<p>I'm a junior in environmental engineering who is considering grad school. I was wondering what majors I can get into as an environmental student. I realize I can do some civil stuff like water but is it possible to get into structural? or transportation? I talked to 1 grad school and they only ask for math marks and mine are okay. </p>
<p>Is it possible to get into renewable energy? I realize thats closer to mechanical / chemical now.</p>
<p>Well... You'll need a good answer on deck as to why you want to make a switch from environmental engineering to something like structural or traffic. </p>
<p>For structures, there would also be a bunch of prereqs you'd need to satisfy. You'll need some structural analysis courses, a couple of design courses (steel design, concrete design) and a couple of other things. You can call the departments that interest you and ask them about switching from environmental engineering, they'll have more info for you.</p>
<p>With traffic engineering... I got a friend of mine a job as a traffic engineer with a firm I used to work for. He was a history major. They put him straight into engineering work. The sort of thing they do is so very different from most other civil engineering jobs that it doesn't strictly require an engineering background to be able to understand what's going on, it just requires an understanding of the sorts of statistical things that are going on with traffic patterns. If you've had a stat course or two, you'd likely be able to segue to traffic with not too much trouble.</p>
<p>Someone else is going to need to chime in on renewable energy. I'm not familiar enough with it to know what of your background would be applicable and what wouldn't.</p>
<p>Why the change?</p>
<p>I used to work at a traffic engineering firm. Very few of what you actually learn in school during undergrad gets applied in the field; my VP said he's used only about 5% of his education during his career. The only thing I can see being useful is learning how to model using VISSIM, CORSIM, Synchro, etc. , but that can be done through on-the-job training. It's how I picked stuff up. It's actually how most people at this company picked stuff up (during their internships).</p>
<p>So you don't really need a graduate degree in traffic engineering to get into the field. You just need to convince companies to hire you.</p>
<p>EDIT: I notice the thread title is about EnvE grad school, but you don't express any interest in it in the body of your post...</p>
<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>thanks for the replies. I just want to see what my options will be in grad school. I'm sure I can go into environmental engineering so I decided not to ask about that. </p>
<p>Before I went into environmental I thought it was a lot of renewable energy stuff which it doesn't seem to be although I have managed a couple interviews for those jobs. I think I'll have a much better idea of what I wanna do after junior year.</p>
<p>thanks for replying</p>