Not Sure What To Do: BSME vs. BSMET

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>If I challenge a 10 year old to make a paper airplane, do you know what he does? First he tries designs that others have shown him (the common designs). Then he googles “best paper airplane design” and tries a few of those. In your terminology, he’s RESULTS! oriented.</p>

<p>As an engineer, do you know what I do? First I study the physics of the airplane. Then I study the strength of the paper, and then I build a design to maximize distance. My paper airplane greatly outperforms his (this is a real-world RESULTS! example and I did win).</p>

<p>Finally, we worked together. I took his generic plane and modified it to fly farther based on what I know about airplanes. The modified plane didn’t go as far as my design, but it still went father than his. And by using his starting design, it was manufactured faster than my initial design.</p>

<p>So when do you hire him and when do you hire me? You hire the 10 year old when you want something done similar to how it’s been done before, but cheap and fast. You hire me when you want something completely new designed in a way that creates a better project. What’s his education? It’s heavily based in experiential learning (RESULTS!). What’s mine? It’s based in theoretical physics based on first principals and develops from there. So who actually gets the best RESULTS? Someone that knows why and how of flight and can make radical improvements, not someone who’s tinkered with planes and tried to work off incremental improvements. </p>

<p>If you don’t have the education, it’s hard to understand the difference of being taught something and being taught to derive something. I get that you think your education is equivalent to an engineering education, but it’s not. If it was the exact same education with the same rigor, you should have gone to Pitt and earned an actual engineering degree. Don’t base your impression of engineering based on people with engineering degrees that work in non-engineering positions.</p>

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<p>I know this is an old thread but wanted to post my experiences for people finding the thread through a google search - which is how I got here.</p>

<p>I graduated 6 years ago with a BSMET degree from OIT. At the time OIT did not offer BSME degrees, however, now they do. I had a friend go to OSU and majored in civil engineering. Almost all the core engineering curriculum we took, used the same textbooks. The only difference was that my classes were 50 people max, and were accompanied by a 3 hour lecture with a ratio of something like 15/1 student teacher. This was awesome for getting to know your prof and doing hands on experiments to help learn the theory stuff. He on the other hand would take the same class, with the same textbook, but not have a lab and his lecture would be full of like 100+ students.</p>

<p>The BSME and BSMET degrees are mostly the same. The only difference I could see is I could take 100 level basic science classes instead of the 200 level ones. I took the 200 level ones anyways. 200 level physics means its calculus based, whereas 100 level does not use calculus. I the three terms of 200 level physics our professor taught us both ways to do the problems. These classes also had a lab, whereas over at OSU there was no lab.</p>

<p>I had to take 3 terms of calculus, and 1 elective course. I picked Diff Eq, some picked stats. I think stats would have been more relevant to be honest.</p>

<p>I had one friend go to work at Sandia National Labs with his BSMET degree. Its the largest research lab in the US…I’ve interviewed 3 times with these people recently and all they really seem to care about is your GPA not whether your degree was BSME or BSMET.</p>

<p>Notes from career:
I’ve had Project Engineer, Engineer titles before. I’ve never had a job where they dismissed me because I didn’t have the BSME degree. </p>

<p>One time I interviewed for an MEP firm and he asked me why I never took the FE. I told him that at the time I had a job lined up already and they didn’t care if I had the FE or not so I just never did it. He was skeptical and told me that the purpose of the FE is to give validity to your degree. I had never thought of it like that…I only thought people took the FE/EIT if they wanted to get a PE down the road. I didn’t know if I wanted that or not, so just never took the exam.</p>

<p>My first employer hired primarily BSMETs because they can hit the ground running quicker. I have worked for many large companies without any problems - GE, Boeing, Johnson Controls and now Rockwell Automation.</p>

<p>Recently I have been having problems because my new boss is Canadian. In Canada the technology degree is a 3 year program similar to our associates degree. When he sees technology at the end of the your degree he automatically thinks you graduated from like DeVry or ITT Tech. In Canada if you have a technology degree you are a technologist, NOT an engineer. So I’ve had to explain to him that its a 4 year bachelor of science degree. My business cards actually say BSME, not sure why.</p>

<p>The people from Canada though put MET or EET as their credentials. Note, this is not the same as BSMET and BSEET which is much more similar to BSME and BSEE.</p>

<p>I am finishing up a graduate level ME degree from a top tier engineering school and did not have any problems getting in. Of course if you have an associates MET degree you could not get in…Its more important to have the BS in front…I’ve found that many people don’t care what comes afterwards since many of the engineering disciplines share common science knowledge. In the future, as I move into management I plan on dropping the MET and just saying BS, MEng.</p>

<p>To summarize:
If I could do it again I probably would have gotten the BSME because it is more widely accepted and known. BSMET, however, from an accredited 4 year program is fine although you will occasionally run into people that don’t understand what it is.</p>

<p>I chose to go BSMET because the school gave me more scholarship money than OSU.</p>

<p>The only pre-req course I had to take when doing my masters was Statistics.</p>

<p>You can get a BSMET and still get your PE if you want. (At least in Oregon that is the case).</p>

<p>I would recommend that you take the FE exam at graduation because it will give validity to your degree.</p>

<p>Within the Northwest, my school and degree is widely known, accepted, and even desired above BSME’s on occasions. Outside of the NW however, it is a different story as many people have never heard of OIT and unfortunately some will liken it to ITT Tech.</p>

<p>Above all else, once you get in the workforce your degree will matter less and less - just work hard, continue learning, be a team player, etc, etc and it won’t matter what school you went to.</p>

<p>I don’t like the nurse analogy. These people are those in the workforce that don’t understand the difference between a 2 year technology degree and a four year BS technology degree. If you get the BSMET and find yourself working for someone that thinks you have a 2 year degree move jobs.</p>

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<p>What wet your jobs at these companies you list? That would be more useful than listing the companies. It is all about the job you have, not the company. That is where the difference between most MET’s and most ME’s lies.</p>

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<p>I agree w/ most of what I am reading and am interested in the subject. I am an older student currently going for a BSMET. I had an AAS in Building Tech, worked in architecture CAD for many years and want to change to engineering. I am good at math but the Tech degree wont transfer so I figure do the BSMET so I wont have to retake classes I had already. I think what matters is the type of degree and where you get it. The program at NJIT requires to CALC 3 and seems like
all the engineering classes pre req CALC 1. I agree its not as good as an ME but far better then a 2 year degree. I may get an AAS Physics degree to back it up, curious to know if that is worth it- what you think? I am in Univ Physics just because I had the opp to take it at my community college.</p>

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<p>Banjohitter, I have to say that as an engineer you have failed to have read herkuhns post and understand the meaning. I think what he was saying is that the different BSMET degrees have different levels of theory. The degree he did had all the CALC based classes minus the CALC based engineering that a ME had and it worked out well for him. If you are designing airplanes well sure you need high level math for the wind forces etc. but most practical engineering positions dont require this.</p>

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<p>You just replied to a post that is almost one year old. congratulations lol</p>

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<p>Since this post is so old, I figured I’d take this opportunity to put in a final word.</p>

<p>I am finishing up my BSMET degree from Purdue University, and have been doing engineering for 15 years. I am currently the lead engineer in R&D at Morgan Olson Corporation (we build commercial vehicles such as UPS trucks). I am considered one of the most competent engineers at my company, and am well-respected by my peers (including those with BSME degrees). Maybe I got where I’m at because I worked my way up inside the company… nope! I’ve only been here 7 months and hired into the position. One could argue that a technology major has no business in such a position, but looky looky, here I am!</p>

<p>So how did a lowly technology major that hasn’t even completed his BSMET obtain a position that pays better than 75% of BSME graduates with similar experience? The fact of the matter is this. Straight out of school with no work experience, the BSME graduate is going to be viewed as being able to solve more in-depth and complicated problems than the BSMET graduate; however, any experienced engineer that’s worth anything is going to tell you that school BARELY prepares you for the real world. Once you get out their in industry, it’s time to really begin to grow.</p>

<p>I have built my skills and my resume’ by being a team player and accepting every opportunity for training in skills that one does not learn in either the BSMET and BSME curriculums. Things like FMEA, six sigma, RSS tolerance stack analysis, the list goes on. Most importantly, I produced results and built a reputation of value to my employers. My projects created far more money than my salary cost the company and that’s easy math at review time and when prospective employers call for references.</p>

<p>It sickens me to see experienced engineers banging on BSMET graduates as being sub-standard engineers to BSME graduates. This is like comparing one gallon of 87 octane gas to one gallon of 89 octane gas. Both of them will get your car rolling, and you probably won’t notice any difference at all in performance, but your going to need more fuel in short order. That fuel is the actual results that you provide to your employer and is FAR more important than the first gallon of gas that the undergraduate degree provided.</p>

<p>In my experience (which is significant), it’s those engineers that desperately cling to the notion of their BSME degree being superior to other degrees that are the worst team players and provide the least value to their employers. These are the guys that you stick in a corner somewhere because they are anti-social a**holes that don’t provide any value beyond being able to punch numbers into some software package and provide data to other “less intelligent” people that make things happen and probably get paid better because of it.</p>

<p>In conclusion, my best advice to those that are yet undecided and have the option of completing either a BSMET or BSME degree is this. Complete the BSME degree, because it will eliminate some of the prejudice against equally competent BSMET majors and there’s no sense in dealing with hurdles you don’t have to. If you do get a BSMET degree, take the additional classes required to become a certified professional engineer in your state as this will also eliminate any prejudice against your degree. Lastly, and most importantly, remember that your employer is not hiring you for your degree. They are hiring you to provide value to them. Be a team player, take every opportunity to learn new skills, and accept increasing roles of responsibility while providing real measurable results.</p>

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The general consensus of the MET community seems to be - “MET and ME should be considered the same by everyone!!! I just dont get why they are not. I did MET, and want equal rights! It was just as hard!”

If you need to benchmark the ME degree to prove your worth and you claim MET is just as difficult, why didn’t you just do the ME degree? You wont ever hear an ME say “Yea the MET is the same degree.” It is obvious which degree is in whose shadow.

Almost all METs I know were basically there because they got weeded out of ME by the time Statics happened.

The “snootiness” you observe of some MEs not giving you a “fair shake”, while definitely annoying, has some basis.

You did not go through what the MEs did - so please stop saying/believing (or expecting others) you did.

Side note - Right or wrong, MEs should probably keep the snootiness to a minimum in the professional workplace. Nothing good is ever going to come out of it.

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You are responding to a person who unearthed a dead thread and posted to it 3.5 years ago. Let…it…be…dead!

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Looking back at my post, I feel I was a bit harsh to METs.

I will say I do appreciate METs who surrendered to the difficulty of the ME degree, retracted forces, regrouped and went to MET. They show they understand the concept of core competencies and are willing to take action and let go of sunk costs. The greatest war generals advise to not fight “just to fight”, but fight those battles where you stand a chance to win, even if it isn’t as glorious.

We all know those MEs who never should have went on - flunked statics 3 times, flunked calculus multiple times and only got through due to the graciousness of the professors, etc. These guys finish the ME degree in 6 (or more) years with a bleeding transcript and a pitiful GPA - they truly should have been in MET.

eyemgh - Haha, I actually stumbled upon this thread while helping someone pick between ME and MET. Thought Id add my two cents here as well. The thread may be old but the issue is as alive as ever.

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Whether you were too harsh or not, just let the thread die. Thread necromancy is not good.