How much does university prestige matter for employers and salary?

[IanB]

Ignoring the degree for a minute.  How does a newly minted grad come to your attention as a potential hire?  An automated resume parsing system?  How does that motivated, qualified candidate get your attention to get called for an interview?  Particularly ones that may not have any industry networking contacts... 

Rather than arguing over the merits of the piece of paper, could those that are actively involved in the hiring of EEs give some guidelines on how to get to the interview?

Find a college that has good contacts with companies that offer internships, and/or a college with a careers department that can help place students as interns through careers fairs and other channels.

Getting a job as a summer intern and impressing is an excellent way to get offered a permanent position.

[Smokey]

How about this for something to differentiate the two schools....

Which school has more interesting (to you) and accessible (to you as an undergrad) research going on?  A lot of programs will let you work for some research project as an undergrad.  As long as you don't overload yourself on top of normal class work, this is a great opportunity to get some real experience doing something which is also impressive for employers and especially grad schools if that's your deal. 
Find out what research projects each school has going on and which might be available for undergrads to help with.  Try to talk to the guys running the projects.

Or I could give you my short answer, which is...
Congrats on getting into Berkley... Now go to Berkley... 

I knew people with 4.0+ highschool GPA that didn't get into top tier UC schools (UCLA, Berkley, etc...) and they were super pissed about it.

[nixfu]

The name of the school is the most over rated factor in history.   At today's prices university education is a very poor investment to begin with.  Overpaying for an already overpriced product(university) is just dumb.   Save your money.   Not having a ton of debt when you graduate will be worth a huge increase in salary by itself.   

It might matter what school you went to a small amount for your FIRST JOB.   Of course as Dave said, someone from a cheap state college with a nice portfolio of projects might actually get chosen over someone from MIT with nothing to show for it. 

And after your first job, it does not matter jack crap what school you went to.   Your experience and what you have actually done counts for way way more than anything at all like the name of your school or what GPA you got etc...no body gives a crap about your GPA either after your first job.  How you handle yourself, your experience, and what you can show to me that says you can produce is all that matters. 

If you can produce for my business in the job I need to you to function in, I don't care where you went to school.   I might care that you have a degree of som sort in the field  but that is about all.  The rest comes down to what you can actually do for me as a business.   

[Balaur]

Find a college that has good contacts with companies that offer internships, and/or a college with a careers department that can help place students as interns through careers fairs and other channels.

Getting a job as a summer intern and impressing is an excellent way to get offered a permanent position.

+1000

The last three people I've hired got their job after an internship made possible by a recommendation from their teachers (and in one case from the PhD adviser).

[tytower]

When someone mentiond Berkley ...Berkley database ...and MIT ...I tend to sit up and listen . I watch the MIT science news RSS feeds daily

I live in Australia and they are the only Unis I know or take notice of in the States.

I did degrees at James Cook University in Townsville but that Uni is known world wide for Marine Studies as it is right on the Great Barrier Reef.  Anyone who works in Marine biologies knows that Uni by reputation .

So like the guy says ...Go to Berkley.....and it was a smart move asking.

[ivaylo]

Umm, let's see... What got invented/produced in Berkeley? The original SPICE program, BSD Unix, the memristor, Berkeley DB, ... just from the top of my head. So dunno... are you after knowledge or are you after money? Jeezus...

[XFDDesign]

Ignoring the degree for a minute.  How does a newly minted grad come to your attention as a potential hire?  An automated resume parsing system?  How does that motivated, qualified candidate get your attention to get called for an interview?  Particularly ones that may not have any industry networking contacts... 

Quite a bit of creation on your part there. Let me create a system about your company, which I know nothing about, and then use these unfounded assertions to attack! Whee!

Newly "minted" grads don't get our attention. The company has active finders who shop for people who will graduate in about 1 year down to 6 months. If they wait until they graduate, they're left with the scraps. Fortunately, this is not limited to just MIT and such as it comes down to the members of different divisions looking outside of the "easy" places for talent. When we go shopping for new hires, we specifically hunt for candidates, and perform on-site introductory interviews. Of the many that are performed, a list is generated by the person of whom they think are good material. These persons then get put through the gauntlet, a full day of interviews among various persons in the group they would intern at. They'll get beaten on by the Fellows, and then beaten on by their would-be peers. Those who can cut it, then get offered paid interships for the summer where we see what their work ethic is like. If they do well, we offer them a job.

[KJDS]

It's been a decade or so since I recruited any grads. I'd give slight benefit to those from a couple of unis where I knew I could phone up a senior lecturer and have a chat about what he knew about the grad I was looking at, but apart from that I didn't care what the uni was.

What mattered was the CV and some sign that they had a life beyond electrons.

At interview I'd want them mathematically competent, had common sense and a sense of humour. I gave one bloke a job purely on his enthusiasm. He was such a great guy to be with that everyone else on the team was always willing to help him with anything he was struggling with and he'd happily put in a lot of effort on the bits he could do. That ability to drag others along to get things done is worth far more than being technically very good, as at grad level it really means very little compared with an average person with ten years good experience.

So chose to go to uni where you want to go, I chose mine because it had some of the best access in the country for rock climbing. Learn some people skills, show some enthusiasm and do things you enjoy. It might not make you millions, but you'll do ok and be a lot happier for it.

[LabSpokane]

Ignoring the degree for a minute.  How does a newly minted grad come to your attention as a potential hire?  An automated resume parsing system?  How does that motivated, qualified candidate get your attention to get called for an interview?  Particularly ones that may not have any industry networking contacts... 

Quite a bit of creation on your part there. Let me create a system about your company, which I know nothing about, and then use these unfounded assertions to attack! Whee!

Newly "minted" grads don't get our attention. The company has active finders who shop for people who will graduate in about 1 year down to 6 months. If they wait until they graduate, they're left with the scraps. Fortunately, this is not limited to just MIT and such as it comes down to the members of different divisions looking outside of the "easy" places for talent. When we go shopping for new hires, we specifically hunt for candidates, and perform on-site introductory interviews. Of the many that are performed, a list is generated by the person of whom they think are good material. These persons then get put through the gauntlet, a full day of interviews among various persons in the group they would intern at. They'll get beaten on by the Fellows, and then beaten on by their would-be peers. Those who can cut it, then get offered paid interships for the summer where we see what their work ethic is like. If they do well, we offer them a job.

Whoa! No malice intended.  That wasn't meant to be an attack. It was just a question to redirect the discussion. So active recruiting is how you hire young engineers.

[Blofeld]

4. Suppose two resumes are equal except one says their education is from UCB and the other from UCD, which would you hire?

Berkeley gave me SPICE and the Berkeley Physics Course (more precisely, "Mechanics" and "Electricity and Magnetism", don't know the other books). Davis gave me... hmm, dunno. Maybe they invented some stuff that I used without knowing it. So if two resumes were exactly equal, I'm pretty sure most people would hire the Berkeley guy.

On the other hand, at Berkeley you would be one student among some very, very bright other students. And you might have the unpleasant experience of many other students being ahead of you, no matter how much effort you put in. This is less likely to happen at Davis.

[suicidaleggroll]

On the other hand, at Berkeley you would be one student among some very, very bright other students. And you might have the unpleasant experience of many other students being ahead of you, no matter how much effort you put in. This is less likely to happen at Davis.

On that note, an unfortunate truth is a lot of larger companies have a minimum GPA threshold before you're even considered.  It's a hard number, no wiggle room, the admins won't even pass along your resume to the necessary department unless you hit it.

I graduated from undergrad with a 3.49 overall (3.8 engineering only), and I applied at one institution that had a 3.5 cutoff...no dice.  Meanwhile I knew several guys who went to a MUCH easier state school down the road and came out with 3.6-3.7 without any effort.  Many got interviews with this company, and some were hired.  On more than one occasion they would come back to me to ask for help with their work because their school skipped straight over many of the basics - topics that you wouldn't have even passed at my school if you hadn't mastered.

[geratheg]

Thanks for all the responses. I have a 4.0 at CC, but I also have some projects that I put in the application, which is probably what got me into Berkeley in the first place. Looks like I'm leaning a little more for Berkeley. Have until the end of May to decide.

I saw a list of jobs per major for Berkeley. In that list, most of those with an EECS got a job as a software engineer. I'm more into hardware than software.

All of you that got an EECS at Berkeley, what was your GPA? What about Davis?

[VK3DRB]

In Australia? Not much, if at all. At the end of the day, smart employers want passion, articulation, intelligence, drive and skill.

The "old boys" club does not exist here in engineering. Little Lord Flauntleroy's rich parents are throwing money away sending their kids to a private secondary schools here.

In Australia (like in other socially advance countries like France and Sweden), it is considered crass and rude to boast or demonstrate social class. All uni engineering courses must meet a standard set by the IEEE. Hence there is no benefit going to a "prestige uni". Same with salary too. There is no difference.

Unfortunately things have changed...http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.htm

The 4 Corners program exposes so-called "prestige" universities committing fraud in order to get money out of foreigners and the rampant cheating by some foreigners who fail to meet basic standards. In my opinion is, no matter what Australian university a student graduates from, if their spoken or written English is crap they will be out the door before they even get to the end of the first interview. If however, they graduated from a foreign university, that is entirely a different matter - they are not excluded from being a candidate for the job and are evaluated based upon merit.

[timofonic]

Find a college that has good contacts with companies that offer internships, and/or a college with a careers department that can help place students as interns through careers fairs and other channels.

Getting a job as a summer intern and impressing is an excellent way to get offered a permanent position.

+1000

The last three people I've hired got their job after an internship made possible by a recommendation from their teachers (and in one case from the PhD adviser).

That may be an issue.

I'm not at university, still struggling with a crappy vocational training school (or is it called trade school too?) but would like to go someday. I've experienced the ass lockers issue.

A few above average students get 80% attention span and resources from teachers, while the rest go to fuck off. Maybe there's 40% trash students in class (a few are smart but don't give a shit, others are dumb as a potato and maybe have maturity issues but don't care at all) but the rest have real motivation and don't get the deserved resources.

And from those really motivated, I see most of them have learning issues. Such as me.

Here in Málaga I'm becoming an university lurker, trying to get access to their labs and workshops.

I see they have resources, but I dislike the department way and would prefer an advanced workshop instead. Why a soldering station is separated from PSU, scope and DMM?

There's tons of Rigol Scopes in telecommunications and engineering universities here in Málaga too.