<p>I've read that the specialties of both Computational Fluid Dynamics and Propulsion are "in demand", and would be good to specialize in if thinking about a graduate degree in AE. True? Any other areas that might be considered good areas to get into?</p>
<p>MS or PhD? Ultimate, the best specialization is the one you most enjoy.</p>
<p>MS, and I agree, but knowledge is power.</p>
<p>Choose what you like to do. Don’t go with the “course du jour”. Who knows what will be in demand when you are ready to enter the job force.</p>
<p>I once saw a huge demand for optics engineers. My company was giving new grads salaries that were almost twice what I was getting (with about 3 years experience) to new grads as there was a huge demand and few available. Turns out there was to be a big contract to be awarded about a year down the line that had a huge optics element to it. There were 4 companies submitting bids. A year later, after we lost the bid, those optics guys were laid off with absolutely no one hiring optics engineers.</p>
<p>Not to say that this story is typical, it isn’t. But it does highlight the danger of going into a field just because it is hot today.</p>
<p>Sure knowledge is power, but if you hate the subject you in which you have knowledge, you aren’t going to like your life all that much. Study the topic that is of most interest to you.</p>
<p>CFD is certainly in demand and likely will be for the foreseeable future. Propulsion is also in demand currently, probably largely due to the price of oil dictating that we find more efficient engine designs. However, these two subjects are not separate. A CFD expert can work on propulsion, and many of them do (among a host of other jobs). Think of it this way, out of all of the different topics in engineering research, there are really three flavors: experimental, computational, and theoretical. CFD is merely the computational flavor of the entire fluid dynamics subject area of which propulsion is a part.</p>