It can work either way. Engineering is one area you can get a very good job with just an BS. That is why many students prefer to go that way. If you want to do research in engineering or very specialized ares then you may need a masters. I got my BS and went out in the workforce as do almost 95% of the people we hire. My husband got a chemistry degree undergrad with a German minor and then got his engineering MS. Ultimately it is up to you.
@sable999 can you clarify your question for me a bit? Do you mean get an undergrad in something like applied math and then a masters in engineering?
If that’s what you mean, then licensing can be an issue with that approach. In my career, I know of two folks that have an undergrad in something other than engineering. One guy did math for his undergrad and then went for a masters in engineering. He ended up moving to another state because it was going to take him 8 years to be eligible to sit for the PE exam (usually it is 4 years for those with an engineering undergrad.)
The other guy I know has a PhD in chemistry and no undergrad or graduate degree in engineering. I still don’t know how he convinced our state board to sit for the PE but he did and he passed. Quite unusual though.
(I have a BS in civil and that’s all I’ve ever needed - along with my environmental PE. DH has a BS in chem E and a masters in environmental that his employer paid for at an Ivy. He’s dual registered as a chem and environmental for his PE.)
For many engineering jobs, it is best to study the appropriate engineering major as an undergraduate. Note that graduate study in engineering after some other undergraduate may require taking additional undergraduate level engineering courses to “catch up”, and is likely to be more specialized within the field than an undergraduate engineering program. Also, for those engineering areas where PE licensing is necessary (commonly civil, but others when there is infrastructure used by the general public involved) is best prepared for by an ABET accredited bachelor’s degree in engineering (graduate programs are often too specialized for ABET accreditation).
There are a few areas where an engineering degree may not be strictly necessary. Computer science is often found as an “engineering” major, but is also found as a non-engineering major; non-engineering computer science majors can be good (e.g. Stanford, CMU, UCB L&S CS). Operations research and similar areas may not strictly require an industrial engineering degree, versus a tailored applied math or statistics major or non-engineering operations research major.
My daughter is a civil engineer. We knew that even if she decided engineering wasn’t for her the choices would then be math, chemistry or another STEM field so an engineering school was fine. Her school also offers business degrees including construction management. She didn’t need to go to a big university with the full cafeteria of majors, but that would have been fine too.
Civil is the smallest of the engineering majors at her school. This semester she has 2 classes from the same professor, he’s supervising her senior project, plus she works for him. Worked for her, could have been a disaster if she didn’t like him - or worse if he didn’t like her!
Thanks for that input. S19 has been saying for years he wants to major in “some sort of engineering”. He is clearly a STEM kid. Loves and excels in all math and science, in particular calculus and chemistry (thought I think that might have more to do with the teacher than the subject). He will be really narrowing down his college choices this summer, and I just don’t think he knows enough to know what specific field he would want to study. He is leaning toward Chemical, but I am not sure he really knows what careers that would open up for him. So much harder being so focused so early. I love the idea of LAC, study abroad, fuller experience, but I don’t think that is what is in the cards for him. Is it easier to switch from specific majors within engineering once you are in (if direct admit)? I know it can be very hard to switch into engineering if you don’t start there.
Switching within the engineering majors is likely to be school specific. My oldest switched from biomedical engineering to material science engineering to mechanical engineering with ease, but that’s likely due to his scholarship. And they probably had space, but I’m betting on scholarship because they seem to really take care of the kids that get the scholarship he has.
Youngest kid hasn’t changed engineering disciplines yet but he is only a freshman. :)) I’ll give him good odds to stick with his choice.
Depends on the college. You really have to check the declare/change major policies carefully at each college.
Many of the colleges where engineering majors are “full” tend to be popular, relatively selective public flagships and some similarly selective private schools, because they have many strong enough students who can handle the rigor of engineering majors but not enough money to increase capacity to accommodate all interested students in engineering majors. Very wealthy (often super selective) private schools may have no such capacity limitations, while much less selective public or private schools may not have capacity problems in engineering majors because they do not have enough strong enough students.
If the small size of a LAC is attractive, there are smaller engineering focused schools, both public (SD, NM, CO Mines, MO S&T, and a few others) and private (Caltech, Harvey Mudd, WPI, Stevens, IL Tech, RPI, Olin, etc.). Study abroad may be more problematic, due to disrupting the sequenced prerequisites in many engineering curriculums, but there may also be foreign universities with engineering majors that are accredited by mutually-recognized-by-ABET organizations where costs for international students may not be that high by US standards (in this case, the entire degree would be study abroad).
@missbwith2boys your assumption about my question was correct and your examples pretty much confirm my sons belief that if he wants to be an engineer, his best bet is to pick a discipline, find a good school that offers it (ABET accredited - I now know!) and apply direct admit (ideally). Thanks all, for the input!
My engineer husband says…to be an engineer, math is a tool you need…but really…you need to be interested in how things work and how they go together. Math is a tool to get there. But just because a kid is interested in math doesn’t mean he will be a great engineer.
Some schools offer general engineering for the first year and let students pick the specialty later. Chemical engineering is tough to start late because there are so many required classes and you need to get the sequence right.
My daughter did the general course and picked civil after taking it. My nephew started in civil and switched to mechanical. Both are finishing in 8 semesters, no problem.
My husband says this is true for all fields of engineering. He is electrical…and he says…EE grad programs are soundly based on the knowledge of EE undergrad programs.
He did add…an undergrad in physics might be able to get an engineering grad degree. Might.
As already stated, stick with ABET accredited programs. Engineering and Engineering Technology programs do not have the same ABET accreditation and the courses differ somewhat. As you move on, the advanced courses are based upon the prerequisite courses. Graduate school admission usually requires the regular ABET program.
The basic calculus, physics, chemistry courses are common for most engineering fields. Many majors within engineering can usually be delayed until the second year as long as the college permits these changes after admission. After the first year of studies, things become more specialized.
For a chuckle, read this short story starting at entry #2, CameoKid @ http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21403902#Comment_21403902 and remember that education is about discovery.
However, at some such schools (e.g. Purdue, Texas A&M), the process of picking a major is competitive or requires a high GPA. At others (e.g. Michigan), a student in the engineering division with a 2.0 GPA and C grades in the frosh courses can choose any engineering major.
Might add this thought. If he thinks he might be interested in engineering but is not sure he should consider applying as an engineering major then transferring to another if he changes his mind. It is much easier to transfer out of engineering than into it. Engineering will provide a strong base for a variety of stem majors.
@retiredfarmer HA!
I hope @CameoKid and @cameo43 are not taking out a lot of debt to pay for college, since @CameoKid 's change of major will likely cut his/her post-graduation pay in half. WPI reports that 2017 CS graduates found average pay of $83,672, while 2017 biology and biotechnology graduates found average pay of $41,591.
https://www.wpi.edu/sites/default/files/CDC_StatReport_2017.pdf
CS is no guarantee of a good job, since the industry and overall economy have their ups and downs. But biology graduates do not seem to do that well even in good economic times, perhaps because the major is so popular compared to the number of available major-specific jobs.
@ucbalumnus Interesting link provided about with WPI post grad outcomes. Is that type of report available for most colleges? Where would I look for that?
Some colleges provide that information, but most unfortunately do not, or provide that information for the college as a whole rather than by major (major has a strong impact on post-graduation outcomes due to association with major-specific jobs and graduate/professional study). You can web search for “[college name] career survey” or “[college name] post graduation outcome survey” to see if you can find it for a given college.
If the college has historical reports from enough past years, you can check how economic or industry downturns affected post-graduation outcomes.
Some observations from this thread:
With respect to obtaining a “broader education” then “going in to engineering with a master’s”, keep in mind that engineering graduate programs have a fundamentally different purpose than undergraduate. An engineering master’s degree is almost always specialized to a specific subset of an engineering discipline. An undergraduate engineering degree includes all the basic and foundation science and math courses, as well as the discipline specific academic and practical (project) design courses and work. An engineering master’s degree does not include these (it assumes you already had them in your undergraduate education), again, it delves into a specific area of engineering deeply. It is not (emphasis on “not”) a substitute or replacement for an engineering undergraduate degree. Many employers will not hire with a non-engineering undergraduate and a master’s degree in engineering for a design position. The federal government for example requires an undergraduate engineering degree from an ABET accredited school for most of its engineering positions.
If you are going into an engineering specialty that requires licensure (PE), most state engineering registration boards require an undergraduate (BS or BE) ABET accredited degree to sit for the exam. It is possible a board may make an exception on an individual basis for those holding non-engineering undergraduate degrees if the person has a significant amount of engineering experience supervised by PEs, but it is not a guarantee. Interestingly, an applicant could even have a Ph.D. in engineering, but without an engineering bachelor’s degree they do not automatically qualify to sit for the exam after the usual three years of supervised work experience.
Engineering Technology is not the same thing as Engineering. It is a “watered down” course lacking the high level, theoretical proof-based math, physics, chemistry, and other basic science courses meant primarily to train engineering technicians and assistants. Of course, the coursework is not as challenging as engineering. I would stay away from schools that have ET in addition to engineering (interestingly, Purdue has both for example). You will very likely experience limited career growth with ET as opposed to Engineering.ABET accredits both programs, but separately as either Technology or Engineering. An ABET accredited engineering program will be listed as “Accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, Inc.”, whereas ET programs are listed as “Accredited by the Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET, Inc.” So as they say, caveat emptor.
Most reputable engineering schools are ABET accredited. Accreditation signifies that the program meets an acceptable standard of rigor, course content, and quality, but it is not an indication of quality of one school as opposed to another. With respect to curriculum, the requirements of ABET accreditation set the coursework that must be covered therefore there is much commonality in course content from one school to another. There are also many prerequisites and dependencies of the coursework (e.g., you must take calculus of single variables before multivariable, basic E&M before quantum physics, general chemistry before organic chemistry, etc.), so it is important to make sure the school has sufficient resources (number of faculty, facilities, etc) to allow all the students to take the courses in a timely manner and in the correct sequence to assure one can graduate in four years (number and qualifications of faculty, facilities, etc., are part of the ABET accreditation requirements).
A “School of Engineering” is really just a name on an organizational chart. Large universities of course organized their corporate structure hierarchically as a “Dean”, “School of Engineering”, “School of Science”, “School of Arts”, “School of Business”, “S of Medicine, Law”, et al. Naming the engineering department a “school” does not necessarily mean it is better than a school that calls their engineering faculties “Department of EE/ME/CE”, etc. Many smaller universities do not use the “school” nomenclature and offer excellent programs.
The first two years of a four year ABET accredited program is very similar for any of the engineering specialties, since the foundation science and interdisciplinary engineering courses are fairly common to all the specialties. In the third (junior) year, one usually begins to take the discipline-specific and specialized courses. It’s usually easy to transfer from one engineering major to another in the first two years because of the commonality of coursework (barring other factors such as the major becoming “full”), so one has approximately that amount of time to decide upon a specific major.
Some engineering schools will not accept non-engineering undergraduate degree holders to their master’s degree programs for engineering, or if they do, they may require significant non-credit makeup coursework for the courses they did not have as undergraduates.
If you are sure you want to become an engineer, it is really best to start as a freshman in a four-year engineering school as opposed to transferring later from a non-engineering field.
@sable999 I search their websites for “outcomes.” Sometimes you can locate major specific information by starting with a search of the subject major on the school’s website. It differs by schools, but poke around.
@CameoKid @cameo43 can moderate the financial problem by considering the BM option where the average reported salary was $57,168, a $15,577 pay raise but still a $26,504 pay cut. My niece earned a biology degree and learned that a PhD and some years of academic labor were required before she would have her own laboratory which was her original goal. She soon learned that law school and patent law paid very well in this exploding biomedical field and now works at a fancy Boston law firm with a very fine salary. Younger sister did the same thing, graduated and has been snatching low paying jobs in the few labs that do her very specialized genetic work in the Boston area. The younger sister fell in love with the field. She is not motivated to go to law school.
As usual, ucbalumnus has opened Pandora’s box, but that is our job here!