<p>I really love physics. What would happen if I did something outrageous and let's say... decided in my freshman year I wanted to do engineering? Should I shoot myself... What kinds of opportunities are available at Chicago?</p>
<p>University of Chicago does not have an engineering school ;)</p>
<p>I don’t get it. Physics isn’t engineering. In any case, I don’t think that many people decide that they want to switch to engineering once they get here. If they do, they transfer.</p>
<p>I totally get that.</p>
<p>I wanted to be an engineer for the longest time, but then I realized that I really want to go to grad school.</p>
<p>Did you know that you can get a PhD in engineering without an undergraduate degree in engineering? I work at an engineering lab, and there are at least 5 people doing that. </p>
<p>If you take a lot of math and physics- especially applied math- and demonstrate that you will contribute a special something to the research, then you can get into engineering grad school and “be an engineer.”</p>
<p>The funniest thing is that the people at the lab who have an engineering undergrad complain about forgetting how to be an engineer. They don’t use all the stuff they learned in their specific research, so they just forget it. I don’t want to put a ton of effort into learning a bunch of stuff I won’t need. You have to remember that engineering is a professional program. You are being technically trained. It isn’t really a part of “academia” in the sense of the academic tradition. That’s why we have technical schools. (Of course there are exceptions to this- especially in grad school).</p>
<p>Knowing that changed my mind about Chicago and made me add it back to my list in October. And now I’m probably going to go there (85% sure).</p>
<p>All of that said, you can transfer if you want to. Chicago is such a good school. If you want to transfer to another awesome school, you probably can (as long as your grades are good). I really don’t want to transfer, so I’m being careful about the engineering thing. But, Chicago is amazing in so many ways that it makes up for the engineering thing for me. you have to decide if it does for you.</p>