Going to College as an Adult

Sanrith Descartes said:

I'm going off of memory here so bare with me but as I recall engineering degrees gain very little from grad degrees in terms of salary bump. Business degrees gain a substantial bump with an MBA. Lots of liberal arts degrees gain a chunk with a grad degree (though this is partially due to how little they make with just a bachelors).

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True, but the grad degree can be a barrier for entry for some companies in engineering.

The university was also explaining that if you do your work through them, they have a fast-track 1-year program that will take you from bachelors to masters. It's re-using some of the credits you've already earned, but they're allowed for... reasons?

Assuming you had decent grades (B or higher) in those re-use credit classes.

Sanrith Descartes said:

I always thought of grad degrees in STEM to be more for research and teaching. I figured the bachelors would be for those going to do the job every day.

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That's sort of true, but there are companies that require a masters. Also some companies won't promote you passed a certain point without an MS.

The BS/MS combos were offered at our school too, but they were offered Junior year to only the top people in all of engineering (like top 5% I'd guess). It turns the 4 year degree into a 5 year degree. Totally worth it if you can get the grades.

I know very few people who have Master's degrees in Engineering and I went to an Engineering University (Clarkson). All of my engineer friends either went straight to the field after their bachelor's or stayed in school to get their PhD.

As far as I can tell the FE and PE licenses are more important than a Master's degree. And you usually need work experience/several years in the field to be able to take the PE.

Not criticizing but curious - what's the benefit of perpetually being enrolled in school?

Noodleface said:

Not criticizing but curious - what's the benefit of perpetually being enrolled in school?

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Think of it like raiding mythic but the achievements carry in to the real world.

wormie said:

Since I got a worf for my hobby reply I just wanted to clarify, I wasnt being dismissive. I didnt appreciate college when I just got out of high school. I fucked around a lot, didnt bother doing anything and quit after two years. When I grew up a bit, I finished that degree (Economics) and realized there were certain classes, particularly math, that I enjoyed. Since I barely work, and what work I do is almost entirely up to my discretion, I decided to start taking a class or two a semester just for fun. This was 12 or 13 years ago and I have not stopped taking classes, sometimes more than 1 or 2 a semester (last semester I took 6 which wasnt smart lol) and the topics of interest to me have widened from just math to pretty much all STEM fields (except chem, eat shit and die chem).

Now since I have been at this for over a decade, I am more or less out of classes to take so a large portion of what I do involves independent studies with Professors to either work on some shit they want me to study or projects that they need done or are interested in exploring. There have been a couple of things that I myself have requested the Professors take an interest in and I have done study under them on those topics.

The tl;dr is that by going to school I have access to people much smarter than I am and the ability to work with these people is preferable to what I was doing before with my free time.

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But raid times are tue-thur-sat, no time to idle.

Arbitrary said:

Think of it like raiding mythic but the achievements carry in to the real world.

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Do they? If you aren't getting a bunch of degrees?

Here's the next update. (I posted this on another forum)

Regarding my own college (I haven't started yet), I had a meeting with the University regarding their Engineering degree. I liked what they told me, but they said I could accomplish a lot of the math faster using the local community college's accelerated program. By doing the math there, it would unlock other classes I need to take at the university and save a lot of time.

So on Tuesday I had a meeting with the community college and they walked me though the process. They have an agreement with the university to knock out the 1st and 2nd year of the university's curriculum, thus saving you a lot of money in the process. And 100% of the credits you earn will be transferred. You are also free to enroll at any time, but once you hit 24 credits worth of points at the community college, you are automatically enrolled into the university. IE - You don't need to pass a test or anything. You're just suddenly a student there.

So this morning I reached out to a community college in Philadelphia that I attended a LONG time ago (turns out it was 2005), and I took 6 classes. Passed 5 of them with B averages, but bombed one. I don't even remember taking the final.

Anyway, they are going to transfer my transcript to the new community college, and begin their pre-Engineering program to knock out as much math and GE classes as possible (for as little as possible).

For a Hawaii resident, the community college charges $131/credit, where as the university charges $471/credit. I don't know why they both end in 1, but you get the idea. And I can also CLEP out of a lot of the GE for around $45/credit. So there's that as well.

Today I enrolled into the community college. They said I would hear back in a week. So now to play the waiting game.