I am really interested in aerospace engineering, but some some of the colleges I am looking at don’t offer it as a major. If i majored in Computer Science could i then go to grad school for aerospace engineering? if so would it be a hard transition and would i have to do a lot of work to catch up to everyone else who majored in aerospace? Also, same question if I take major in Mechanical Engineering?
If you really have a strong interest in CS, I could not discourage you from pursuing it as an undergrad. I can also give you perspectives from two professionals that I have spoken to about a similar question. First, I spoke to a old friend who works at JPL (NASA). His observation was that undergrad as CS or Computer Engineering (Software engineering) were actually better pathways to working at NASA than AE undergrad. Second, had a one on one meeting with the head of AE program at a flagship state school who (though I am sure that he is biased) expressed the opinion that AE major is superior to ME major at his school. He explained that at his school AE includes most everything that the ME degree requires, plus more. He pointed out that with AE you can do anything that the ME major can because the fundamentals are the same. Often his AE graduates go to work in other industries and are sought after because the program is more rigorous than ME. This is just at this particular school and only one man’s opinion, of course. He also mentioned that his AE research was very heavily based on computer simulation and the students that worked in his lab had to have strong programming background. I can’t speak exactly to the transition from CS to AE, but that’s something you might discuss with admissions dept of the schools to which you are applying. Maybe you will want to supplement CS curriculum with some additional engineering or Physics courses, for example. I am sure that other posters will chime in and some will disagree with what I have said. However, I think you’ve asked a good question and I hope you will get some good, constructive feedback.
There would be a lot of catch up work if your started in computer science. There would be essentially no catch up work if you started in mechanical engineering.
Berkeley doesn’t have an aerospace major; people do ME and take aerospace electives. Plenty of them go to Space X, Boeing, and NASA, and the lack of the aerospace major had no affect.
@reygun I am not really sure what that statement had to do with anything here…
He’s asking if he can do an MS in aerospace if he does CS or ME for his B.S. The answer is yes, and I gave him an example of a school where people regularly do that.