hunterashmore wrote:
bryk wrote:
This seems unnecessary. I know plenty of companies that hire chem E's, ME's, EE's, etc for the same position. I think business schools look at your degree and see engineer, that's it. Even you said that you are an ME but your job doesn't pertain much to mechanical engineering.
To many engineers, this would be offensive (though I dont think you intended it that way, so pardon my upcoming rant).
It is like saying finance degrees are the same as the business and economics degrees, so we should just lump them together as well. Unless the job simply needs someone who can handle math, you would never hire a software engineer for a mechanical engineer job or an industrial engineer for an electrical engineer job. The vast majority of engineering jobs are not so vague. Plus, the difficulty of these degrees are significantly different, so to those who obtained the harder degrees this simplification is ignoring the extra work we had to do.
Also, I never said my work does not pertain to engineering. I work a business development role at an energy startup, where I have to know the technical details inside and out for the systems in order to be able to speak intelligibly to it. Everyone working BD here, as well as those in other highly technical companies I have worked, have engineering or otherwise technical backgrounds.
However, I will agree that this level of granularity is not necessary…but then again, no breakout is necessary at all. Does knowing this information change your willingness to apply? No. You will apply to your school choices either way. It doesn’t mean I’m not curious, though.
Speaking as an engineer, I know that it is generally accepted that a Chem E degree is more difficult than EE which is more difficult than ME which is more difficult than IE, but I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that business schools only see "engineer" and automatically associate that with the ability to do quantitative work. That is why I think breaking down engineering is unnecessary.
However, I do think the original breakdown given is helpful because when I first started thinking about applying to business school, I went to see Harvard's admission stats. When I saw that 40% of the class of 201X was engineering, it gave me hope and provided motivation to look further into the process. If, early in my research, I saw a stat saying that 1% of engineers make it into Harvard, I seriously doubt I would have applied because the odds would have been heavily stacked against me.
That is why I respectfully disagreed with you when you stated, "Simply saying "engineer" seems woefully inadequate to me."