Ok so I’m currently a high school junior, and my plan for college is to major in Mech Eng, and try to get into the college’s 5 year masters program (all the colleges on my list have a 5-year masters) and get a masters in either Aerospace or Nuclear engineering. This is because I’m hoping to get a job in the aerospace or nuclear field after graduation, but I want a backup (the Mech Eng degree) just in case. If I choose to go down the nuclear path, the dream would be to work at ITER or another plasma fusion facility. Should I continue considering a Mech + Nuclear degree, or should I instead try to do a Mech + PhD in Physics for this? Do any of you guys have experience with aerospace/nuclear enginering/physics? Which would you reccommend?
That really depends on which part of those plasma projects you would like to join. Big fusion programs like ITER or NIF employ such a wide range of programs ranging from nuclear physicists to plasma physicists to nuclear engineers to mechanical engineers to electrical engineers. They are such large projects that they require a little bit of everything. The aerospace industry is similar since planes and spacecraft are quite complex in their own right.
Your first order of business will have to be deciding between the nuclear/fusion route and aerospace, but you have several years to decide that. Starting in mechanical engineering ought to put you on a solid path to either goal. Most people working on those projects do have PhDs, though there are a decent number of people with just an MS or BS, especially if you are looking for more of a pure engineering role instead of a research role.
I had a similar dilemma when I was your age and waffled pretty rapidly between mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering. I ended up doing mechanical engineering, going to graduate school for aerospace engineering, and now I work on projects related to one of those fusion projects. Long story short: you’ve got plenty of options to get there and there’s no reason to worry too much about it until you get some of your undergraduate work under your belt and have a better sense of what you want to do.
@boneh3ad if you dont mind me asking, what fusion related project do you work on and what did u need to get there? like, what degree did your employer care about, your mech or aerospace degree?
Your final degree is what matters, so for me, it was aerospace. However, my research team also has civil engineers and mechanical engineers on it (all with PhDs) because we do fluid dynamics experiments and each of those fields contains fluid dynamics that relate to what we do. Our work supports the various projects trying to make inertial confinement fusion work for energy production.
Hmmm I see. I was looking at UC Berkeley’s programs, and I saw that they don’t have a 5 year masters in nuclear engineering, but they have a joint degree program with Mech Eng and Nuclear, and also one with EECS and Nuclear. Would you recommend that I try to go for the Mechanical or EECS joint degree if I want to work on plasma tokamak reactors? I want to wo
Why do you feel the need to get some kind of joint degree? Regarding which degree is best, it really is going to come down to what you want to do as part of those programs. Tokamaks are complex machines. There really is no best degree. An electrical engineering degree likely means you will be working on the engineering aspect of the program, i.e. working on actually building the machine. Mechanical engineering might end up either in pure engineering or on the research side of things. Other than that, I don’t think it’s possible to offer specific answers.
I just want to push myself with some sort of advanced program so its either an honors or joint degree program, and I chose joint degree.
Well I’d say that’s probably not going to be very worthwhile. Something like a dual degree isn’t going to be very helpful. You would be better of trying to get involved with undergraduate research as early as you can and using that to help get you into the graduate program of your choice. That’s would be a better use of your time, in my opinion.