Yahoo was there. Nearby were Honda, Caterpillar, Rockwell Collins, ON Semiconductor, Marathon Petroleum and Raytheon. They were among the 110 companies and graduate schools with recruiters at the winter career fair, seeking to fill opportunities for full-time employment, internships, co-op assignments and graduate school studies.

Some of the positions have already been filled by Rose-Hulman students. The Office of Career Services and Employer Relations reports that 49 percent of this year’s seniors have already accepted job after attending the last fall’s career fair (with nearly 240 companies), completing summer work experiences with companies, or through other work searches.

The Princeton Review has featured Rose-Hulman in the 2018 edition of “Colleges That Pay You Back: The 200 Schools That Give You the Best Bang for Your Tuition Buck.” The institute was ranked 10^th for providing top internship opportunities and 17^th for best career placement.

Nearly 96 percent of Rose-Hulman students have at least one work or academic research experience before graduation, according to Scott Tieken, associate director of career services and employer relations.

It this work-related experience that keeps most of the companies returning to campus for each of the three career fairs annually filling the fieldhouse area of the Sports and Recreation Center.

“Rose-Hulman students have the hands-on project skills, ability to work well in teams, intelligence and analytical skills that make them attractive to us. We’re impressed with every student that takes an interest in us,” said Nate Subbert, a software engineer with Rockwell Collins. More than 100 alumni currently work for the Iowa-based company, with more expected after the 2017-18 recruitment season.

Senior computer science major Alex Goebel had a co-op with Rockwell Collins during the summer and fall of 2016, along with an internship last summer with Booz Allen Hamilton, before accepting a post-graduate job as an cyber engineer with Raytheon—one of seven job offers.

“I look forward to using the skills I have learned at Rose-Hulman to work in a field I enjoy. I believe this job will utilize what I already know as well as help me learn more about computer science,” he said. “I wanted to focus myself on the engineering and problem-solving side of computer science.”

Besides the two internships, Goebel participated in computing Hackathon events, was a member of the Rose-Hulman lacrosse team and Team Rose Motorsports club, along with his many classroom projects.

“I wanted to make sure my resume reflected a busy life at Rose-Hulman. Moving the conversation from my implementation of a polyglot-persistent, horizontally scaled database system to my experiences on campus were helpful during interviews,” said the native of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

Fortunate to have six job offers to review were Tayler Evans, an optical engineering senior who had two summer internships with NASA; Aaron Starlin, an electrical engineering senior who had internships in each of his first three years on campus; and Taylor Knoblock, a civil engineering senior who took a year away from his studies for valuable work experience with a construction company.

“I am not the most social person and given my nature would probably be more of an introvert had it not been for the necessity to participate at Rose-Hulman,” says Evans, who was co-founder of the ESCALATE mentorship program (for aspiring entrepreneurs) and was a student government leader.  “Because of all the group-type projects, various presentations, ESCALATE, student government and my campus job as lifeguard/building supervisor in the sports and recreation center, my communications skills have grown and expanded.”