<p>I took 6 years to get through college. One year realizing I don't want to do liberal arts, another two to start with Computer Engineering, and 3 years ending in civil engineering. I've contacted numerous employers who are telling me the same thing: "We're not hiring in this recession". I'm currently debating grad school in Electrical Engineering. </p>
<p>The only interesting classes I thoroughly enjoyed were what I learned from Geotechnical Engineering, Fluid Mechanics and Municipal Water and WW Systems, specifically the lines of process design and pipe routing. </p>
<p>Does anyone in either CivE or EE have any light they could shed on this? It's a pretty tumultuous time in my life since I can't get an actual career-related job, aside from free internships. It's hitting me really hard.</p>
<p>I’m in a similar situation. I’m graduating with a BSCE this year, and the market is absolutely terrible for new grads in our field. The option I’m looking at a lot now is grad school in structures, though I did seriously consider trying to go to grad school in mechanical. The biggest reason I’m gonna stick with structures is because I’ll be able to get paid to do research. Most professors have a lot of money available to fund students so long as you simply go talk to them about it and express a willingness to do some serious research. If you like geotech and fluids, you might wanna think about groundwater engineering or flow through porous media or something like that.</p>
<p>EE seems so far removed from CivE that I don’t know how much sense it would make to make that switch. Have you thought about going into MechE at all? A lot of the basic principles are the same, and you could just learn at a more accelerated and advanced rate in grad school. It would probably take you two years of straight classes to get a master’s, as opposed to probably longer with EE.</p>
<p>As much as I hate saying this, you probably will need a masters to be competitive nowadays. The reason is the job growth in this field has not kept up with the amount of cives grads and imports (H1Bs). That and the state of the economy.</p>
<p>Now, if you meet older civils (ones with 10-15+years experience), most of them only have a bachelors and PEs. Supply and demand…
Few eventually go for their masters later on in their life.</p>