Intro: I am a soon to be high school graduate, and I am picking between schools, but it will end up being as If I am picking between majors. I got into the school of engineering at UCI but not at UCSB, where I would pursue physics and a minor in chemistry. Doing engineering at UCSB, from the mood of their acceptance letter, doesn’t seem feasible or reliable.
Before my 11th grade year, I was 3.0 weighted student who was taking no AP’s and got C in my chem class’s because every time we had a binder check I grabbed a stack of loose papers in my backpack and forced holes through the whole stack with the rings. I just really wasn’t a very good student at all. In 11th grade, I somehow found myself in 5 AP class’s and did decent, but was still transitioning from being a lazy non-student to an actual student. This year I am taking 4 AP tests, but also reading Jared Diamond books, Ap chem book and the AP bio book for fun, because I am genuinely interested in the material. I have always liked science to some degree, but in 11th grade by chance when the physics C class I wanted dissipated at my school, I was stuck into AP bio where I thought I’d never find in an interest in. Since joining that class a few weeks, I have been appalled at the applications of the bio information to make machines that accomplish a goal what they want to accomplish, but also of experimental strategies to find a solution/answer. I was also highly interested in the non-cognitive function of living systems, the exact chemical spontaneity that was happening when you push down on your knee to your ultimate detection. I am also interest in a lot of the theory behind atomic structure and the orbitals of electrons and their roles in the properties of an element or shape of the final covalent compound, and thermodynamic theory, as well as tons of other topics. I am taking Physics C this year and I find a lot of the theory interesting, but sometimes get’s really rather boring when they give you a question just asking you to flip millions of quintillions of variables around to a specific order. Pretty much I am interested in everything in science you could imagine, so finding an interest wouldn’t be a huge problem.
And the problem- I hardly have any experience with engineering. I hardly even know what it is. 2 years ago I thought I had no respectable interest in science, so I was just going to find out what engineering was when I was at CSUN. Even on march 22nd, a few weeks ago when I got my acceptance letter, I initially had trouble digesting the possibility of being a non-engineering major. I’ve always been good at math and my parents just assumed I would be an engineering major. My parents are giving me passive-aggressive pressure to be an engineer. But in the last 10 days I’ve been thinking about it more and more. And in actually, I had been hiding from this dilemma as long as possible, trying to pretend it didn’t exist.
Based on what I read in the last in the last day on the internet about this, science majors upper limit job is a teacher if they have a Phd, but if they don’t they will make less than a first year McDonald’s employee, and the average person can bench press 620 lbs on their warm-up set and can run a sub-10 second 100 meter dash. Also, the earth is flat, and there are mermaids that domesticated megaladons and riding them to battles. Yes it may seem ironic that I am asking for answers online.
Questions:
First off, where exactly is the best place to get more information about what it’s like to major in physics or science vs. engineering?
How sticky is one over the other? Doing engineering as an undergrad- science as a grad how possible compared to science as an undergrad to engineering as a grad.
How much science do you actually use an engineering? I would be more interested if there was at least some application of scientific theory and principles in engineering,
Also what engineering should I pursue if I am generally interested in answering my previously unknown. Pretty much, being able to answer the unknown. What Engineering that is employable will be the most sciency?
What is the market like for people who do science as a undergrad but engineering as grad if that is even possible
What is the market like for engineer majors who want to pursue an additional or simply more scientific knowledge base.
what is grad work for a scientist like and how does it affect you?
What is grad work as an engineer like and how does it affect you?
Assuming I am as smart as I think I may be, is there a chance to going to a prestigious private school (like cal tech, or even berkely) as a grad from ucsb or uci. My gpa isn’t spectacular because sophomore year and my English SAT (which I spent 0 minutes preparing for) wasn’t spectacular either
Also I keep hearing you need communication skills with engineering. I am generally socially autistic, however; I usually try to be good with communicating ideas and helping people learn what I am thinking and vice versa. I am not exactly sure how this will play out.
science and engineering are not my only interest, I am pretty sure at UCSB I would have the advantage of band mates who are seriously in music but aren’t planning to pursue more serious music if that makes sense. I want to have a band that makes like rock/metal originals, and the stuff we do would be somewhat technical with applications of polyrhythms and modulations, secondary dominants and leading tone 7 chords, etc. Pretty much I’d want creative people with at least a basic understanding of music structure and could play their instruments well (drums, electric guitar, electric bass). Making below minimum wage with a PhD in physics would not allow this goal to be sustainable (THIS IS A JOKE based on the ridiculousness I was reading online).
If I solely become an engineer, I will buy myself college science textbooks (which I may do anyway) and read them as a hobby. I am actually very well at understanding the theory through this method but doing the computational stuff like we do in my high school physics class I might not be able to exactly learn proficiently.
I am sure I am missing things on here, but at the moment, I can not remember them. Also, I am not exactly an English scholar