<p>i was wondering what kind of programs MIT has for aerospace engineering and would it be a good school to attend for it? what is the best?</p>
<p>MIT's Aero/Astro program is Course 16. The website can be found here: MIT</a> Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.</p>
<p>The general consensus on these forums seems to be that the department is extremely good, but that the major itself is very hard. One of the defining features of MIT's program is 'Unified', a class that all course 16 majors must take that spans the entire sophomore year and is generally considered to be one of the hardest classes that the Institute has to offer.</p>
<p>MIT has one of the top (if not the top) aerospace engineering programs in the country.</p>
<p>My husband graduated last year from the department (and will returning for his master's the year after next), so I'd be happy to relay any questions about the department to him.</p>
<p>im not fully set on aerospace engeering yet but why is so bad?</p>
<p>Aero/Astro Engineering is known as one of the more difficult types of engineering to study and major in--along with chemical engineering.</p>
<p>Also, Aero/Astro work often requires security clearance, so the work is less open and less comfortable than other fields.</p>
<p>"Hard" is not the same as "bad."</p>
<p>Aero/astro at MIT is tough, but since every year of students takes Unified (mentioned by k4r3n2) together, everybody does homework together in the student lounge and helps each other through. Nobody slogs through the major alone.</p>
<p>Aero/Astro isn't bad, it's challenging. At risk of revealing my age, my class was the 1st or 2nd one to take Course 16's Unified Engineering program. In my opinion, Aero/astro's reputation as a difficult major is based on the breadth of material studied as well as the complexity of the material. Unified alone introduces structural analysis, fluid mechanics, dynamics, thermodynamics, and the challenges faced when you need to design and optimize a system across these disciplines instead of merely within one of them. If you took a "block" course in high school where, say, English and History are taught together to complement each other, Unified is the same idea on steroids at full afterburner (if I mix the metaphors). In addition, you may also be taking a 3rd semester calculus or differential equations course covering material you'll be using in Unified, as well as 3rd semester Physics. So it's a full load, but one I think most MIT students are fully able to handle. [And just for completeness, I see chem e's reputation has not suffered, either, over the years. I thought of it as 3 solid years of thermo and organic chem. There's a reason I didn't concentrate in propulsion and took a materials sciences course! :) ]</p>
<p>I haven't kept up with the current curriculum, so I can't say if the program has relatively less room for electives than other majors, as was the case when I attended. That said, I had enough room in my schedule to include an 8 month co-op job on the West Coast, participate in UROP, fly sailplanes with MITSA, work at the Wright Brothers low speed wind tunnel, take some fun elective classes (including a philosophy class at Wellesley) and thoroughly enjoy my fraternity's social life and Boston and Cambridge. </p>
<p>As to employment, aerospace is traditionally a very cyclical industry. (something that can be said of many engineering disciplines, or ALL businesses in general.) I entered the major during a significant industry downturn, employment had just started to recover the year I graduated but didn't really pick up for another year or so. I've held a variety of jobs since then, in and out of the business, and with one or two exceptions, they have all been rewarding intellectually as well as financially. While I've moved from the metal-bending end of the business into what's called systems engineering and integration, I began to develop the knowledge and skills I use daily back in Unified. This includes jobs where a security clearance is required. The federal government and military are major customers, so if that bothers you, get over it or go work in a different field. That DOES NOT mean we're all "nuke em till they glow then shoot 'em in the dark" nut jobs. Far from it. And the skills you learn in aero/astro are quite applicable to solving many other problems that have nothing to do with the military, government, or making something fly further or faster. </p>
<p>To answer the OP, I think the department is one of the best in the country. It has world-renowned faculty, and as usually one of the smaller departments, your upperclass courses are relatively smaller and you get to work with senior faculty (I did for all 3 years beginning with Unified). </p>
<p>If the program has a weakness, we are not geographically close to a major aerospace industry center, so there may be a perception of less direct involvement with a local industry in comparison, with the EE department or with competing aerospace programs in, for example, Southern California. I did not experience that as a problem and I think there are ample opportunities to engage in hands-on work at the undergrad and graduate levels to satisfy almost anyone. I'd recommend MIT's aero/astro program to anyone interested in the field.</p>
<p>ok thank you. i do like hard courses because i usually get more out of them and come out as a changed man. I know you talked about employment little bit but how about current rates? I'm attempting to get a ph.D. Currently im only a sophmore but how do you think the rates will be when i need a job? Because i have a friend who took natural science or something along those lines and has not got a job from zoo anywhere.</p>
<p>I want to study Aerospace too.. but my parents claim I won't survive at MIT.. or at least they make it sound like it..</p>
<p>Well, the jobs you get with a PhD will be different from the jobs you get coming out of the department with a bachelor's or a master's. Generally speaking, you would get a PhD only if you're interested in working in academia, which is not particularly promising job-wise in the vast majority of fields.</p>
<p>With a bachelor's degree, you would have no problem either getting a job or getting into an aero/astro graduate program -- a very large percentage of MIT's graduating aero/astro seniors continue on to the department's master's program. My husband's friends who didn't go to grad school got jobs with different major aerospace companies, and my husband himself was offered a job he couldn't refuse with a small aerospace company in Cambridge, even though he was planning to head straight to grad school.</p>
<p>so its not worth it to get phD?</p>
<p>Well, it's not worth it to get a PhD if you don't want to work in academia. For jobs at NASA/Lockheed/Boeing/etc., a bachelor's is fine, although you'll usually get paid a little more with a master's.</p>
<p>oh</p>
<p>well ill get a ph.D anyway just for personal knowledge </p>
<p>later on..</p>
<p>This is not a decision you have to make right now -- actually, it's probably a decision you shouldn't make until junior year or so of college. </p>
<p>Speaking as someone who is in a PhD program right now, getting a PhD is a pretty painful (6+ year) process, and you only want to put yourself through it if it's something you can't live without doing.</p>