<p>What are the differences between environmental science/studies and environmental engineering? Any drastically different career opportunities?</p>
<p>They are very different majors. Environmental science is extremely broad and can range from studying ecology, to climatology, to environmental policy, and a host of other fields that have to do with the environment. Environmental science tends to be a less quantitative major than, say, chemistry. </p>
<p>Most environmental engineering programs are descendants of civil engineering departments' sanitary engineering programs; at some point in the past few decades, sanitary engineers decided that their field needed a name change and decided that "environmental" sounded good. While some environmental engineering programs may emphasize broad-based study in solutions to environmental problems (a big emerging field is with managing air pollution), most still reflect their sanitary engineering roots and focus on sewage/wastewater management. This involves a lot of fluid mechanics, some chemistry, some biology, and maybe some chemical engineering).</p>
<p>I'd add to Quentin's fine explanation that some Env Eng programs have a science bent.....that is, they get into the science fundamentals of engineering problems like bioremediation and water treatment chemistry. For instance, the top Env Eng programs (e.g., JHU & MIT) as reported by USNews all have decent science-oriented research going on in their env eng departments.</p>
<p>Also, as an employer of environmental professionals in a scientific & engineering consulting practice, I least prefer Env STUDIES majors, as they receive the least amount of hard-core technical course work, not that policy & social science classes in a STUDIES program aren't applicable to some careers, just less so in technical consulting.</p>