Engineering Job Opportunies Question

[VoloD]

It is the case that in almost all cases though, these students had internship or co-op programs (the University of Waterloo in Canada, which is one of the highly ranked schools for STEM fields in Canada, requires all engineering students to be enrolled in and participate in the co-op programs).

That's sounds like a great deal for the students who go there. My first school has industry contacts, but there is no built in co-op or intern program. Primarily it's up to the student to find their own opportunities, despite having a career center for guidance.

The university I'm currently at now has the same issue. I don't think the universities are not sponsored, but competition can just make things a lot harder.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Students with high GPAs almost always have an easier time finding jobs than students with mediocre academic records. Grade inflation has rendered GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5 much less valuable than they used to be, especially from the mid and lower ranked schools. At the same time, job markets on the east and west coasts are much stronger in many engineering fields.

If it is too late to fix a mediocre GPA, you need to improve your letters of recommendation, and you need to broaden the geographic scope of your job searches.

 

[VoloD]

If it is too late to fix a mediocre GPA, you need to improve your letters of recommendation, and you need to broaden the geographic scope of your job searches.

I am still attending graduate school, I have two more semesters of coursework left, so my GPA can still increase (and most likely will given that I developed better study strategies since my first year.) As for demographics, I am certainly not picky about job/intern locations. I want to work after getting my Masters degree, but I am not sure who I should be talking to.