As someone who went to a top ranked school in Engineering , I have an interesting anecdote that reveals perhaps a disturbing trend my friends and I have noticed in these engineering schools as we talk to more and more peers about it, which I think is important because this issue impacts more areas than just how these kids do in college, it effects every area of their life.

Me and some of my other female Engineering friends, just got out of long term relationships with boys we went to college with in Engineering, and while anecdotally its a coincidence that in this case I'm speaking from the perspective of three females (because the genders could be reversed with potentially the same problems), after much discussion we've realized the biggest issue with our exes is that their mothers practically ran their lives, even at the age of ...25.

Two of us came from a poor background with uneducated parents, so getting into a good college was completely of my own motivation and that characteristic of mine continued to play out and earn myself a role of success in life, and hers as well. The other had a mother that came from a very poor background with uneducated parents but paid her way through college and become a high end Executive on Wallstreet, and pushed her daughter to have the same ambition she did.

All three of our ex boyfriends however came from multigenerational inherited affluent wealth with stories about their grandparents creating legacies at fancy boarding schools and their parents played a role in everything they did. While this did print them a resume to get into a good college (and they were also smart and did actually perform well in school but that's ALL they had to do, was show up to classes chosen for them and do well). Once they got there, academically they were unmotivated and did poorly in classes while playing video games. When they graduated all three of them had "no idea" what they wanted to do post college. They all got ok jobs making entry level salaries but have sat in those positions for going on 5 years, miserable.

Meanwhile the three of us females were, in college: doing graduate research, taking grad classes, working part time jobs and had both started, taught ourselves investing etc etc. and now going on 5 years post college we are all age 26: one is the director of Marketing for a top ranked Bank, One of the cofounder of a trending tech startup, and I work in Engineering for a nonprofit in energy resources setting precedents in the Supreme court and free market economics for challenging resource monopolies and making energy resources more competitive, and all have surpassed our ex boyfriends salaries years ago....

All three of us one night discovered that not only had we all done our boyfriends resumes in college and updated them since college, all three of them asked us to do it for them, because their parents were sick of doing them as they had created them for their college admissions as well. Hmm...interesting...

Our exes were sitting at home in dead end jobs they admittedly hated, but couldn't stop playing Halo to update their resume unless their mothers called them and told them to do so, or their dads offered to look around for an opening in their respective companies. It boggles our mind but more importantly..

this same lackadaisical "wait for somebody else to swoop in and solve this problem for me" attitude became a problem in our interpersonal relationships. All of them had a hard time expressing their emotions or even being in touch with them, or knowing what they wanted or even verbalizing their own perceptions of problems because all of those things? someone had been doing that for them their whole lives.

This left all of usfrustrated with emotionally disconnected exes sitting at home not even knowing how to work on their own problems, much less adequately address issues in a relationship that involves two independent humans. All three of them kept running back to their estate to take time "off" and pout whenever a problem occurred at work or personally and hide from their problems while their mothers doted on them.

It also caused us to decrease our sympathy for them over time because they had everything handed to them yet still had excuses about why they hated their jobs and life so much. But we came from a world where excuses were not a luxury we had if we wanted not even a successful life but an even slightly comfortable one.

Meanwhile, we are traveling the world, doing well in our careers and also trying to figure out how to verbalize their perspective and then ask them if what we said was what they were feeling. Like, we had to present multiple choice options for them because they had no voice of their own.

Needless to say, these relationships did not work out. Everyone has issues and we were willing to admit to our own and take constructive feedback, but there was no constructive feedback, because they had never had to do that in their lives.

The most heartbreaking part was, in their careers and in their personal lives, they wanted a good career and they didn't want us to leave them, but they had burned their bridges and were left clueless on how to go about to their next phase of life. It was sad but we did not have time to raise children as 25 yr old females busting our tails in the tech environment. There's a reason we don't have kids right now, because we don't have time.

We each loved them dearly but we needed emotional equality and people who supported our ambitions and also had their own.

I'm not sure if these issues were also paired to be more likely outcomes with their personality types, or what the true root cause is, as I'm an Engineer, not a psychologist, but being able to talk to someone else going through the same thing, we saw some eerily similiar trends, and it always related back to their parents effectively babying them in areas of their life, that were embarassing from the perspective of highly independent and motivated people we had to be to effectively reach the same socioeconomic status they were born into.

Moral of the story: While having an Engineer Degree is important for Engineering (but not so much coding if at all)

the MORE important factors in success are
1. Knowing what you want and going after it

2. Being self motivated

3. Being able to clearly communicate your position whether its emotions, needs, or negociating a raise or why you feel you are up for the challenge of a new job position, etc

4. independent ability to not only
a. identify
b. define, but
c. solve problems on your own

Sorry helicoptor parents but your missing the point. As someone else said earlier (whom I completely disagree with) he said "helicoptor parenting is working, get them into stanford and then they have the rest of their lives to fail"

woops, college is not the ends to a means, its a means to an end and if the means is handed to them, then they will not be able to fish in the real world by themselves. Teach them how to fish.