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<li><p>What courses do you take as an engineering (civil) major? I've been to websites and have seen names of courses and such but not exactly what you learn/what you will be doing.</p></li>
<li><p>Is a lot of science required?</p></li>
<li><p>What does the average engineering job entail?</p></li>
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<p>I love math but not science. I don't like dealing with microscopic things such as electricity, LED's, wires, etc. Would engineering be a bad choice for a major?</p>
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<li>How would you compare a business major (finance, accounting) with an engineering major? Which has the better job prospects? (I feel like so many people major in business and the prestige of the school matters) Which is more safe in this economy? I'm very technical and love doing quantitative work so I feel engineering might be better but I also love the business field as well. Thanks</li>
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<li><p>The courses are generally “mechanics” related. You learn about the forces and stresses in steel, concrete, water soils and how to design structures based on these fundamentals. There’s typically a course in traffic engineering and environmental engineering as well in the core civil engineering curriculum.</p></li>
<li><p>Typically physics and chemistry. I took 2 chem courses plus lab, and 3 physics courses plus lab.</p></li>
<li><p>Pretty much everything involves something microscopic in one way or another. ChemE and EE are obvious. In mechE and civE, you have to deal with stress and strain and forces, which are of course invisible.</p></li>
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<p>As mentioned before, civil courses will focus on pretty much anything that has to be taken into account when designing and building buildings/bridges/dams/beaches/etc. Mechanics of materials, statics, dynamics, fluid mechanics and a bunch more. It would take several pages to actually describe everything that a civil engineer learns so I am not going to waste that time or space on your screen. I suggest just keep looking at the course descriptions and if you don’t understand what something is, that is normal because you haven’t taken the class yet.</p>
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<p>Is that a serious question? Of course it does. Engineering IS science. You start with math. Phsyics is essentially just applied math. Engineering is essentially applied physics (and depending on your major, various other sciences like chemistry or biology).</p>
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<p>That is pretty difficult to answer. There are such a vast array of engineering jobs out there, and the jobs you get vary dramatically based on major, area of expertise, job function, level of education, years of experience, etc, etc. For the most part, you can expect to work either designing things, maintaining things or managing people, or perhaps a combination of any of them. It really depends on so many factors that you can’t really describe an “average” engineering job. Trying to define an average engineering job is like trying to describe what kind of music the average person likes, it just doesn’t work.</p>
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<p>Cool. Then don’t be a computer or electrical engineer, and don’t go to grad school to be an experimentalist. Problem solved.</p>
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I’m very technical and love doing quantitative work so I feel engineering might be better but I also love the business field as well. Thanks
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<p>If you are only comparing finance and accounting (there are lots more majors in a typical business school) to engineering then I would say that a lot of the people I know in those two fields have the intelligence and drive to succeed at engineering and vice versa, its just a matter of preference. Personally, I would hate doing that kind of job. Defining which has better job prospects depends entirely on your job preference. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Generally, it is safe to assume that engineering has slightly better job security most of the time, though that doesn’t always hold true. For instance, I would bet that a higher percentage of engineers in Detroit are jobless than Businessmen due to the auto industry tanking, but overall, the financial sector has been decimated by this recession, so there were plenty of those guys who lost their jobs too.</p>
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<p>You can do quantitative work in both business and engineering, just different types. The fact that you say you don’t like science is kind of indicative that you may not fit into engineering, but then you said you don’t like “microscopic” things (none of which are microscopic by the way) but that would mean you presumably would like designing bridges or machinery or something, so I don’t really know what to think.</p>
<p>Even civil engineers need to know some microscopic stuff. For example, to really understand strength of materials, you need to understand how metals cool and crystallize when they are forged/cast/extruded and heat treated.</p>