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. The story is pretty depressing. . I also wonder if this guy did anything wrong.
Spoiler
Quote:
Robert
Location: Texas, USA
Years in College: 4 and 2: 1986-1990, and 1992-1994
Degrees: B.S in Chemical Engineering, 1990 from University of Maryland, Masters of Engineering 1994 (similar to a Masters of Science, but requires more credit hours of classroom work and less credits research with a higher overall credit requirement) from Texas A&M.
Finances in college: My B.S. was mostly paid for by my parents. I did work summers and part time during the school year to help pay though. My Masters was paid for mostly by me from what I had saved up working full time for a couple of years. I did get a small stipend from the university for the first year ($1000/month). There were no student loans to pay off, thank God!
One of things nobody bothered telling me when I entered college for chemical engineering was, companies only hire (zero) experience straight out of college. If you don’t get hired your senior year, your degree is pretty much worthless. I’ve since been told by a geologist friend that geology is the same way.
I wish I had gotten much more familiar with my school’s placement office. Truly, for engineering, and some other professions, the quality of the placement office can make or break your degree. In my case, I suffered a triple whammy.
My first whammy was I had little time to interview and get familiar with my school’s placement office my senior year as my course load work was so heavy. I was taking 18 credit hours a semester, trying to graduate in 4 years before funding ran out. My school’s limit was 19 hours per semester. And senior chemical engineering classes aren’t easy either. They require a lot of time. I was one of about 4 members of my graduating class that graduated in 4 years IIRC. Most took 5 years. My chemical engineering degree required 140 credit hours, while most degrees at the university required only 120. So it’s not hard to imagine the load us chemical engineering students had to take was high. But even then, I had to take summer courses and even a 3 credit hour course crammed into Christmas break (not fun; I ate, sleep, and studied -that was my Christmas break) in order to make it in 4 years.
My second whammy came from the fact my school’s placement office sucked. Only 6 out of 22 of my graduating class had offers (or would admit to having offers). I know one of those was a job as a salesman for a chemical company, not as an engineer. I later learned that the same year (1990) that everyone in the University of Virginia’s chemical engineering class had at least one offer, some having multiple offers.
My third whammy was when I tried to get my school’s placement office to help my after I graduated, I was told it is only for active students and they refused to help me or let me interview.
I tried finding a job on my own. I must have sent out hundreds of resumes (this was before the Internet). The only jobs offers I finally had were the military doing chemical weapons research, which required me to enlist, or working in law enforcement for the state of Maryland Department of the Environment. As a side note, one of my friends from the University of Maryland in the nuclear engineering program and my only friend in that program, enlisted in the US Navy because he couldn’t get a job too. I took the state job. They preferred engineering degrees, but it wasn’t a requirement. I had one co-worker with a political science degree, and another with a physics degree. There were two others I believe had no college degrees, but I never confirmed that.
I decided to go back to school and get my masters because I really wanted to work as a chemical engineer, not a regulatory cop. I figured if I got another degree, I would have access to a placement office and would have another chance. During my stint with Maryland, I lived at home to save money. If had lived on my own, I probably would not have been able to pay for my Masters on my own.
With that idea, I moved from Maryland to attend Texas A&M. This time I was careful to interview with every company I could during my graduating year. Here the placement office used a point system and you had to buy interview slots. I burned all my points. Job offers: 0.
It wasn’t until a chance meeting 4 or 5 years later that I learned why. I happen to run into a person I had interviewed with at Texas A&M, named Julie Mays (now deceased). I asked her what I did wrong. She told me nothing. I never had a chance. The company she was working for then wasn’t hiring anyone, and she told me she knew many others were doing the same thing. The companies lied to the placement office and told them they were hiring so they could keep their slots open for future years when they would be hiring. So again, the placement office kinda screwed up.
I did eventually get an environmental consulting job on my own for a while, which used my degree, but only a little. My self-taught computer skills were used a lot more than my engineering degrees. The pay was little better than working for the state, and the benefits poorer. That lasted less 3 years, then the bottom of the market fell out and I got laid off, and I was unemployed yet again.
Eventually, I wandered into the computer field for lack of other options and have been there ever since, although for the last several years I’m only part time, and not by choice. There were several jobs I applied for in the meantime to keep eating, but when then saw my degrees, I was told I was “overqualified”. In one the case where I knew the manager, I learned they (the general manager from what I was told) passed over me to hire someone who had been in jail for 3 years. Kinda sad when a jail term beats a masters degree.
So in summary, I spent 6 years in school, to work in a related field (and that’s being generous) for 5 years, making maybe half of what the salary surveys that were touted when I entered school in 1986. I think if I totaled it up, including my parents gifts, I probably didn’t make enough during those 5 years to pay for my schooling. Worthless to me implies worth 0. In my case, I’m in a deficit, so my degrees are worse than worthless. And that’s just the dollar cost. There’s also the time lost, sweat, sleepless nights to finish school work, tears, blood (I sold blood to help pay for school), etc…
Thanks for listening,
Robert
You can find a similar sob story, 'Don't go this degree/career route because it pays crap and you can't find jobs' for EVERY single educational/career path under the sun.
The only exception is probably MD, because they make so much $ and are virtually guaranteed jobs.
But for every other single one, someone here on CD will try and steer you away from exactly what they did, whatever it may be.
. The story is pretty depressing. . I also wonder if this guy did anything wrong.
1. this story should really be as much about Maryland as TAMU because TAMU delivered exactly what this person went to them for and I will cover that below (point #4 )
2. yes this person made major mistakes they spent their entire time in the classroom and failed to have any clue or goal as to what they were going to do with their degree
3. the next mistake they made is after they failed to get gainful employment with their degree instead of figuring out what the issue is or was they doubled down and went right back to school for a masters in that same field of study
4. the MAJOR mistake they made when they went back to school is instead of getting a masters of science degree they got a "professional" masters of engineering that as they pointed out meant yet more time in the classroom and no time in the lab or doing research....the EXACT same thing they did when getting their undergrad degree.....TAMU delivered them the masters in engineering degree, but the INDIVIDUAL failed to deliver the real world experience needed to make one of those degrees relevant to getting a job....that is not the fault of TAMU that is their own fault for failing to recognizing and repeating the same exact mistake they made before.....professional degrees are for people that have been in industry for a decade or more and that are moving into management and are looking to brush up on some of the latest things they may not have had when they were in school so they can have a broad understanding of that in order to lead their underlings at their place of employment
a masters of science degree would have forced this individual to finally CHOOSE an area of study to specialize in and then to have real world and probably industry contact/experience while conducting their research......instead they wasted that opportunity and spent even more time in the classroom gaining overall broad concepts probably in several different areas and having no real world knowledge or experience in any of them
a huge waste of their time and effort and 100% on THEM
5. in 1990 to 1994 (you have to wonder where the 2 years between 1990 and 1992 went and what they were doing with their time) the semiconductor industry and the pharmaceutical industries were exploding and there is no reason that anyone with an ounce of common sense and ANY type of knowledge in semiconductors or pharmaceuticals should have had difficulty getting employed and in a few years after that the oil and gas and petro chemical industries should have been recovering as well and looking desperately to hire since they had laid off and run off many of their most experienced people with no chance to get them back because they were retired of firmly entrenched in a new career and not willing to go back to O&G or chemicals
if this individual had seen fit to actually get a MS degree instead of the professional degree and if they had even remotely worked to gain knowledge or experience in a particular area of specialization as an undergrad instead of merely working as fast as they could for a piece of paper with no knowledge what to do with it they would have had a much easier time getting a job
this persons experience is a joke and you really need to either include Maryland in the title or you need to remove the wording that attempts to question the value of the TAMU degree and instead question the idea of getting a piece of paper (much less two) while learning nothing from your multitude of mistakes along the way and having no real clue what to do with them once you get them
this persons experience is a joke and you really need to either include Maryland in the title or you need to remove the wording that attempts to question the value of the TAMU degree and instead question the idea of getting a piece of paper (much less two) while learning nothing from your multitude of mistakes along the way and having no real clue what to do with them once you get them
@TexasVines : Thank you about your helpful opinion.
OK, I brought the story here for the purpose of asking CD's members about their experience of TAMU chemE program. If you have the successful story, please share with others. It's great. I will apply for their PhD program next year. I do not question about the quality of education that TAMU provides, since we all know TAMU is a respected program in US, even in the world. I just have questions about their career service and internship placement as well as hiring process in industry. As this guy 's words : the hiring was fake at his time.
I put down TAMU , because I want to know more about this program. TexasVines, you seems to know a lot. If you have experience with TAMU or with other programs like Maryland, .... you are welcomed to share in CD. As I said I had no intentions in questioning about the value of the degree, I just want to here opinion about the program, that's it.
"If you don’t get hired your senior year, your degree is pretty much worthless."
"I wish I had gotten much more familiar with my school’s placement office."
In engineering most (that don't plan to go to grad school, etc.) students have jobs before graduating. Several good offers in good times, maybe not so many during a recession. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to buck the odds and not get a job. It IS possible and apparently this person managed to achieve exactly this result. The quotes suggest a certain deliberate cluelessness.
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. I also wonder if this guy did anything wrong. 
