I am debating between majoring in Engineering Physics and Mechanical Engineering at Cornell this fall. I will be doing Air Force ROTC and hope to be an Air Force Researcher (61 AFSC) when I commission. However, I do not plan on serving a full career in the Air Force and wish to do civilian work after 5 or so years in the service.
It seems clear from my reading on Air Force web pages that Engineering Physics is the better program for becoming an Air Force Researcher as it is explicitly listed as a desired major for that position. Mechanical Engineers sometimes manage to get into these types of positions, but nine times out of ten, they become civil engineers doing general work for the base (which I do not wish to do).
Yet I have also read that although Engineering Physics better prepares students for grad school, it may not present as many job opportunities if they do not earn a graduate degree. With an ABET Accredited Mechanical Engineering degree, would jobs really be easier to come across?
That being said, I “think” I want to work at the cutting edge of technology, but I am not really sure where. Everything from being an engineer for a formula 1 team to working on coding for a Space X launch sounds amazing to me. Would the fact that Engineering Physics is significantly more general be beneficial to me. As in allow me to specify in exactly what I want in grad school?
And finally, going to grad school immediately after I graduate is not guaranteed to me by the Air Force. More likely I will not have that opportunity until after I get out of the Air Force. Is is normal/possible/reasonable to go to a leading graduate program five years after having last been in a classroom?
This ended up being way longer than I intended it to be as it is a rather simple question. It is not an emergency (obviously), I would just like some information before I tell the Air Force what I plan on majoring in. Thanks!
Do you have flexibility on timing of telling the AF and is it then set in stone? Could you just tell them generically “engineering?”
I ask because you don’t declare a major at Cornell until the beginning of second semester sophomore year so you can get a feel for what field you like better. You can also talk to the career center about internships and career opportunities for each major.
PS. Many grad programs prefer students who have work experience so there should be no issue with you going back to grad school later.
I think the Engineering Physics guys can get jobs, but probably mostly not in the same areas as the Mechanical engineers. .EP you’ll likely be geared more towards lasers and the like; solid state, materials, various other areas. If you check their website you might get a flavor for it.
IIRC, EP used to be desirable also because it led into the nuclear power master’s. When Cornell’s reactor was still going, which I understand it isn’t any more.
One thing to understand is that the EP program is really an elite program. The students I knew who were in it were among the smartest people I ever met. It is basically a physics major for people who wound up in the engineering college instead of CAS. though it has a more applied slant. And physics is really, really hard. A lot of the physics courses were actually interchangeable between COE and CAS.
During the course of your first two years you will figure out how much you still like physics, and how good you are at it. (If you don’t have “A” range grades in your physics classes I would bail at that point- It doesn’t get easier. It gets harder.)
You will also take an intro course or two related to Mech E (eg thermodynamics), and learn more about both paths from the people working in both fields.
Then you will be able to make a more informed decision.
And it’s only then that you need to make a decision, so long as Cornell is concerned anyway.
If you are up to it, suggest you take the more advanced track intro physics courses. try to get an advisor who is in EP. Maybe you can find one who is cross-listed in both EP and Mech E.
I can’t speak to Air Force practices, but fluid mechanics, turbines, etc are very central to mech e and certainly should be relevant to the air force. But if they need people more to build structures, that could well be the case. Could be they want training beyond undergrad to do the sexy flight-related stuff, or they contract it out ?
@momofsenior1
I am on scholarship for Air Force ROTC, meaning I am “committed” to my major. I put the parenthesis because there is ways to change major. Although it is not guaranteed, it is indeed possible to change my major as long as I stay within a technical field.
@monydad
That is good to know about the difficulty of EP. That is the way I am leaning, but I am concerned about if I can handle it. I am good in math, but I do not have a lot of experience in physics if I am being honest (but have loved what I have been able to do). Think it would be a good idea to take a Physics 1 course from a community college this summer to help prepare/test for fit?
To add to the information presented, these are the Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSC) that I would like to be able to shoot for. These AFSC’s pretty much define what I will do throughout my time in the Air Force.
SCIENTIFIC UTILIZATION FIELD
-61AX OPERATIONS RESEARCH ANALYST
-61CX CHEMIST/NUCLEAR CHEMIST
-61DX PHYSICIST/NUCLEAR ENGINEER
DEVELOPMENTAL ENGINEERING UTILIZATION FIELD
-62EX DEVELOPMENTAL ENGINEER
-62SX MATERIEL LEADER
Due to my fathers Air Force career, I have and can talk to people who have worked in pretty much any AFSC. My Favorite is 61DX. I plan on looking more into 62EX if I get the chance.
I have had the pleasure to get to know a number of Air Force officers who have studied physics and have worked in research at Wright Patterson AFB and in other capacities in the service. Engineering Physics is difficult, but it is also general enough that you can go to a number of different tracks after graduation. If your goal is eventually getting a Ph.D. in physics then a physics degree is a better place to start. It will be a bit of a change to go back to a graduate program after 5 years of service but we have had a number of students at my university do this successfully.
re #4, @kbat1700, since you say you don’t have much physics background:
If you don’t already have an AP physics background from high school. and you have the time, sure I would take Physics for Engineers (with calculus) at community college over the summer. Both semesters if possible.
But don’t place out of the intro courses at Cornell, take them.
The community college courses will likely have similar content to the intro courses at Cornell , but will cover less material, have easier problem sets and exams,. and the class will do worse. If you succeed at those coures you will have a good chance of succeeding at the intro courses at Cornell. But the intro courses at Cornell will be a lot harder.
Having this reinforcement will help you achieve the best possible grasp of intro physics, which is a good thing in any event… And your prior familiarity may help relieve some of the stress of the freshman engineering curriculum.
[The community college may want you to take calculus concurrently though…]
In this case I suggest do not take the advanced physics sequence at Cornell, as I suggested before, take the “regular” one.
And in this case, with little physics background to bolster your choice, I suggest do not sign up for engineering physics for ROTC if you have to do it now. It just seems like a less probable ultimate path to me, YMMV.
If you get “A” range grades in the physics sequence at Cornell you can change then.
FYI, 61AX can be quite interesting, it is more applied math/ simulation and basically no physics. You might investigate that, as well.
@monydad
I was looking at Cornell’s website and your right, I can’t declare a major till Sophomore year. Moreso, they do not encourage selecting engineering physics till junior year. I think I will talk to the ROTC instructors at Cornell to see how that works there.
I found MIT Physics courses online for free. Is this a better option than community college? Physics 1 for engineers isn’t offered but it’s free, and my community college isn’t doing Physics 1 for engineers anyway. Which course(s) should I take this summer?
So I might dispute the community College physics for engineering being that much easier at a community College. My son’s at Michigan for engineering but took Calc 3 and physics 2 last year at a community College in Chicago that is known to be pretty tough. Remember like his whole class was summer school kids like him from Cornell, Michigan, Berkeley etc etc trying to get these courses out of the way. Plus the classes are taught a lot faster. I think each class was 4 hours long then the lab section a few times a week. His math class was 4 hours 4 days a week if I remember. It was a tough class. No one would say it was easy by any means.
If you take physics and find it easy, you are way ahead of the game. I have talked to many recent engineering grads of all disciplines and they all say the same thing that they are glad physics is over… Lol…
I’d take a slightly different approach here. Rather than focus on what job may exist 5 years from now, or what the job market would even be like, I think the first question is whether you are focused on engineering or physics. They really are separate disciplines. Walter Isaacson’s book The Innovators gives good real-world examples of how the people in those fields think differently, approach problems differently, solve differently.
Most pure engineering programs teach you how to approach problems like an engineer and provide the basic skills to put you into the workplace as an engineer in training with a bachelor degree. An engineering physics degree implies a more research-focused effort that is not purely focused on the immediate practical application of the work; there should be extensive thesis work and research time involved that you would not be required to do in a core engineering program.
So for me the question is which of those fields matches your interest better? Because that is the one you will thrive in and excel in and be happy in. If you don’t really want to be a research physicist then EP is not the road to take, you’ll either bomb out of classes or change programs. Same for pure mechanical engineering - if internal combustion engines and a year of thermo isn’t your thing, consider the other program. Take a look at your choices of reading material or issue investigation from your recent spare time - what are you choosing to do with your free time?
re #8:
I actually took the physics sequence at Cornell. About a million years ago, but still.
I still have my old textbook (Halliday & Resnick), problem sets and exams. Or at least I did until recently.
Several years ago I audited the first two courses of that sequence at a community college that is held in high repute. Just to brush up, because I’d basically forgotten everything.
I directly compared what was covered, and the nature of the problem sets and exams.
My observations from that may be right or wrong, but my comments in #6 were based on that experience.
The labs at the community college were very good, btw.
Re #7, what you want is a calculus-based intro physics course. It doesn’t have to be “for engineers”, per se. The MIT course might be fine, but to me it takes a lot of self-discipline to actually follow through on a course that’s hard and requires a lot of work, if you aren’t paying for and physically going to it. But that’s me. Also if it is taught at real MIT level it might be too hard.
re#9: actually I think EP is a little different than pure physics in that they offer more “applied” electives
as upperclassmen (solid state, materials, lasers, nuclear…), whereas the pure physics majors are more likely to be taking more purely theoretical stuff or astronomy or gravitation or whatever. The EP guys can probably practice, at something, if they gear themselves that way, and particularly if they follow up with a 1-year master’s of engineering in something. But the guys I knew personally did go on for doctorates, so there’s that.
Well this is all great info. I spoke to some people within ROTC and ended up choosing mechanical engineering for now. I have complete freedom to change it till I start class, and if I decide to go the EP route, then I should be able to do that without difficulty assuming the Air Force does not have a sudden need for more mechanical engineers.
Thank you all for the genuine help and insightful comments, this is one of the best CC experiences I’ve had.
Chiming in a little late on this one, but for what its’worth, my daughter is a MechE at Cornell and her boyfriend is an EP major. She says that the classes he has to take are insanely hard (usually the honors version of what the other engineers take). She also said that her friends who are EP majors are all unbelievably smart. They are all looking for or have obtained research positions instead of industry internships this summer and are probably going to get PhDs after graduation. My D is very happy that she is a MechE instead. Good luck!
