<p>Basically, what are the most stable fields of engineering(employment wise)? I've heard Mechanical because it is versatile. Is this true, and what are other semi-stable engineering careers are there?</p>
<p>EE, MechE, ChemE, CompSci, ComputerE, SoftwareE. </p>
<p>In my opinion, the more limiting disciplines are BioMedE, AeroE, EnviroE, PetE.</p>
<p>Not sure where CivilE and some others should fall. </p>
<p>With the deteriorating civil infrastructure in this country, I bet Civil Engineers will be safe for many years to come.</p>
<p>Thanks, Chemical and Computer Engineering are my top 2 choices</p>
<p>All can be subject to industry cycles. For example, computer science and engineering jobs were hard to come by in 2001-2003, while civil engineering jobs were hard to come by in 2009-2011. However, job prospects during better times can be a lot better than the job prospects associated with some other majors (e.g. biology) during better times.</p>
<p>In some cases, job security and stability within a given company may be low, even if it is relatively easy to get another job in the field in the geographic area.</p>
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<p>Actually, AeroE and MechE are virtually interchangeable degrees. Many companies consider the two equivalent in terms of qualifications at the BS level. The differences in job prospects are not worth worrying about IMO.</p>
<p>If anybody else has an opinion or support for these or any other type of engineering, feel free to comment.</p>
<p>What about industrial?</p>
<p>Thanks, but I am not really interested in Industrial Engineering.</p>
<p>^ I was asking others about the stability of industrial engineering. Sorry I wasn’t clear.</p>
<p>Chardo,Not sure about long term security in industrial engineering but my recent industrial and systems engineering grad had no problem getting a job. He is working at a science, technology , and engineering research/consulting type place. Another guy he graduated with works for Ford and another of his friends works for a consulting firm as an operations research analyst. Those are the ones I know about . But it is a degree that you seem to be able to take in lots of different directions so perhaps that kind of flexibility could help with long term job security/stability?</p>
<p>Chardo: my bad 
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<p>It sounds like you are talking about undergraduate degrees, because there are a few areas of engineering where additional training (one year master’s for example) is helpful and which could affect job security. When I was hired (with a master’s degree) that company had a hiring freeze for engineers (for those without significant work experience) on those without graduate degrees.</p>
<p>Two ways to look at this - “which are broadest” (probably easiest to switch specialities) and “which are likely to have highest long term demand”</p>
<p>Broadest: Electrical, Mechanical</p>
<p>(on the other hand Petroleum Engineering and Materials Engineering are narrower)</p>
<p>Long term demand is much harder to predict and “hot” areas like Petroleum also draw more attention (so presumably supply of those will increase too which makes them riskier) and some like Civil have enough supply that it keeps salaries lower. More controversial is Biomedical which IMO is too broad to be a useful term now and includes too many subspecialties with much different skill requirements.</p>
<p>My top 5 preferences (in rough order) for current US students would be: Software Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Materials, Chemical Engineering</p>
<p>In the end though, until you have taken engineering courses and found your passion - there is no hurry to decide - things can change in a few years. There is enough demand in the top 10 engineering fields for you to pick based on your interests/passions after you have had some coursework. Who knows if Petroleum will be super hot in 4 years? Who knows if you would even like it? I switched from Biomedical because I liked other engineering courses much better not because the job market for Biomedical was bad.</p>
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<p>Software engineering, when offered (it is an uncommon major), usually resembles computer science, except for adding a few more software engineering methods courses in place of some computer science topics courses. If a student in computer science takes an overview software engineering course or a project course using those ideas and methods, that is probably more than sufficient without needing several courses on the subject (and taking just the one course instead of several would leave more room for computer science topics and other courses).</p>
<p>In some cases, the software engineering major is overlooked by students applying to colleges, so it may be less selective than computer science at those colleges.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I agree that Software Engineering is in many cases not a major but just a few course specialty within a Computer Engineering or Computer Science degree, but there are respected programs available which award degrees in software engineering which offer it as a major both undergraduate and graduate (see <a href=“Software Engineering and Systems (SES) | Texas ECE - Electrical & Computer Engineering at UT Austin”>http://www.ece.utexas.edu/research/areas/software-engineering-and-systems</a> as one example, and Carnegie Mellon also offers a great program in it) and I believe that the skills are exceptionally important for companies with large software projects, and I anticipate that there will be increased need for engineers with these skills. BLS does recognize software engineering as a distinct category.</p>
<p>I am actually in favor of the 1 or 1.5 year masters for Computer Science and Computer Engineering, since there is little time in the undergraduate training for useful specialization due to the large number of basic courses in Computer Science to get out of the way.</p>
<p>One of my kids has a systems and information engineering degree and is now doing more software engineering/consulting type things. The big companies (Google, Microsoft, Palantir , Amazon, Facebook, etc.) probably tend to look for and find the best people. </p>
<p>Re: <a href=“Software Engineering and Systems (SES) | Texas ECE - Electrical & Computer Engineering at UT Austin”>http://www.ece.utexas.edu/research/areas/software-engineering-and-systems</a></p>
<p>Looks like this describes software engineering as a subarea of ECE at UT Austin.</p>
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<p>However, a bachelor’s degree in CS has enough schedule space to take courses to get foundational knowledge in the commonly used areas in industry software jobs (algorithms and complexity, operating systems, networks, databases, software engineering, security), plus electives, so doing a master’s degree is not necessary unless one wants to go into additional depth in a given subarea in an academic environment.</p>
<p>A good civil engineer will always have a job for the reasons mentioned above. There are also many different specialties within the discipline.</p>
<p>Any more responses would be appreciated</p>
<p>I know someone who graduate from Cu Boulder his major was Cs and his GPA Was 3 out 4 </p>
<p>he got an offer with a salary of 100K yearly </p>
<p>you got to make sure you do a summer training </p>
<p>apply to jobs in your last semester or your senior year </p>