<p>A friend has a physics major DS who is potentially interested in some kind of engineering grad school. Yet he's getting no exposure to engineering disciplines at his small LAC.</p>
<p>Does anyone have an idea for a summer term program where he could get this exposure? He's a sophomore looking for this summer.</p>
<p>Dartmouth has it. </p>
<p>You can find more by googling</p>
<p>site:*.edu Introduction to Engineering</p>
<p>and then looking for schools that have summer programs that require it as part of their engineering curriculum.</p>
<p>Thanks, the class looks great.</p>
<p>this question is meant in the most positive spirit - why is he in a LAC if he thinks he wants to get into engineering grad school??? surely there are limits to the versatility of LAC degrees?
i’ve been a career chem e and have known many other kinds of engineers in my time - so far as i remember all came from engineering schools. it’s maybe not impossible to find a grad curriculum that doesn’t require the focus of the traditional bs eng specialties. but it’s hard to figure what it might be. my son went to one of those intro to eng summer seminars = after his junior year in high school (now in computer sci/elec engineering). and a lot of us don’t bother with grad school anyway - you’re pretty functional after the first four years, and for most of us that is MORE than enough, believe me. think relocation while it’s not too late</p>
<p>Toodleooo, he goes to the college both of his parents attended. Enough said?</p>
<p>I am able to be honest with my friend and we do have spirited debates. Their other son just graduated from the same school as a pre med poorly prepared for med school.</p>
<p>Interestingly, he doesn’t want to do the 3-2 program because there are so many other courses he wants to take. I actually think this can be great if you can afford to pay the $200K plus and then for the masters he’ll need to catch up.</p>
<p>So it’s the same old question–is a liberal arts education an unaffordable luxury for most?</p>
<p>I am afraid that a physics major will be ill prepared to handle a graduate program in engineering. A summer program will help, but I’m afraid it won’t be enough. Go to an engineering school’s web site and look at the classes required for an engineering degree. From that list you’ll be able to see what the grad school will be looking for.</p>
<p>If he wants to go into engineering, transfering to an engineering school ASAP would be almost mandatory, IMHO.</p>
<p>^This is not necessarily true at all. It really depends on what type of engineering the student is interested in. It isn’t required to have the equivalent of an undergrad degree in the field except in certain areas.</p>
<p>What engineering fields would an LAC student be shut out of?</p>
<p>Not sure about all the fields, 2college, but as an example, here are the prerequisites for Civil Engineering MEng degree at SUNY Buffalo:</p>
<p>[University</a> at Buffalo - Civil Structual and Environmental Engineering](<a href=“Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering - Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering - University at Buffalo”>Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering - Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering - University at Buffalo)</p>
<p>Now a LAC student would not necessarily be “shut out” of this program, but they would have to cover additional material requiring a year at the very least, possibly two years, before getting in. Doable, not ideal.</p>
<p>My thought is, if he really wants, and can afford the luxury of a LAs education then so be it. However if he wants to move to engineering from there, his next move is not to a graduate program, but to do more undergraduate work. How much ground he has to make up and how long that will take will depend on the type of engineering and what he wants to do with it.</p>
<p>You can not have your cake and eat it too.</p>
<p>2college - you have some pretty savvy respondents here telling you about the same thing. a lac is a lac, but it is not an engineering school. furthermore, science (physics) is also not engineering. the physics major will have plenty of advanced math, but much of the advanced math for engineers is in fact taught as part of an engineering course. a basic math course such as differential equations is about the same whether you’re a math, physics or engineering major, but beyond such basics, a course like tensor calculus is usually geared more to engineering applications and these can be pretty significant in their specialization. then there is the issue of the specific science or technology around which the engineering is focused. chemical engineer and chemistry majors both take basic chemistry courses, but at a certain point the chemistry major continues to focus on the science while the engineer will focus on how to apply that science to a working manufacturing system. very different stuff. there is surely some new area of engineering science that would be an easier fit, but it won’t necessarily relate very well to physics, and imho is likely to be very academic - meaning that industry may not have a way of using such a specialty. have to do a lot of looking around i suppose. anyway, i believe there are career opportunities for physicists in areas such as optics, material science, etc</p>
<p>I don’t agree with a lot of stuff here. I’m an electrical engineer. I think it would be very easy to go from an undergrad major in physics to a graduate program in EE especially in the area of devices and semiconductor physics, or electromagnetics and optics. Furthermore, I think it would take only 1 or 2 undergraduate courses to get up to speed in any other area of EE that he wants to study in grad school. There is no licensing issue for EEs. </p>
<p>Also, while an intro to engineering course might be useful to understand what engineers do and see if it’s something that he wants to do. For EE, I don’t think it’s necessary. I might instead take summer courses that are standard courses for EEs like circuits, or a signals and systems class, that are outside the standard physics education.</p>
<p>I agree, CRD. EE is probably one of the more feasible crossovers from physics. Also probably some of the computational engineering areas. As far as math preparation, a physics major should be prepared to handle any of the engineering graduate math courses.</p>
<p>Many LACs, have 4-1 agreements with a schools such as Columbia (I know Williams and Bowdoin do and I think several others). You complete your degree at the LAC and go to Columbia (or other school) for a year to complete the engineering requirements. My father, an electrical engineer with an advanced degree, feels physicists make better engineers than those coming from more traditional programs. Search the school’s website, that information should be available on the site if it’s available. I gather from reading “between the lines” that the DS “might” be interested in engineering but not sure and enjoys his LAC education.</p>
<p>Actually Johns Hopkins offers both of the classes I suggested during their summer sessions. They have two consecutive terms, which could be perfect. </p>
<p>Wisconsin offers an extensive summer session. So does Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>Basically, I think a lot of public universities offer these courses because students get locked out during the regular school year and make it up in the summer.</p>
<p>My son is going to an LAC and double majoring in Spanish and Geology/Physics. His goal is to go to graduate school in Civil or Environmental Engineering. It says on Stanford’s Graduate EE page that it will probably take a graduate school applicant with a non-engineering bachelors degree 1, maybe 2 semesters to take all the prerequisite courses for graduate study.
This is what Stanford has to say about Environmental Engineering Today:
“Traditional Approaches are Inadequate
Historically, the civil engineering profession was concerned with the built environment, including the planning, designing, building, and managing of facilities important for a well-functioning society, while the environmental (sanitary) engineering profession focused on the provision of wholesome and plentiful water supplies and the treatment of wastewaters.
Our work now requires us to deal not just with technical issues and efficient design, but all the more so with the larger social, economic, and environmental aspects of our work. Related to this is the challenge of unprecedented global industrialization and urbanization in developing countries who seek increased wealth and living standards. Some of the issues that lie ahead include the following.
Engineers must be able to work with and within other cultures.
Our civil infrastructure (transportation and lifeline systems) is decaying at an increasing rate.
Providing adequate supplies of fresh water to the public continues to be a great concern globally.
Protecting the environment and sustaining our future is becoming increasingly critical.
Energy shortages and impacts of energy use are becoming more acute.
Design and construction processes must be implemented in ways that consider the sustainability of proposed structures in an integrated and timely fashion.
Sustainable Solutions Require Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Today, the affiliation between the different disciplines that make up a civil and environmental engineering program is less obvious and many civil and environmental engineering departments nationwide are experiencing an identity crisis. Often, sub-programs within civil and environmental engineering departments act more-or-less independently with little interaction.
The interdisciplinary nature of the sustainability issues identified above suggests that civil and environmental engineering departments with strong interaction between different research groups within the department and ties to other engineering and science disciplines will be better able to educate future generations of engineers to address these issues.”</p>
<p>The broad education gained at an LAC for an undergraduate who goes to graduate school in engineering will not be wasted.</p>
<p>my goodness, it sounds like those limited, non-visionary students who have been going to traditional engineering schools to learn engineering, are probably responsible for all that’s wrong today! downright deleterious to us all to put them in charge of things the way we do. and hey, come to think of it, i bet most of all our money-grubbing politicians, wall street bankers, corporate attorneys and…hell probably every single aig executive who walked away with millions of taxpayer dollars must have been an engineer as well. obviously we need more “broad” lac grads to fill these key management slots from now on, to help right this ship. engineering school undergrads can hit the bricks.</p>
<p>LOL! Toodleooo, aren’t you being a tad sensitive? But now that you mention it, my dad is an engineer and worked on the Manhattan Project which brought us the lovely atomic bomb. Thanks Dad.</p>
<p>as per the movie the right stuff…“no bucks, no buck rogers”. politicians (ie those in senior management) direct traffic and fund the projects. so don’t put your dad down. he helped save the lives of thousands of young “uneducated” men who would have lost their lives if the us had tried to end the pacific war by invading japan. engineers and scientists only figure out how to do it, not what to do. and i further suggest that most of those who have determined what we should do have traditionally been…guess what… those sensitive, broadly educated lac grads! (how many presidents have been engineers, for a first and simple example??? oh yeah, jimmy carter!). so please lac grads proceed to being a swell and leave the engineering to, well, engineers. and i still can’t for the life of me imagine how a year of basic courses equates to a four year engineering undergrad degree. lightweight.</p>
<p>This is very helpful and I discussed it with his dad. Kind of scary to think about 3 years after ther BS to get something that might be doable in 5 total at a school with engineering. </p>
<p>While I really support LACs, working with underpriveled kids it’s become clear few can afford the luxury anymore.</p>