MSU Red Cedar Message Board

MSU Mechanical Engineering Class of 2009.

From an undergraduate standpoint, there isn't much reason to go out of state for engineering unless he goes somewhere he will get a pay bump on name recognition alone (MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Princeton).

A very good friend of mine from high school went through the ME program at Michigan as I was going through ME at MSU. For undergrad curriculum, they were nearly identical. I can't speak for programs at the smaller schools in-state, such as Wayne or Michigan Tech. I would recommend a larger school as your kid most likely will have a wider variety of research interests amongst his/her professors - a good way to hone in on the exact specialization.

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Well, if you are going to pull out your research, I am someone who has lived being an engineer or an engineering student for 20 years. I have also done recruiting for a major company for many years. The US News and World Report Rankings are pretty much the Readers Digest of rankings. They are not bad, but they also are not putting in a ton of research. A few surveys and some readily available info on the internet combined with their own formula. US News and World Report is an oversimplified ratings system used to sell magazines.

Personally, I would give someone a completely different recommendation depending on their wants. For example, if someone simply wants to go through undergrad and get a job, I would probably make a different recommendation vs. someone looking to do research and get their PhD. It would literally take me pages to go into all the scenarios, and I am certainly not an ultimate expert. Yet I do have a fair amount of experience, especially when dealing with the different dynamics of schools and how they are seen in industry (in research it's a whole different ballgame).

edit : I am not trying to belittle your research, yet just be really careful with lauding US News and their ranking. It's a hodge pogde of stuff that should not be used as anything other than a check that a school actually has a decent engineering program. The difference between 10 and 50 can be very negligible in many respects, and can actually be way off in certain instances.

I don't think that should be dismissed in any way. It's a solid point, and is part of my argument about what schools I would recommend depending the individual. Many people in engineering end up there simply because they were good at math and physics. That does not mean they should be engineers.

I will also say this about undergrad engineering degrees. It is the most respected and diverse undergrad degree you can get. You can get into pretty much any graduate program with an engineering degree (that includes med, law, business, whatever), and the acceptance criteria is always lower for engineering grads. I have had the discussion with MBA and law school programs about engineering degrees. They all pretty much agree they are extremely willing to take engineering graduates and have lower standards for students with engineering degrees. For example, I talked to a top MBA school who said they would not touch a student under a 3.6 GPA unless they were an engineering student and in that case it was more like 3.0 (mind you, there are other criteria but the GPA standards are always lower for engineering students).

OP...Alcibiadas brings up an excellent point. One thing your son also should factor in is the ease to switch majors if he winds up deciding engineering isn't his cup of tea. At some schools it can be a royal pain in the ass, while at others not so much. Back when I was visiting colleges, one of the big things that turned me off to Purdue was the impression I got that radically changing majors (i.e. Chemical Engineering to say Math) was incredibly difficult (even after your 1st semester!). That's a nice aspect of MSU and other schools that you essentially have until your junior standing before you really have to "commit" to a particular college and program.

Here is a combo ranked list of university and engineering school. The drop/transfer rate in engineering is fairly high, so going to a specialized engineering school can be slightly risky. For example MTU (which I love as I grew up about an hour away from Houghton) is a fantastic engineering school, but there is not much else there. If he decides his junior year that he does not want to be an engineer, his options are limited.

Combined Rank Engineering Rank University Rank University
6 1 5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
7 2 5 Stanford University
12 7 5 California Institute of Technology
19 18 1 Harvard University
19 18 1 Princeton University
20 16 4 Columbia University (Fu Foundation)
24 3 21 University of California--Berkeley
25 10 15 Cornell University
27 22 5 University of Pennsylvania
29 6 23 Carnegie Mellon University
32 20 12 Northwestern University (McCormick)
34 11 23 University of Southern California (Viterbi)
37 9 28 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
38 35 3 Yale University
39 26 13 Johns Hopkins University (Whiting)
39 14 25 University of California--Los Angeles (Samueli)
40 4 36 Georgia Institute of Technology
41 31 10 Duke University (Pratt)
50 5 45 University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign
51 34 17 Rice University (Brown)
51 14 37 University of California--San Diego (Jacobs)
53 8 45 University of Texas--Austin (Cockrell)
54 37 17 Vanderbilt University
58 16 42 University of Wisconsin--Madison
60 45 15 Brown University
61 50 11 Dartmouth College (Thayer)
63 21 42 University of California--Santa Barbara
63 49 14 Washington University in St. Louis
64 39 25 University of Virginia
69 31 38 University of California--Davis
69 27 42 University of Washington
70 25 45 Pennsylvania State University--University Park
71 13 58 Texas A&M University--College Station (Look)
71 52 19 University of Notre Dame
73 11 62 Purdue University--West Lafayette
77 22 55 University of Maryland--College Park (Clark)
77 42 35 University of Rochester
81 43 38 Lehigh University (Rossin)
83 45 38 Case Western Reserve University
84 29 55 Ohio State University
84 39 45 University of California--Irvine (Samueli)
87 37 50 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
88 30 58 University of Florida
92 39 53 Boston University
95 27 68 University of Minnesota--Twin Cities
95 24 71 Virginia Tech
99 70 29 Tufts University
99 70 29 University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill
103 78 25 Washington State University
110 52 58 University of Pittsburgh (Swanson)
120 45 75 University of Delaware
123 52 71 Michigan State University
126 64 62 Northeastern University
126 58 68 Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey--New Brunswick
126 68 58 University of Connecticut
130 36 94 University of Colorado--Boulder
130 59 71 University of Iowa
132 70 62 Syracuse University
142 45 97 Iowa State University
146 52 94 University of Massachusetts--Amherst
148 60 88 Drexel University
152 70 82 Auburn University (Ginn)
153 85 68 Clemson University
153 78 75 Illinois Institute of Technology (Armour)
153 78 75 University of California--Santa Cruz (Baskin)
157 95 62 Worcester Polytechnic Institute
163 66 97 University of California--Riverside (Bourns)
165 77 88 Stevens Institute of Technology (Schaefer)
175 85 90 University of Missouri

Michigan State is one of few schools to include Computer Science in the College of Engineering as well which I found pretty useful.

I just started reading the board this past month and saw this thread. Honestly I recommend your child go into Biomedical or Computer Engineering. I went into Computer Engineering and I thought it was the best decision I have made. At MSU, I got the best of both worlds in Engineering. I was able to take Electrical classes which are more power, and analog focused and I took Computer Science classes which are software driven. I am now Director of Database Development and have 20 developers reporting to me. I strongly suggest your son take business courses as some of his pre-reqs or maybe minor in a business discipline. I did this as well and it really helps when you are interested in going for your MBA or trying to move up the ladder in a company. You can almost triple your starting salary if you get involved on the strategy and the business side of engineering. Especially if you enhance your undergraduate degree with an MBA degree from MSU or a top 10-15 MBA program.

Another route I have seen some Engineers take is that they get an undergraduate degree and then work for the Patent Office. Patent Office pays a decent salary with great benefits. Work there for a couple of years and then move onto law school to become a Patent Lawyer. Patent Lawyers can make a ton of money.

There was an interesting article that I read in the papers a couple of years ago. They said that Engineering is actually not a very popular discipline with high school graduates and that our country is lacking with the engineering talent.

Electrical Engineering is another really good major to go into as well. Almost everything in our age has some sort of electrical component.

The only downfall with MSU Biomedical Engineering is that they don't have a masters or phd program that he can directly go to after graduating from MSU. I am not sure if that has changed over the last 7 years.

Good luck in his decision.

Your comment on Calvin doesn't surprise me. A long time ago, I worked at a software company writing code. I had no formal education in it, and didn't have a science based degree. An EE grad from Calvin worked on my team, and he lacked the most basic problem solving skills. Every day, he was like "Uh, can you look this over, I think I'm missing something...". He'd always mention his EE degree, as I showed him how to do his job.

I know about 10 people who went through the Michigan State Engineering program. All 10 have good, well paying jobs. None thought the program was easy by any means.

My youngest ended up at Kettering. The big advantage is the co op program. He's working at the fed agency that he co oped for and doing very well for himself. He didn't care about the sports aspects either and loved the small school environment/work experience every other cycle.