My son is graduating in December with Materials Science Engineering job. He has a decent amount of undergad experience with about a year working in the National Corrosion and Reliability Lab at Rellis as well as a summer internship in R&D at a large O&G firm (his work was focusing on alternative energy and new material technologies) in Houston.

He is applying for jobs and a some companies are responding and asking what salary he is looking for. He doesn't know exactly how to answer and I wanted to arm him with good info so I thought I would ask here among other places.

So the question is, what's a good salary expectation for a new grad in engineering these days? Materials Science Engineering specifically

Thanks in advance and Gigem

https://aggiesurveys.tamu.edu/public/Reports.aspx

Looks like Spring 2022 the average for his major is ~$75K/annually.

Yeah I was a little surprised but more than one company has asked the question. Inflation has been pretty rampant and most of the A&M data is a year or two old so I was just trying to help him get more up to date data.

tamuags08 said:

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https://aggiesurveys.tamu.edu/public/Reports.aspx

Looks like Spring 2022 the average for his major is ~$75K/annually.

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This sounds about right, that was going to be my guess.

Noble07 said:

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I would not answer the question, and say instead that you'd have to look at the entire compensation package and don't have a specific number in mind for base pay. I would then ask if they have a salary range they can share for the position.

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That was my initial thought...however they specifically said not to answer with "competitive" or "negotiable". They said they are ok with specifying a range, but they want to make sure everyone is on the same page before moving further.

I hate having the lay salary out because I was always told whoever speaks about money first usually sets the stage and I would hate for him to ask for $75k when they are open to $85k or more. With the cost of living rising so rapidly the last 2 years, I would expect that even in starting roles that pay scales have increased 5-10%

Maybe just consider tacking on the 5-7% inflation increase to the $75k and call it a day? Perhaps an $80k ask in other words

I assume they are looking at smaller companies. As someone above said, we don't ask nor do we negotiate new grad slaries. We hire probably 500 new grads a year at this point. I'd have to go dig up what that number even is because I don't really track since HR sets and that's it.

Thanks for the info yall.

BTHO everyone.

Gigem !

Depends on the industry and the city.

For Example, Los Angeles salaries are generally higher than other cities.