<p>My D is a high school senior. She is very strong in math and science but unsure about college major/future career. While engineering could be a possibility, she was never the type of kid to take things apart, figure out how things work, build with legos, invent things, etc. She is not interested in her school's robotics team, and she has never used any mechanical tools in her life. Maybe I'm stereotyping, but aren't those interests sort-of prerequisites for satisfaction with engineering? What characteristics are important to engineering success? I know it is a broad field with probably very different career options. How does she learn more about what engineers actually do, particularly sub-specialities like chemical engineering or biomedical engineering?</p>
<p>Everybody wants a woman engineer. Contact your local chapter of the society of women engineers. Engineers tend to like to solve puzzles, and tend to be a bit persistent to find the answer. If she loves to manipulate the language of science (math), and is inquisitive about how things work, she could be a very fine engineer. A lot of engineering involves modeling a physical system, testing the model to be sure it mimics reality, and then building the reality. She could be involved in any aspect of that. She could be doing tests to inform a model, writing an algorithm that mimics reality, or building and testing something. The building a bridge, robotics, tinkering with cars stuff represents an accessible approximation of a piece of the process- building and testing a prototype.</p>
<p>Websites such as ieee.org, acm.org, asme.org, SPIE.org, and university professors’ lab webpages will give real insight. Going to local meetings of the sections of these organizations would also put her in contact with working professionals. Just the other evening, I went to a presentation on modeling neurons in the brain where a number of students were in attendance, as well as a number of working engineers. During the networking part of these meetings, she could talk to the engineers.</p>
<p>If there is a conference in town, she may be able to go to the Exhibit hall and see what vendors produce and speak to working engineers there.</p>
<p>PM me with where you live if you want me to do a couple of minutes of research on meetings or conferences coming to your town.</p>
<p>It is a broad field, and if you start down the path and don’t like it, well I know Wall Street and Management Consulting companies were all over the placement office at my school looking for graduates with engineering degrees; and secondary schools need math & science teachers.</p>
<p>Since everyone wants a woman engineer, there are also scholarships available (example: Google, SWE) and set aside for women.</p>
<p>ItsJustSchool: Thanks for all the valuable suggestions. They definitely give us a place to start learning more. We live in the metro-Detroit area, where the engineering field is focused on the automotive industry.</p>
<p>Well asking specific questions here wouldn’t be a bad way, for starters. I can help you with what I know if you want.</p>
<p>Being interested in putting stuff together and such is not what engineers do, as many will point out, but it is a large boost. If that simply doesn’t interest her, then there has to be something else to push her to get through the curriculum: a strong work ethic, curiosity, and interest in the sciences are all helpful. Engineering academics are no fun no matter what, so you need to be able to put up with that. The plus side is that learning to do engineering is a very useful skill, regardless of where you ultimately end up.</p>
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<p>??? I thought engineering academics were fun. Just as a musician may work hard to master a difficult piece, the classes are challenging, but there is a real thrill to mastery, and it can be a bonding experience with study partners.</p>
<p>Yeah I don’t mind engineering academics at all. Exams are no fun, but I enjoy learning about new things.</p>
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There is some truth to that. The material itself can be interesting, but the process of actually doing work for classes is exhausting after a while. Most of the time, when I learned an interesting subject I only started to appreciate it after the fact, when I no longer had to do homework and take exams on it. </p>
<p>I find that the people who generally talk about how fun learning is are those who never really worked particularly hard. It’s easy to enjoy something when you never really put in enough effort to see when it gets hard.</p>
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<p>Ouch! Can we just agree to disagree @NeoDymium? Was it Indigo Girls: “Any hill that’s worth the climb will always seem too steep.” Summiting is the fun of it!</p>
<p>I worked particularly hard, thank you very much!</p>
<p>I agree with @NeoDynium to an extent. Learning is fun, and the material is interesting. I find that classes, homework, and exams kill all the joy associated with these things. I sometimes get very excited about sitting down with a textbook and learning a new concept–when it’s on my own for my own personal benefit, or related to my research. Being forced to do it for a class or a homework assignment or an exam is an excellent demotivator.</p>
<p>I firmly believe that school would be a lot more useful and productive without all the damn coursework.</p>
<p>The hand tools, taking things apart, etc, are a significant source of inspiration for folks to study engineering. In fact, that is very much what brought me. BUT - it is not the only, and is probably does not describe the majority of engineers. I am asked this same question by high school students and will respond with a question - Do you want to understand the science of how the world works and then use that knowledge to make it better? Very simplistic I know, but at its most basic, that is what I do for a living. </p>
<p>Thanks for all your insights. D likes chemistry. Somehow I picture a chemical engineer using skills that are not necessarily “mechanical”…developing chemical solutions to problems instead of nuts/bolts/metal/die molds, etc. Is there any validity to that? Or do most chemical engineers still enjoy “tinkering” and building. Are those skills part of the typical job? </p>
<p>There are so many different engineering disciplines…chemical, civil, electrical,biomedical, petroleum are ones that I’ve at least heard about. Are some of these more geared toward an individual who doesn’t naturally enjoy taking things apart or discovering how things work? </p>
<p>Frankly, I’ll say that everyone I know who went into ChemE because of their love of chemistry was disappointed. It’s more physics than chemistry, and while you do learn quite a bit of chemistry, you don’t use it in a particularly novel way. ChemE is all about designing industrial-size processes that produce some valuable chemical - benzene, refined oil, etc. </p>
<p>Not as much tinkering involved there, but unless you enjoy building industrial-scale processes for the sole purpose of making money for its owner, I don’t think the chemistry in it will be too appealing. Frankly, in most industries people would replace chemicals with something more stable if they have any choice at all. On the plus side, you do learn some very widely applicable skills in chemical engineering, such as the transport series, controls, and thermodynamics. Crossing into process engineering of non-chemical processes is a very feasible possibility.</p>
<p>And of course, plenty of mechanical engineers are not tinkerers. The most tinkering I did before going to school for mechanical engineering was LEGO. Mechanical engineering is about mechanics (materials, dynamics, thermodynamics, etc.), not tinkering. It just so happens that a big application of those things is the automotive industry, so it tends to attract those sorts of tinkerers.</p>
<p>MIMomma, I was just like your daughter and I went into mechanical engineering. I do analysis and design. No tinkering. No taking things apart and putting them together myself.</p>
<p>There is lots of variety of engineering jobs. But all students have to get through the tough academics. There are many required course sequences, (most with lots of work) and very few free electives. </p>
<p>I had limited mechanical experience. (There were no brothers, so i was Dad’s go-fer kid for car maintenance etc). But for engineering academics, it is good to have strong math and problem solving skills. Engineering courses have many, many hours of “problem set” homework every week. </p>
<p>Let me try a different tack to describe engineers: Some people (scientists) study the scientific principles to try figure why something does what it does. Kind of very general description, but contrast that to an engineer who takes those now known scientific principles and now uses that knowledge to design products that utilize those principles. It can be a new chemical, a building, a plane, a LCD TV, etc. In most (most?) instances, a mathematical description of that scientific principle is used. An engineer can focus more on design, or analysis, or manufacturing, or test. The first two involve almost no “tinkering” while the second are much more hands on. Tinkering may be useful but certainly not required.</p>
<p>Most engineers I know are good at visualizing their particular branch of engineering. For instance, a good structural engineer can visualize the loading on the structure and picture where the load is reacted within the structure and external to the structure. Once you visualize it, you know what you need to do with it.</p>
<p>In high school, you learn math and you learn basic scientific principles but you don’t usually apply those as an engineer would. Makes it tough to figure out what engineering really is about {hence your question}. College is more of the same for the first year or two, more math and more science. You need to build up your knowledge to a certain level before you can begin to apply it in any real, meaningful way. So much to learn, so little time seems to permeate the thinking of several professors I have known. It is also what makes the first year or two of engineering school so hard. Once you start to apply it, it becomes easier and more fun for most students. It also places an emphasis on really learning the subject matter those first years, hence engineering school can be really tough.</p>
<p>@HPuck35, I appreciate your summary! Thanks.</p>