoshiz posted:Chem E student at UC Berkeley here. Wish me luck on my transport phenomena final tomorrow Man, my transport final was terrible when I took it (back in spring 2005). There was this dumb question about ice melting on a pond, and that's about all I remember. Graduate transport was way better anyways. h4x posted:Can a 24 year old with average intelligence go through with an engineering degree? I have managed to save up enough money to fully submerse myself in university, but I don't want to throw a tonne of time and money at something that is impossible. Sure. Mathematics has never come naturally for me, so I had to work really hard (and I still have to think a lot, even after taking real/complex analysis at the graduate level). If you would have asked me in high school if I wanted to be an engineer, I would have had serious doubts. Success in an engineering program is way less about raw intelligence and way more about doing your homework and preparing properly for exams. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Dec 15, 2009 |
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Dec 15, 2009 01:57
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gobuu posted:I work for a defense contractor at a plant in the midwest and the only people vocal about their political views are big fans of Rush/Sarah Palin. I only know one guy that supports Obama, their may be more though. We all went to graduate school.
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Jan 1, 2010 01:06
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huhu posted:I need some help with my mechanical engineering woes and I feel like in the next week or two I'm going to get ball rolling in the right direction but I'd just like any extra help from the engineering community at large. How do you guys deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed at times? I really don't have any engineering friends right now but I'm trying to work on that so I feel like that might be one outlet. PS I'm in my fourth semester of engineering and have been making good progress so it's not like I'm being overwhelmed by Calculus 2 or something like that. Well, it's nice to have friends in your class so you can have someone to do homework with. This is pretty essential in upper-level courses, at least in my experience. I guess the best way to not get overwhelmed is to start things early and get things done one day at a time. Go talk to your TAs during office hours if you can't figure out the homework, as they'll often pretty much tell you what to do if you bug them enough. There's really no other magical way of reducing the workload. I definitely remember days when I was an undergrad where I felt completely miserable with my to-do list, but it somehow worked out in the end. Graduate school is MUCH better in terms of not shoveling busy work at you relentlessly. Many graduate electives don't even have exams.
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Mar 2, 2010 06:33
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Mr Crumbbley posted:Well I just switched my major to Energy Engineering, so any one here have experience with it? It sounds interesting, but I don't know much about it. I switched to it because I couldn't get into Civil Engineering. I don't like that I'll have to be doing way more Chemistry and Thermo, but I guess that's the way it's gonna be. It sounds like one of those cobbled-together specialty majors that doesn't have across-the-board standards like the more traditional chemical/mechanical/electrical/civil folks have (so one university's energy engineering might be a lot different from another). Just looking at the title, I'd guess it'd be a mixture of electrical and chemical engineering? Thus, it'd probably help a lot if you can post a link to your department website. Just speaking from personal experience, it can be sort of hard to find engineering jobs with non-traditional majors (and you definitely limit yourself to a particular field). Look at how hard biomedical engineers have it, and they actually have a decent number of departments now. However, if the specialty is something in high demand (like energy) then I guess it's not such a bad idea. Energy research in departments is pretty hot right now, sort of like biomedical stuff was five years ago. In fact, let this serve as general advice. If you're looking for feedback on an engineering major and it's not chemical/electrical/computer/mechanical/civil/environmental/biomedical or something specialized-but-still-relatively-common like petroleum or mining, please post a link to the department or curriculum. This will help a lot in evaluating the program and what sorts of things you can expect. Edit: Yeah, I don't see 'energy engineering' listed on ABET, so my suspicions were right. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 21:27 on May 22, 2010 |
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May 22, 2010 21:16
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ANIME AKBAR posted:I was under the impression the biomedical engineering was a very rare degree/department at most schools. I go to Case Western Reserve University, which has an enormous BME department, but I'm pretty sure we're exceptional in that regards. And I've never had the impression that it's a worthless degree (though I don't know that much about it). There are ~65 ABET accredited BME departments in the US which grant undergraduate degrees in the subject. So I guess uncommon for sure, but not necessarily rare. If a school doesn't have a dedicated BME department (Princeton for example) a lot of research that would otherwise fall under the purview of BME takes place in material science and chemical engineering. In fact, more and more chemical engineering departments are renaming themselves to be something like 'chemical and biomolecular engineering' or 'chemical and biological engineering.' It's perceived 'worthlessness' comes from the fact that it's relatively new, and having just an undergraduate degree in it doesn't result in the same number of job offers that typically follow the more traditional engineering disciplines. I hate to say it, but most people with chemical engineering degrees plus a couple of electives in biology can pretty much do the same job as someone with a dedicated BME undergraduate education. Plus, the guy with the chemical engineering degree can do a lot of other jobs that a guy with a BME degree would just not be suited for, like design oil refineries, or work in a food plant, or manufacture glue or polymers, etc. It's not worthless if your goals are to apply to medical school, or go to graduate school. Personally, I got all of my degrees in chemical engineering (BS, MS, and working on PhD). However, most of my electives are either molecular biology or core graduate biomedical engineering classes, and my research is really heavy biomaterials. I guess it's the best of both worlds. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 15:00 on May 27, 2010 |
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May 27, 2010 14:54
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:What sort of course-load would I be looking at if I went back to school? Would it be feasible to get an Associates from a community college or should I be looking to get at least a Bachelors from a major university to be viable in the job market? I'm not sure if I can go full time to do this or not, considering my current financial situation I'm not an EE, but you absolutely will need to get a BS if you want to have any sort of chance of getting hired. An AA could maybe get you some sort of tech work, but you won't have nearly the sort of demand that you'd get with a typical four-year engineering degree. Most schools require about 1-2 semesters of humanities/general eds (though this varies widely), so I guess you maybe could get it done within 3 years? You could look into getting into summer courses to shorten the time, but yeah, 3 years would be about the bare minimum at any respectable program.
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Aug 13, 2010 02:46
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Thoguh posted:There are a few schools out there that offer M.S. programs for non-engineering undergrads. The downside it is that it would take a few extra semesters of concentrated work on pre-reqs, so it might be tough to do while attending part time. Oh yeah, I forgot about those. I think it'd still be tough (you'd still have to cram in a lot of pre-reqs), but I guess faster(?) and you'd get a higher degree. Do you know any examples you could link to for the previous poster's use?
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Aug 13, 2010 03:39
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Plinkey posted:But if you end up at a company like that you have tons of opportunity to move up and get into management or go deep down the systems/specialist/consultant tunnel and end up in a room with no windows working on poo poo you can't talk about. Just need to get your foot in the door. Yeah, plenty of people with AAs find work as techs and so on. I guess having a bachelors just gives you more options and higher pay; I suppose you could always get an AA and then get a job while working on a BS part-time or something. I guess I'm just glad I got my BS and MS straight from high school (Notre Dame and Princeton respectively, if we're going to name universities). I'm a chemical engineer by education (PhD grad student at Michigan though, so I'm really more of a scientist than an engineer at this point); there really isn't an equivalency to EET in my field that I know of. I should probably stop giving advice on EE stuff 
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Aug 13, 2010 04:10
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Zo posted:But if math "kicked your rear end" your grades are probably too poo poo to go into medicine anyways. What minimal GPA would you recommend for those serious about applying to medical school?
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Aug 19, 2010 20:49
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RealKyleH posted:Take Calc including AP. Take physics. AP Physics and AP Chem were the most immediately useful courses to me as a freshman. Calc didn't hurt either, but don't worry too much if your school doesn't offer any sort of 'pre-engineering' class like some of the magnets out there.
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Aug 20, 2010 03:25
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Geraldo Rivera posted:It’s really amazing the amount of information contained in this thread, so very helpful. Thanks. I really hate to break it to you, but I think your advisers might be right. It's one thing to pull Cs and ask if maybe you should stick with it, but outright failing is a different can of worms. It's not just getting the math right, but engineering uses all sorts of related problem-solving skills directly related to physics (and sometimes chemistry). Calc 2 is freshman year sort of stuff, and if it's not for you then it's not for you. I'm not trying to be a dick or discourage you or anything, so please don't take this the wrong way. It's just that it's not like it's going to suddenly get any easier even when you figure out the math. If anything it gets pretty crazy hard. If you are determined to stick with it, have you looked into getting tutoring? Maybe going part time and only taking a few classes a semester so you're not so overwhelmed? Do you think it's a problem of lack of focus on your part, or do you genuinely just not get it? If it's the former, you could probably fix it. If it's the latter, it's gonna be tough. When I started school I briefly thought about doing mathematics. Later, I learned that I'm really bad at high-level abstract math. Never understood what a Hilbert space was, and I couldn't prove anything to save my life in real analysis. I could never be a PhD student in mathematics no matter how much I study and work at it, because I know that I just wouldn't do very well and never really had the 'cleverness' or whatever you want to call it to ingeniously see proofs like some of my friends could. I chugged through my graduate math classes and got the grades I needed (barely), but I didn't try to fool myself into thinking I could someday become a genius at it. We all have things we're good at and bad at, and there's no shame. I'd say that you're doing the right thing by looking at your other options; there are plenty of good careers out there that don't involve engineering.
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Aug 20, 2010 18:50
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:A good engineer will listen to a machinist when they give advice. I always give great weight to the advice of technicians, who are really a lifesaver in many ways.
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Aug 21, 2010 02:13
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soupy posted:So I got a BA in Chemistry and am currently working in an Organic Synthesis lab. I am going to be applying for a MS in Chem E. I only took Calc 1 and 2 but I got As in both. So... What are my chances in getting into grad school for a MS in Chem E? Did you guys have many straight chem majors in your programs? I'd really like to go back and end up in energy or plastics or something. We have had a few pure chemistry people. Usually you'll be required to take a few prereqs, especially in undergrad reactor design and maybe separations. Really though you should be okay as long as you know how to sling around a differential equation. Your typical chemE masters program involves the following courses: Graduate Thermodynamics (sometimes a mixture of classical and statistical, sometimes pure statistical) Graduate Fluid Mechanics Graduate Transport Phenomena (heat and mass) Graduate Reactor Design Usually some sort of 'Graduate Engineering Mathematics' which will mostly cover partial differential equations and linear algebra, though it varies a lot from school to school Electives (and all sorts of electives too, from microfluidics to tissue engineering). So what you should notice is that there isn't a whole lot of chemistry in there. It's really more of a physics thing than anything else; you might have encountered some of these topics in physical chem. Edit: Yikes, you've never taken an ordinary DiffEq course? You might want to brush up on that BIG TIME before applying to any chemE MS programs. Is there any way you could take a remedial class or something? Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Aug 21, 2010 |
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Aug 21, 2010 02:45
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soupy posted:I mean we did some dif eq in calc 2 but never got too deep into it. I can get a handle on those pretty easily. I had a 3.6 and I'm hoping the work experience helps me a lot, just scared that lack of calc 3 and lack of dif eq wont screw me over super bad. See my edit above. Calc 3 is really just adding the z-plane to everything, and not critically important (though you might get confused in fluids). But yeah, DiffEq is pretty important. I mean, I know I used Laplace transforms in reactor design. You'll definitely be solving partial differential equations in mass transport (did your calc 2 class go into Fourier transforms or Bessel functions)? You might get a taste of these in the grad math course, but I'd get brushed up on the DiffEq. Really though you shouldn't prevent it from letting you apply, you might just struggle a lot more. I guess I should say that I have an MSE in chemical engineering, and the school I went to was highly theoretical in its education with a great emphasis on analytical mathematics (Princeton). Your program might be different, though I imagine the general information and course structures will be similar.
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Aug 21, 2010 02:51
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soupy posted:Yeah... Yeah. It sucks, I regret my Chem degree.. If I had gotten a chem e degree I'd be making a decent salary with ability to move up. I'm applying all in Texas, (UT, A&M, UoH, Rice..) so I'm hoping they will be all "OIL NEEDS CHEMISTRY, THIS MAN IS A GENIUS" though I'm not especially expecting it. I'm fine with taking any remedial courses they need me to take, I just want in. Once I'm in, I can work through whatever. Just have to get in. The cool thing about MSE programs is that they're usually pretty easy to get into, as typically you pay for it (rather than a PhD program, where they're shelling out for you). You shouldn't have too much trouble finding a good program. There were definitely a few chemistry/biology sorts in my PhD program (mostly kids who went to liberal arts colleges or places like Dartmouth which don't have formal chemE departments) who just had to take a few remedial classes. Good luck with everything!
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Aug 21, 2010 03:05
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Flyboy925 posted:Are you seriously getting paid to get your Ph.D. in ChemE? How is the Ph.D. program for that field? Generally curious, as an old class mate is thinking about doing it, and if I had stuck with it, I mihgt have also done so as well. Yup. I got paid to get a masters too, but that was somewhat of a special situation. I haven't paid a dime of tuition since spring 2005 of my undergrad years. It's not really that unusual though (well, the masters part was, but like I said, that was an odd thing). Most PhD programs in the sciences and engineering offer full tuition reimbursement and a stipend/health insurance (usually in the range of 24K-30K a year, depending on the generosity of the school). In return, you work in a professor's laboratory and generate research. It's more or less like having a job. I've been done with classes for a while now (still take a few here and there), so school for me is pretty much work. Usually your boss pays your stipend/tuition from his grant money (every professor doing active research will have a pool of money they draw from to fund what they do, usually awarded by government agencies like the NSF or NIH, but sometimes private or university-specific sources too). However, I've been on fellowship for the past two years, so my boss doesn't pay me anything. Instead, my fellowship does. That's what's nice about having one. Sadly, I'll be off it at the end of next year, but I'll probably pick up some TA work (which also pays you instead of your boss), so I shouldn't be too much of a burden. Anyways, like any science/engineering PhD program, it's largely what you make of it. I think the biggest factor in the whole thing is your relationship with your adviser. If you get along okay and generate useful research, then it'll be fine. If you don't, then it'll be pretty painful. Everything else is pretty much secondary to this. The ONLY reason you should want to get a PhD is because you love doing research, otherwise it's a pretty deadend degree that limits a lot of the jobs you can take. Then again, it also opens up quite a few doors that might have previously been closed.
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Aug 21, 2010 13:44
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Plinkey posted:This is pretty much true. I think at my company if you come in with a MS as opposed to a BS you get 6 months 'seniority' for pay, benefits...etc. So you basically go to school for an extra 2-3 years and when you do get hired you're 2 1/2 years behind some dude you went to undergrad with that was hired right out of school. Yeah, an MBA seems to be a lot more valuable than an MS for engineers. Any PhDs at your company?
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Sep 13, 2010 16:05
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Plinkey posted:Ill agree that the mba will get you better pay, but you'll be doing fairly little engineering work, but if you're into that, go for it. We have a few PhDs from what I hear, the company won't pay for it unless you can show that some new project needs you+phd to get it done. It goes to VP or higher for approval, masters you just need your manager approval. And you can get as many as you want if its business related. Well, most people who earn PhDs in engineering do so without the benefit of a company. We are paid by our advisers or fellowships, and then seek jobs after graduation. I guess I knew one or two people who had outside support from companies, but it was far from the norm (at least at the universities I attended).
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Sep 13, 2010 16:53
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Totally Negro posted:A lot of my professors did this and they said it was because they could see the mistakes you make along the way. I personally like the idea behind that, and just generally enjoy using pens more than pencils. Eh, I used to always do my problem sets on scratch haphazardly with a pencil until I figured out the answer, then I'd make a 'nice' copy to hand in. A lot of people do this, so I don't get the relevancy of a 'pen-only' assignment for seeing that.
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Sep 22, 2010 12:45
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Zo posted:I agree with all that, but you're not going to get anywhere shutting yourself in and jerking off over your 4.0 GPA then crying about not having a job. Not you specifically, since you realize that your decent grades didn't help you much if at all. Yes a big part of it is luck but you can also make your own luck by meeting more people. Some of us aren't looking for jobs right out of undergraduate, but want to go to graduate or professional school, where GPA cutoffs are a real thing. Connections didn't help me nearly as much as raw numbers and scores, and I've hooked into plenty of good networks since going to grad school (going to an Ivy helped a lot in this area too; really the only actual advantage of attending an Ivy). I do agree that obsessing over getting a 3.8-4.0 with no plans for post-graduate education is a little dumb.
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Oct 28, 2010 18:57
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Lemming posted:What about Cooper Union? Nobody's heard of Cooper Union... Who hasn't heard of Cooper Union? It's a pretty well-known school among at least us academics. Olin is one that's somewhat more obscure.
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Nov 14, 2010 05:52
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Terrifying Effigies posted:For someone who's in graduate school is there as much emphasis placed on seeing your undergrad GPA alongside your current graduate GPA? I did pretty poorly in undergrad but have been maintaining a 3.9 for my MS, so I've just been listing that along with having completed my BS. Eh, probably nothing wrong with that, but realize that there's a pretty wide perception out there that it's actually easier to get an A in graduate courses than undergraduate.
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Nov 14, 2010 07:48
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