×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Is grad school a wise choice?
2

Is grad school a wise choice?

Is grad school a wise choice?

(OP)
Hello all,

I just graduated from the University of California Irvine with a B.S. in Civil specializing in structural engineering. I've been looking for jobs and have been making progress but it seems like most of my prospects didn't get too far. Frustrating, to say the least.

I've been accepted into and am considering getting an M.S. in Structural Engineering at Cal State Fullerton. This school is not regarded very highly however I'm not sure of my chances of getting into a school of a higher caliber. My gpa from undergrad is 2.7 and almost all grad schools require a 3.0 and above. I'm thinking that obtaining a masters degree (and a much higher gpa) will improve my job prospects significantly.

Is going to this school and working on improving my gpa a good option for me right now? My game plan and overall goal is to get a job doing interesting structural work and make a good living for myself.

Thanks for all responses.  

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

IMO, getting a better (or additional) education is always a good option.

Chris
SolidWorks 10 SP4.0
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

agree, UCI is at least two or three steps above Fullerton. How about Cal-Poly in Pomona, could you get accepted there?

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

My impression is that lots of SE's are out of work. If your in a good position for grad school, the job market will probably look better when you're done

A: You'll have an MS
B: They might be building things again in 2 years.

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

There have probably been a dozen threads on this subject over the last few years.  My advice is always that an MS without relevant experience makes you LESS employable than not having the MS.  The reason is that you are still an entry level person, not able to do much worthwhile, but you expect a higher salary and you are part of a community (MS) that has higher mobility than the engineering population as a whole.

If I have two resumes for an entry level position and the BS has strong credentials I'll pick him over an MS with similar credentials every time.  An MS PLUS RELEVANT EXPERIENCE is an asset.  An MS without that experience is a liability.

David

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

I'd say go for the MS now, before life gets in the way.  A MS after you have some experience would be desirable, because you'll have a better idea of what facet of engineering you'll want to pursue, but it's much harder when you have a job, family, etc.  There are lots of people here that have done just that, but I think they'd agree it would've been easier (but not necessarily better) to have done it immediately after the BS degree.

Another consideration is that P.E. licensing requirements are going insist on a MS (or equivalent) by the time you are eligible for the exam.  As a civil engineer in California, you will want to be licensed.


 

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

I'm beginnning to think that grad school is only appropriate for people capable of making their own decisions.  Or maybe it's the opposite.  I don't know.  Help me with this one.

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

TheTick:

Today you are TheTickle because your humor tickled my funny bone!  STAR!

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

What makes you believe that you'll do better in grad school if you were only able to pull off a 2.7 during undergrad?  Just an honest question you should be asking yourself.  Undergrad is a cakewalk compared to grad school.

Maybe design isn't your calling.  Maybe getting a JD would be a better and more lucrative option?    

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

Quote:

Undergrad is a cakewalk compared to grad school.

Yes and no.

The coursework is more advanced, but the professors aren't in "weed-out" mode any more and they are a lot more accommodating and easy going.  You can also focus more on each class. 9-12 hours is considered full-time in grad school, compared to the 15-18 hours in undergrad.  So, if he is going to school full-time, he will have a lot more time to devote to each class.  Also, my school let us take a certain number of undergrad classes for credit.
   

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

abusement..

I totally agree with you. The material is certainly more complicated, but the professors aren't looking to make you fail.

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

Go for it. It may give you more than just a piece of paper.
How little or how much you can learn in grad school is up to you. It may only give you perspective and credentials.
But this is better than nothing.

Go with your gut...the Tick has a good fickel wink

peace
Fe

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

jun41,

This is just slightly off the topic of your main question.  But if you're concerned about getting into a better school, there may be a way.  Often times, a school will allow you to take a course or two as a non-degree student to prove yourself.  If you do well, they will sometimes admit you.  May be a bit extra money, and it may or may not be worth it to you... just something to think about.

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

A master's degree will give you effectively twice the time in equivalent experience. So a 2 year Master's program will put you on an equal footing with a 4 year experienced person.

It will also take two years to get and by that time there is a good chance that the economy will turn around and there will be jobs opening up again. It will also show that you think and plan ahead. You will be ahead in the job competition over your classmates who were flipping burgers for the last two years.

There was a serious recession in the early 80's where almost none of the graduates for a three year period got engineering jobs. When the hiring started again there were some who were in comfortable jobs in testing labs as technicians and they did not start to hunt for engineering jobs until well after the hiring was under way.

Anytime I received an application from one of these guys it immediately went in the circular files because if someone could not get off their fat a$$ and help themselves I considered them totally lacking in any initiative and drive and not someone I wanted around.

The people who went direct into a master's program on the other hand got high consideration.

Why not look elsewhere? I have been working in Afghanistan for the last few years and every company I know of over there is interested in hiring people because there simply is a serious lack of qualified people willing to earn twice what they make now.
 

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion
www.kitsonengineering.com

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

RDK wrote:
"A master's degree will give you effectively twice the time in equivalent experience. So a 2 year Master's program will put you on an equal footing with a 4 year experienced person."

I don't agree with that advice. A Master's degree and no experience does not equal a Bachelor's and 4 years exp. While the advanced degree shows greater knowledge in a particular field, it is not the equivalent of work experience.

Also, there are plenty of reasons why someone would not pursue a Master's degree during an economic downturn. Attributing it to not getting "off their fat a$$" seems biased and short-sighted.

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

Quote:

If I have two resumes for an entry level position and the BS has strong credentials I'll pick him over an MS with similar credentials every time.
Why not pick up the guy with the MS but pay him the salary of roughly a BS?

Quote:

A Master's degree and no experience does not equal a Bachelor's and 4 years exp. While the advanced degree shows greater knowledge in a particular field, it is not the equivalent of work experience.
I understand what you mean, but some defense contractors equate a Masters to two years of work exp automatically.

 

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

If OP wants to go into structural design, he has a far better chance of doing this with a decent GPA and MS degree than with a 2.7GPA BS.

Structural engineers should be required to have a MS anyway.  The four structural classes you take during a BS degree are not enough to designate you to the profession.

 

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

"some defense contractors equate a Masters to two years of work exp automatically"

Some, but not all; we don't.  The only reason for specifically hiring an MS is if there is a specific area of expertise that the average engineer is unlikely to have.  Otherwise, we don't really treat them any differently.  In fact, we often stay away from MS degreed candidates because it often means that the candidate is research oriented, and that often leads to over analysis, and paralysis...

TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

Quote (RDK):

Anytime I received an application from one of these guys it immediately went in the circular files because if someone could not get off their fat a$$ and help themselves I considered them totally lacking in any initiative and drive and not someone I wanted around.

Need to find the button to award a little brown star for the most backward thing I've seen written in ages.  You'd probably think differently if one of these graduates was stuck living on your couch.  Seems most people go to graduate school for the same reason as these other said folks who did not: there were no available opportunities and no one had a clue where to go after graduation.  

Seems the ones who didn't go to grad school were the ones not accumulating more debt and investing in a career that was already going nowhere.  Why accumulate an additional crushing debt burden just to get stuck working yet another dead end job?

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

Back to OP, I can offer this:  Our structures group has a preference for MSCE on the entry level position.  As I understand it this is for a multitude of reasons some of which are all the additional hours of coursework; confidence is much higher - though you have to be weary of the over-confident ones; typically these graduates will work independently and when encouraged to seek help will.  BSCE's tend toward needing much more hand-holding.  And that ties up resources which in this economy you can't afford - cause you don't have em!  And it seems that the future of structural engineering is going toward the MS as the first professional degree.

I'm not posting this to be argumentive just stating what it's like at my place.  Also you must hire good people to begin with whether or not they have a BS or MS, as there are certain things you can't instill or teach graduates.  Additionally it matters where graduate is seeking employment.  Some of us on this site work in consulting engineering, government engineering and others in the manufacturing side - each of those has it's own needs.

Our MS graduates are staff engineers right out of school and don't specialize in anything until they gain experience and prove themselves of value.  Then they are encouraged to join technical societies/committees which are usually helped by current staff invovled in those programs.

I'm digressing too.  In any event it should be clear that going back to school is a good thing.  If you're granted the opportunity do not waste it.  Apply yourself, it will help you and it will help your earning potential.  Hopefully the economy is better when you graduate.

Good luck.

Regards,
Qshake
pipe
Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.
 

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

Tick,
I agree with your opinion about the 'brown star' and the such proceeding. Although, for the comments about 'dept' I can say that most graduate programs (given the student is good) provide good pay through many resources.
Thus, in many cases there is no dept at all in pursuing an MS or PhD.
This is not meant to be contradictory, just an additional comment for readers.  

peace
Fe

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

I don't really think GPA means much in terms of employment opportunities, so if you're just doing it for GPA you might be misguided.  On the other hand, in today's market I tell every graduating Civil Engineer to go get their masters, and I tell every freshman Civil Engineer to switch majors.  Unless you have an 'in' to a niche market sector that's not tied to land development, it's truly brutal out there, and will probably remain so for at least 2 more years, possibly more like 6.

Quote:

What makes you believe that you'll do better in grad school if you were only able to pull off a 2.7 during undergrad?  Just an honest question you should be asking yourself.  Undergrad is a cakewalk compared to grad school.

For what it's worth, I got around a 2.9 in undergrad (Georgia Tech) and got around a 3.5 in grad school (also Georgia Tech).  Part of that goes back to GT being notoriously tough in undergrad, but part was that I went back to get my masters after being in the workplace for a few years, so I was older, more mature, and had better work habits and time management habits.  I was also married, which tends to narrow your after-class activity schedule somewhat.  :)  I do agree that grad school is *significantly* harder than undergrad in terms of time demands and course load.   

Also, take GIS classes in grad school.  That's still somewhat of an emerging field that the aging baby boomers in charge haven't totally grasped yet.

 

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East - http://www.campbellcivil.com

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

I thought Beej67 was right on, and agreed with some of the other comments too.

If you can't find a job, why not? But if you can find anything related, in this economy, I'd work. Go get the experience and make sure structural engineering is in your blood and you want to do it for 40-50 hours a week.

I had a pretty good GPA at an average engineering school, but I worked hard at it and brought that to my career. I think the ability to self teach and seek your own knowledge will get you far in your career whether you go to grad school or not. I never had a course in masonry but the first day of my new job I got handed a masonry design book and I studied it hard and had some pretty good go-by mathcad calcs, and now that is one of my stronger areas. BTW, early on in your career, do as much by hand as you can. It will beat the theory into you head, and mathcad is a great way to replicate hand calcs and once you right a template you usually know the material inside and out (others swear by excel, depends on the application, I digress...)

For me, some of the earlier undergrad classes were harder than the engineering design classes, especially the higher level math. Plus, at 18-23 your partying can easily get in the way. You usually have settled down a bit by the time you go to grad school, and you should have a keen interest in the classes you are taking more so than the myriad of undergrad classes you may have blown off for that party. I would not sweat the GPA or your choice of grad schools. Nobody has ever cared about my football school degree or conversely my Cum Laude, once you have a couple of years of experience nobody even asks that stuff. This is especially true once you have your PE or SE.

Personally, I have never felt that a MS would have advanced my career. I have had several really smart PE bosses with BS degrees from average engineering schools. Oddly, I am currently working for two PHds from the rival football university, who bust my balls about sports stuff but don't mind my education one bit.

I definitely disagree that a MS is equivalent to much of anything in REAL world experience. You could get a MS and not design a simple one story house top to bottom, or properly design a steel connection. The fact is with a MS you will gain specialized THEORETICAL knowledge, some PE mentor will still have to teach you how to apply it. I'm sure it will help you, but it will not launch your career either.

However, specifically to the west coast, it seems many employers value the MS degree, especially advanced structural dynamics and seismic related course. So in that you may want to live in Cali or the west coast your whole life, the MS may end up really helping you get a leg up on your competition.

With all that said, after 13 years of experience I don't regret getting out in the work force right after my BS. I kind of had to at the time for personal reasons. Now I have a great job next to a major university (though its my hated sports rival) and am going to apply to go to graduate school while I work, take a class a semester. It is more likely to be for a personal sense of accomplishment, as I don't know if I will every directly use or need it. But the situation is just right, and who knows what doors it may open in the future.

RE: Is grad school a wise choice?

I've never felt a MS would have helped me too much on my career. Much like all knowledge I've learned and rarely used, many of my college classes didn't go in one ear and out the other but have merely languished to the point where I only have a vague familiarity with certain, obscure subjects, and maybe some "well I'm pretty sure I remember something about this" tidbits, but that's about it. (disclaimer: pretty good student, took good notes, did well on tests, really enjoyed labs, etc)

I've always felt that going to college for engineering doesn't make you an engineer; it prepares you for the training you'll get on the job to become an engineer. But, without that solid foundation of terms, subjects, and situations, you'd never have much of a chance at really being great.

Of course, I encourage everyone to educate themselves as much as they can. I never turn down free training, be it CPR, running a forklift, computer software I'd rarely use, or whatever else they're offering. I eat the stuff up. But I do it because I enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and want to be able to apply these skills if the need comes up. They cumulatively make more more marketable, but that's a side-benefit, not the entire purpose. Going back for an MS would be costly, time-consuming, stressful, and take me away from where I'd likely learn more - real world full time jobs.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources