<p>Since my daughter got into MIT EA this December, I have been looking at the MIT website fairly often, trying to get some idea of what she will be doing the next few years. I'm not certain this is the appropriate place to showcase my ignorance about the academic areas studied at MIT, but I will post some questions anyway.</p>
<pre><code> What is engineering really? I assumed that engineering had to do with building rather than with designing or discovering basic principles of how things work. Is my definition out of date? Do most of the students who study different kinds of engineering (i.e. chemical engineering or bio engineeringlhave years of experience building structures and thus have great intuition about putting materials together? Do most of these students have extensive computer programming experience? Is it possible for students who lack those years of experience and who don't enter MIT knowing computer programming jargon to take some classes in those fields and learn at least the introductory concepts?
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<p>I'll answer the questions I can -- as a biology major, I tend not to concern myself with the nuts and bolts of engineering. :)</p>
<p>Many of the kids who come here, particularly those who intend to major in computer science, have prior programming experience. I'm not sure how difficult it is to enter MIT as a CS major without having any programming experience whatsoever; my gut instinct would be to say that it would be really difficult, but I've had friends tell me that the language used in the intro EECS class, [url=<a href="http://sicp.csail.mit.edu/Fall-2005/%5D6.001%5B/url">http://sicp.csail.mit.edu/Fall-2005/]6.001[/url</a>], is unlike anything most people have ever seen before, so I guess everybody sort of starts from scratch.</p>
<p>If your daughter is interested in engineering, but not EECS, it shouldn't be a problem to have no prior experience -- she could take [url=<a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-00Spring2002/CourseHome/index.htm%5D1.00%5B/url">http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-00Spring2002/CourseHome/index.htm]1.00[/url</a>], the intro programming course offered by the Civ/Env engineering department. Most of the people who take 1.00 don't have prior programming experience, and many non-EECS engineers I know have taken the course. The non-EECS engineering departments will usually teach students how to use other programs that they'll need: [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/matlab/www/home.html%5DMATLAB%5B/url">http://web.mit.edu/matlab/www/home.html]MATLAB[/url</a>] (Aero/Astro, ChemE, MechE), Maple (MechE), Ada95 (Aero/Astro). I'm sure there are others, too.</p>
<p>My understanding of chemical engineering is that it's more concerned with things like thermodynamics, fluids, and transport, rather than necessarily being about building things in a strict sense (although I think the final senior project for ChemE is to design some sort of chemical reactor...). You might direct this question at [url=<a href="http://sam.mitblogs.com%5DSam%5B/url">http://sam.mitblogs.com]Sam[/url</a>], one of the MIT bloggers -- he's a ChemE major.</p>
<p>One thing I know for sure about MIT engineering is that all the engineering departments place a great deal of weight on learning to design things -- circuits, airplanes, robots, what have you. Although there's a lot of education on machining and actually building things, there is a sense that a strong foundation in design skills is very important.</p>
<p>
[quote]
friends tell me that the language used in the intro EECS class, 6.001, is unlike anything most people have ever seen before, so I guess everybody sort of starts from scratch.
[/quote]
that's Scheme. My understanding is that they use that particular language so that everyone is on the same page regardless of languages they have used before, and then the course concentrates on programming methods that would apply to any language, rather than being about learning Scheme specifically. But I wouldn't say that means "everyone starts from scratch". Most CS majors probably go in already very competent at computer programming. They are much more likely to use Java, C/C++ or whatever in later courses than they are to continue with the Scheme they learn in 6.001. Someone who is already a strong programmer is also going to have an easier time with 6.001 than someone with no experience at all. I am sure there must be introductory programming courses for people who have had no programming; any kind of science major might need to learn how to write simple programs to crunch their data. But I'm not sure that that is the purpose of 6.001. (I'm just basing this on what my CS major son has told me.)</p>
<p>Anyway, Enfall. I wouldn't worry too much about this. I promise there will be appropriate courses for your daughter to learn programming. And people who start with a committment to a particular type of engineering may very well change their minds after they learn more about the different areas available to study, so I wouldn't worry too much about trying to figure out the options at this point.</p>