BritishInOhio

Hi, I am thinking of getting some official comparison between my Bachelors of Engineering Honors degree I have from the UK compared to it’s US equivalent. Does anyone have any experience of this? Does it assist you at interviews etc?
Thanks for your replies.

Rich

Stevie

Hi Rich

See my reply in this thread for details of specific agencies:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...hreadid=187707

I don't know about helping at interviews, but I was asked to provide a 'foreign credentials evaluation' when my future employer filed for an H1B.

Stevie

DaveC

I've got UK BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering. It would appear that in the US you can study for either a Bachelor of Science or a Bachelor of Engineering engineering degree. Not too sure of the precise differences between the US degress.

Was your degree accredited by the UK Engineering Council when you graduated? If so, under the Washington Accord it should be recognized by the US Accreditation Board. This is important if you want to go for Professional Engineering Licensure.

There are other threads on this forum about the general differences between US and UK degrees which may be of interest to you.

Pulaski

If you are lucky a UK Bachelors degree will be treated as equivalent to an American bachelors degree.

If you aren't lucky the British degree may be seen as inferior because it is "only a three year degree" (compared to American four year Bachelors degrees).

In truth a British Bachelors degree is of equal standing to a US Masters degree!

Patrick

Honours means nothing. The equivalent to BENG is a BSC, I have recently started putting that as one recruiter commented he didn't call me because he didn't know what a B Eng (Hons) was. - in the current economic climate it is smart to make it as obvious as you can to the americans what you are. My advice is to put Bachelor of Science

Patrick

Pulaski

A co-worker in my office, who has a Bachelors degree from a University in Australia tried to enroll for a Masters degree at a university in Florida but discovered that his Australian three year degree was not acceptable (it was deemed inferior to a US four year Bachelors degree, see my earlier post), unless it was an honors degree.

DaveC

Depends. Bachelor's degrees from Scottish Unis have always been 4 years long. I think in general the standard of UK degrees is deteriorating anyway. For example If you're starting uni now in the UK and you ultimately want to be a CEng you need a 4/5 year MEng degree. You only used to need a BEng, thank goodness!

Patrick's right, leave the BEng (Hons) off the resume. It's all about getting an interview and you can always expand / explain your degree there. I write "BS equivalent in Mechanical Engineering" and list my university name and graduation date. Depending on the job, and if I have room, I'll add "4 year degree, recognized by the US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology."

Pulaski

Fair comment, but "Hons" is recognized here in the US, so I (if I was an engineer, which I'm not) would switch BEng (Hons) for BSc (Hons) - if you have an honors degree there is nothing to be gained by hiding the fact.

Patrick

Hooray for the University of Florida, OK apart from Universities (who are well versed on international degrees) Hons is not widely recognised by HR and Recruiters. If you put BSc (Hons) on your resume you are more likely to confuse the poor bastards. Lets keep it to general rules and not get petty about one University.

It has nothing to do with hiding facts and more to do with accommodating to the environment your in. There is a reason your not an Engineer!

Patrick

PrincessofWales

How do you figure that one out? So I have a BA in English, could I honestly put that down as an MA on my resume? Not that anyone here seems to care about education, seems to be more about who you know or who you brown nose?

NC Penguin

The problem I could forsee is that if you put that you have an MA in English from whatever institution you attended, if it came to the crunch and the employer/agency asked to see your transcript(s), you'd probably be considered as lying about your qualification.

What I did as part of Americanising my CV was to describe my academic qualificatons like this:

"British equivalent of BS Honors" in XXXXX (insert name of subject).

I investigated add the terms, "cum laude", "magna cum laude" and "summa cum laude" but it was too ambitious to equivate my Honours to any of those terms so I decided not to try.




NC Penguin

Pulaski

No no no no NO!!!!

My post was a vaguely tongue-in-cheek comparison of the "quality of the learning" and not anything official.

American and British degrees stand as they were awarded - you cannot translate a degree in one country into something diferent in another.

Pulaski

A Google search for "honors degree" (how convenient is that missing "u"? ) yield the following from the first page:-
University of Utah
University of California, Berkley
University of Oregon
University of Delaware
Indiana University
University of Rochester
South West Missouri State University
University]University of Delaware - Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering

On the second page:
University of Texas, El Paso
University of Texas, Arlington
University of Wisconsin, Madison

The third page:University of New Orleans
url=http://www.engr.washington.edu/score/Degree_Record_Form.PDF]University of Washington[/url] College of Engineering

...... etc, etc

So universities from places as far apart as California, Texas, New York and Washington state, award Honors degrees, including some engineering programs. How much more evidence do you need to accept that "Hons" is recognised and understood here?

GXE

I applied for some courses here and I figured I needed some equivalence with my UK degree (Bsc Hons 2i from Aston)

I used this place. It was about 130 dollars - they even take into account your A-Levels and include them. An A level counts as 10 credits. I was referred to them (one of several) from UW-Madison (WI). They were very thorough and provide a sealed copy for an institution.

http://www.ece.org/

Pharrya

I'm another one with a BEng (Hons). On my CV I simply put 'Bachelors Degree with Honors'

I'm not sure if the Honors impresses or not...