Well for starters, I am freshman majoring in Mechanical Engineering. In an ideal world, I would like to major in BME, but
I’ve decided to major in a traditional engineering major instead and leave BME for grad school. Since grad school seems to be the goal, I’m not sure what the right engineering discipline would be for me. I originally picked Mechanical because it is the most broad, and technically because I’m undecided (at least when it comes to engineering disciplines).
I started to become interested in ChemE due to the focus in chemistry and research. At my school, it seems more common for ChemEs to be in research compared to the other disciplines. Issues that I have with this major though is that it may be overkill for what I want to do. I’m not too interested in fuels or drug delivery, which is the focus of ChemE. It’s also the most prerequisite heavy engineering major at my school, so there’s not a lot of flexibility.
With a mechanical engineering major, I could fit in a Biomedical engineering minor. This would be perfect for me since I would still get early exposure to what I would pursue in grad school, but I would have a traditional engineering degree. My only issue is with my mechanical engineering courses. I never really expressed an interest in robots or machines. I may like my upper division courses (I’m only a freshman), but I could also become bored. I don’t want to be bored my last two years of college.
I understand that 1) your major doesn’t determine your career, 2)there’s no guarantee that I’ll pursue grad school in the future, and 3)most engineering majors work in the same field anyway. I just want to be sure I’m making the right decisions. I could wait it out, but I’m afraid that if I change my mind at the last minute I won’t graduate on time (which I don’t have the funds for)
As a freshman you essentially have a year to decide which major is best for you, with no substantial switching penalty. I recommend you do a bit of exploring to see what you like most.
Upper division classes are never particularly different from lower division ones. The general material is the same, even if it is covered in different ways and there are different considerations for each part of the course. If you don’t like MechE at the beginning, you wouldn’t like it near the end, I can guarantee that much. But I will tell you that ChemE is really almost exactly the same as MechE - think of it as MechE with a specialization in chemical reactions (as opposed to one of the many other MechE specialties) and you would not be far from the truth.
What exactly are you interested in doing? BME is a broad field and if you don’t like working with robotics and machinery, or drug delivery and energy, then certainly you had something else in mind that you like more than those?
I’m interested in materials science, medical imaging, nanomedicine, chemical/biosensors, and nanotechnology. And by interested, I mean spend time reading about on science articles websites.
I guess I wouldn’t say I dislike robots, machines, and energy. Those are just things I never really day dream about.
I guess it is best for me to just wait it out and see what I like. It’s just that I find EVERYTHING interesting. Unfortunately I can’t major in everything , so I at least want to pick something that I’ll enjoy spending a large amount of time on.
Also when it came to ChemE and MechE, I didn’t think there was more to them besides drugs and cars. Sorry, I’m still learning.
Finding everything interesting is generally a sign of youth - even the most enthusiastic people in the program I was in started to lose that sense of “love for everything” in the years of hard schooling of engineering. That’s not really a bad thing, as it is followed by a more focused and well-learned understanding of how to get things done. But I would like to say that I doubt it will last.
If you want a quick suggestion, I would recommend looking into both ChemE and Materials Science/Engineering. The former is a bit more established and more solid for finding regular employment, while the latter seems to be very close to what you’re looking for. The introductory material science course tends to take a birds-eye view of the entire specialty (i.e. every two weeks of the course is going to be another class in the program), and I recommend you take it early. ChemE is honestly just like MechE in principle, but your chemistry and general engineering knowledge would nevertheless serve you quite well in BME if your ChemE program is well-structured and supportive of those applications. I’m also guessing that EE/CS are really not where you’d want to be, because otherwise I would suggest those for some particularly lucrative approaches to BME work.
Lake Jr. began as a ME major, but switched to ChE but maintains an interest in many mechanical things. He very much enjoyed participating in his school’s car building team this past year, though he admits that the MEs did most of the significant work on the project.
Excellent. Neither did I and I still enjoyed mechanical engineering. There is a lot more to it than cars and robots. Mechanical engineering is just engineering based on the science of mechanics, which means there are several main pillars to the degree. First, there are the fundamental subjects that make it up, such as materials and structures, the thermal fluid sciences, and dynamics and controls. Then there are sort of hybrid disciplines within the field that take the concepts from one or more of those areas and turn it toward various applications, such as machine design or biomechanics and things of that source. I know my undergraduate ME department had a very large research presence in biomechanics, micro/nanotechnology, and materials science (among others).
In short, mechanical engineering could set you up quite nicely for these things you’ve mentioned. Then again, so could materials science. Chemical engineering might, but I am really only familiar with the side of that discipline that involves process engineering, not the smaller-scale, more research oriented aspects of it.
I would be willing to bet that this is simply an observational error. It is likely that every engineering department in your school is very heavily involved with research. The availability of research opportunities for undergraduates may vary from one department to the next, of course.
Thanks for the advice @boneh3ad . As of right now, I’ll try to take it one step at a time.
But didn’t you say in one thread that you wanted to pursue aerospace? That means you expressed at least somewhat of an interest in machines. (I’m just curious)
My graduate degree is in aerospace engineering, but that is because my primary interest was (is) in fluid mechanics. I didn’t deal with airplanes in any really way for my primary research project in graduate school. I studied some of the fundamental behavior of air moving over a surface, which applies to a whole lot more than airplanes.