Hi, I’m currently in the situation where I am pursuing a Material Science degree for my undergraduates. However, due to a lack of exposure to different fields, I didn’t find out what I really wanted to, Structural Engineering, do until now, the beginning of my 4th year at college, when transferring majors is no longer a possibility. I am really uncertain in this case what it is that I should do; I know I want to attend graduate school, but I can’t take the required prerequisites in Civil Engineering at my current college, and most of the community colleges don’t offer civil engineering courses. The staff on campus I’ve talked to haven’t been the most helpful and basically told me to buzz off.
Has anyone else been in a similar position to me? What would you suggest to do in this scenario?
What required prerequisites? Most graduate engineering programs don’t have formal prerequisite requirements, and those that do are often flexible. It’s a little surprising that the staff in the civil department there have been dismissive, but I really see no reason why you couldn’t apply to civil programs. The worst case scenario would be taking a couple of make-up classes, but often that isn’t necessary as long as your background is reasonable.
I talked to the graduate advisor for the civil department. It seems like I need classes in structural analysis and steel design. And the major courses are major restricted, which means I cannot take them right now. I’ve also talked to the advisor about potentially taking makeup classes after getting admitted, they just said that it’s highly unlikely that I would get admitted under such a circumstance.
Well, different departments handle things differently so they may just have more strict rules than other departments with which I am familiar. I am certainly not going to contradict info you got directly from them.
MatSci typically lives in the Engineering department, and you probably have most of the general pre reqs. Looks for grad programs where you don’t apply directly into a specific division- they do exist (more often in PhD than Masters). Contact programs you are interested in to see what you would need to ‘fill in’- and whether they would let you do it as part of your course. Be prepared to do a bunch of legwork, and it may well pay off for you.