What engineering degree should I take and what college to accompany it?
May 12, 2010 by thub
Filed under Engineering
I am taking up engineering. What would be some similar and beneficial majors to look at. I will probably get more than one since I am planning to run my dad’s business. I’m looking at architecture, civil engineering, and electrical engineering majors. Maybe two of them. I don’t know which ones are in the most demand or anything. I can also go to any college in the United States to learn these things. I’d also like to know a good college to teach me engineering. Any advice?
The different engineering disciplines are different beasts. Many of the mathematical skills will be the same (calculus differentiation and integration, sometimes partial differential equations), but the laws and concepts to understand will be very different.
Civil engineering deals with static (not moving) physics and strengths of materials, as well as large water systems and geological things. Beginning pay is around $40,000/yr, and there’s not a particularly high demand for them. In my intro engineering class, about 60% of the students were majoring in civil engineering.
Mechanical engineering deals more with dynamic physics (things that move) as well as a lot of fluid dynamics (pumps, valves and pressure, and hydraulics) and thermodynamics. There’s also a little bit of programming involved, such as configuring electronic controls. Base pay is around $40,000 per year, and about 35% of the students in my intro class were majoring in mechanical engineering.
Electrical engineering deals (obviously) with electricity. There are generally two aspects of it. There is the higher voltage aspect, such as power systems, and there is the lower voltage aspect, such as electronics and wireless communications. Electrodynamics and electrostatics can get very difficult – calculating electric fields becomes especially difficult when dealing with anything that has corners, because you have to use integration and partial integration to do it. There is also a lot of programming involved in both aspects. Pay generally starts at around $50,000 per year, but it’s hard NOT to find a job – people will come to you. This is what I’m majoring in – specifically, electronics and signal processing.
Computer engineering is much like electrical engineering, only much more focused on computer systems than any other electrical systems. They have to understand computer architecture, and they deal with how to physically create memory and how to store and access it, as well as know how to tell a machine how to do something. They have to know how to build hardware to handle different things. There is tons of programming involved, as well as very interesting problem-solving techniques using algorithms. Base pay is about $50,000 per year, and people will come to you.
Chemical engineering is very difficult stuff, but also very rewarding as well. The guys who figure out how to make stuff go boom? Chemical engineers. The guys who figured out how to make your scratch-resistant glasses, shatterproof bottles, and your oh-so-soft memory foam mattress? Also chemical engineers. A lot of them work for oil companies (because that falls under organic chemistry), but they are needed for a lot of things. The hard part? Chemistry is a difficult concept for most people to grasp anyway, but add that to a whole bunch of psycho partial differential equations, and that’s your job. There is a huge demand for them, and the starting pay is over $60,000.
There are other engineering fields out there, but generally they would fall under either degrees in physics, chemistry, or computer science. Some examples would be acoustic engineering, metallurgical engineering, software engineering, and biomedical engineering.
If you’re right away going to run a business you may be better off with a BSIT degree in Industrial Technology. BSIT degrees combine Engineering and Business courses, but typically the mathematics is much easier than in a pure engineering program. BSIT degrees are accredited by NAIT.