Materials Science Careers

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Hey, add to my list of stupid questions (and my third prospective engineering field in as many weeks probably):</p>

<p>So I was thinking about MechE, and sort of hoping to go to grad school and do research. </p>

<p>But the thing is, I really don't know enough yet to be solid on the field itself. I just know that I hope to go into R&D, but that I kind of feel uncomfortable with something that doesn't have good prospects for a BS grad going into the job market (as a backup, in case I decide gradschool isn't for me).</p>

<p>I never really hear people talking much about Materials Science, but just saw xINTJx comment in another thread about the outlook being good for the field, and it's starting to sound pretty interesting to me. I like the sound of the polymers side, but don't know anything about any of it.</p>

<p>So I guess I'm just wondering about the job markets for that, at both the undergrad level and the research level, and anything more you can tell me about the field.</p>

<p>Is it pretty chemistry based? I like chemistry, and have been told that ChemE is less about chemistry and more about processes for working with chemicals? Is that accurate? How would some of this compare?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

2

<p>Yeah, ChemE is great for going into Material science, maybe even as a grad study. The problem is not alot of schools have Material science/eng. so ChemE would be the next best thing. Iv’e talked to my physics professor who also does research, and he says that the next break throughs in physics/chemistry will be with materials. </p>

<p>What turns people off from Chem.E is that BLS -6% growth rate. I’m sure that any college graduate can find a great career (although some might have to go into oil/gas, energy, defense)</p>

3

<p>I personally wouldn’t worry about that 6% for ChemE. It’s a pretty established field and the work is so versatile that you can pretty much do anything. It allows you to be general enough to understand (and better manage) other engineers, while allowing you to specialize.
Good (but not all) ChemE’s could do the work of quite a few types of engineers. AeroE and MatSciE are the two most compatible, but there’s enough overlap with most of the others to be able to catch up.
BLS statistics are sketchy evidence for anything, though imperfect statistics > no statistics.</p>

<p>More on topic: MatSciE is a lot like ChemE except it starts a bit more specialized. Do whatever one you like more, there’s enough jobs to go around for those who are competent.</p>

4

<p>From my experience ChemE looks more at liquids/reaction chambers while materials is focused more on the final product’s properties and how the structure, processing, performance, and properties are interrelated. I’d say, for the most part, MSE is closer to physics than chemistry, but that really depends on the subfield you choose (for example, polymers vs semiconductors).</p>

5

<p>Thanks guys.</p>

<p>I will be transferring to a school with a top 10 material science program. If I graduated with like a 3.0ish GPA or something that couldn’t really get me into grad school, what is that market like for?</p>

<p>Is it reasonable to think I could find an internship for this?</p>

<p>Also, how hard is it to get into grad school for that, compared to MechE or something?</p>

<p>What is the job market like for a PhD in something like that, looking to work for a national lab or a private company like GE Global or something?</p>

6

<p>Since the field isn’t nearly as large as some of the other engineering ones out there, I’d say that a lot of where you go after your PhD can matter who you know. I’d say at well over half the people graduating from my lab have wound up somewhere due to connections of our advisor, industry connections with our group, or places they collaborated with while being in our group. That said, my group tends not to post-doc as much as a lot of others, so it may be different.</p>

<p>There are a number of career surveys in a thread ucbalumni (or a username similar to that) maintains. In my experience in a field like materials generally the top undergrad students go to grad schools and the industry positions are filled by those with lower GPAs. That said, some top students just don’t want to deal with any more schooling, so they do wind up going into industry.</p>

7

<p>OK, thanks.</p>

<p>I know it’s hard to speculate on this, but just as someone who seems to know people in the field, I just want to try to force a little more on the issue…</p>

<p>1) How tough is it to get into a phD program? </p>

<p>2) Am I correct that most grad programs are basically paid positions? (I.e. I wouldn’t need loans to go)</p>

<p>3) Are there PhDs in the field who can’t find decent positions? I want to avoid being an unemployed PhD</p>

<p>4) So if I went into the job market with a BS from a top 10 school, a little better than a 3.0 GPA, and some lab experience and/or internships or something, would I have trouble finding work? Or is it just impossible to say?</p>

<p>Anyway, thanks for the answers you already gave, and I know you can’t give me any gospel like this, but even your wildest guesses are better than what I have now. I just fear getting 4/5 of the way through undergrad, and realizing that I’m going to be shut out of what I want to do and end up a salesman’s assistant or locked into some lower rung path.</p>

8

<p>1) I think getting into a grad program in MSE is easier than in some comparable fields. It’ll be less difficult than, say, (applied) physics, chemistry, and probably ChemE. That said, I think that’s mostly due to it being less well known than other fields and fewer schools offering it as an option. </p>

<p>Most of my friends at other schools found their grad classes to be relatively easy after getting a BS in MSE. This is mostly because MSE is a heavily interdisciplinary field, so a lot of what you’ll see your first year of grad school is just a rerun of what you did in undergrad, maybe with a little more detail in some spots. My experience was different, but my school is fairly unique in the course requirements I had for my PhD.</p>

<p>2) Any respectable school should give you a fully funded position. It’ll cover tuition and living expenses. When I was looking at schools my offers ranged from roughly $24-28k. Nowadays I know it’s a little bit higher. You will probably have to TA at some point or another (either due to program requirements or funding needs). Your last few years will be spent almost exclusively as an RA doing research for your advisor.</p>

<p>3) I’m sure there are PhDs without a job, but experience from my school has been that it’s not that bad. One of the advantages of a PhD is you’re not necessarily in a rush to graduate. A lot of students will have a job search going on while they’re writing their thesis (or well before) and have somewhere to go lined up well before graduating. Places looking to hire PhDs tend to be more flexible on hiring timelines. I’ve known people that are interviewed/hired by a company well before they’re ready to graduate. Very flexible places say “When you’re done, you have a spot.” Others will tell you they need you to finish within X many months. Only one person I’ve known has had a very short lead time on needing to graduate for his job (his finished up his thesis while waiting for his security clearance to clear at his job).</p>

<p>4) One of they key things with getting a job in engineering is being willing to relocate. Lots of industries are centered in different cities, often not the most popular cities in the country. My advisor recently found a fellow PhD student we were collaborating with from Ohio State a job in Ohio. Their biggest problem in filling the job? Nobody wanted to move to Ohio (in his case they actually had to pay him a bit extra to keep him from relocating away ;)).</p>

<p>I think as long as you try to get internships over your summer, really learn the material, and try to be involved at your school you’ll be fine. The only one of my undergrad classmates that wasn’t able to find a job was the one that was really flaky through the entire program (missing classes/assignments, randomly not showing up to group work sessions, etc).</p>

<p>Keep in mind as an engineer that if you’re interested in getting out of technical stuff you can always go back to school for a MBA in a few years to try and signal to your employer/others you’re interested in transitioning onto a management path. In general, that’s probably a more financially rewarding career path than heading straight for a PhD. A PhD is really only if you’re dedicated to research and want to do it full time as a career.</p>

<p><a href=“Edit,%20dang%20that’s%20a%20big%20wall%20of%20text.”>i</a>*</p>

9

<p>ChemEs can wear many different hats. One of my classmates worked at P&G as a “manager” right after undergrad. It’s not a manager leading a team of professionals; it was more like a manager at one of P&G’s plants overseeing a bunch of blue-collar workers.</p>

<p>In pharmacuetical companies, the chemists design the drugs at the labs while chemEs are in charge of the process of mass producing them; how to make them in the most efficient way - to achieve the desired mix/purity while lowering the production costs, for example.</p>

10

<p>Here’s a galley of videos introducing different engineering disciplines:
[McCormick</a> Video Gallery | Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science](<a href=“http://video.mccormick.northwestern.edu/]McCormick”>http://video.mccormick.northwestern.edu/)</p>

11

<p>@RacinReaver: Awesome, thanks!</p>

<p>@Sam: Thanks! (Embarrassingly, I’ve seen a bunch of those on Youtube already.)</p>

12

<p>Another dumb question:</p>

<p>The more I read, the longer the MatE PhD looks like it takes. Is it longer than, say, a PhD in MechE or something like that?</p>

13

<p>Ask a MatSciE professor how long they think it would take.
If you can’t do that yet, then I wouldn’t really worry about it.</p>

14

<p>How long a PhD takes can really vary a lot upon your school, your advisor, and your project itself. My friends in other departments probably take similar amounts of time as most MSE groups I know. My group, in general, takes on the long side since we do a lot of experimentation and, unlike many other experimental groups, we have to build and maintain almost all of our own machines. Groups doing computational work seem to finish about a year earlier, on average. Groups where there are well-maintained machines with very well defined projects are probably somewhere in the middle.</p>