<p>Having both science and engineering degrees and many friends and colleagues in both fields, the science jobs tend to be day-to-day running tests with very little initiative necessary. Even the lowest level engineers do project-based work.</p>
<p>Of course co-ops and internships are priceless. If I had <em>one</em> piece of advice to give any college student, regardless of field, it would be to get a career-related summer job each year and do at least two co-ops or internships. Not only do you get paid with co-ops and summer jobs, but you can find out if you like to do the job or not. As a summer intern, I was doing the exactly the same things the full-time employees were doing.</p>
<p>This sounds like a good idea, actually. maybe actually seeing what engineers / scientists actually do I can get a feeling for what the environment is like, what is performed, etc. How should I go about finding these types of things? </p>
<p>Find something else to study. Goodness how are you going to succeed in doing something you dread. Defense jobs are somewhat boring, is that what your brother work? You could get an engineering degree and marketing engineering products. Somebody that can explain to customer how the product work, I think it’s called technical marketing. People called me all the time to get into sales and marketing. I never did it, I was too afraid that I loose my technical skills.</p>
<p>My brother has a CS degree. He has mostly worked for banks in technical support. I guess that would be boring in itself, but even outside of him I have only heard CS jobs are mostly in programming.</p>
<p>That is an interesting suggestion, marketing engineering products, but that’s probably further away from what I want to do.</p>
<p>If you like to study medicine, you should be able to get some loans for medical school. I know my nephews and nieces are borrowing for their medical schools. If this is something you like to do.</p>
<p>If medical school is viable with loans, it is something I will consider. I actually do not know much about what doctors do since I’ve only really talked to pediatricians. like my doctor! MD/PhD programs also sound interesting but I am not 100% sure on how funding works with those.</p>
<p>The most troublesome thing about medical school is that it is a lifelong commitment - you will have enough money to pay back the debt, but you will have to practice medicine for the rest of your life. The program is well over 10 years worth of education+apprenticeships, and it’s tough work.</p>
<p>MD/PhD programs are fully funded, but expect to spend 10 years on the program alone. And don’t think you can just leave with an MD that is fully paid for - the way the program works in most schools, you either graduate with both or neither.</p>
<p>10 years??? jeeez that is a long time. I’ll be in my thirties before I complete an MD/PhD</p>
<p>I wish there was a better way of discovering what it’s like in a field without, you know, actually being in the field. Would hate to go through 10 years of medical training to find out I hate being a doctor, or 4 years of school to find I hate being an engineer.</p>
<p>But the point is if you really like it, you have another 30 years to work at something you like. Don’t discard it immediately just because you have no money for medical school.
BTW, my brother used to do CS for big banks, I think it’s Bank of America. He left the job and went to medical school when he was in his 30s, he will retire when he turns 60, he only works as an MD for about 20 years but he’s glad he changed his field.</p>
<p>I guess if my interest in medicine increases over the next few years I can just take the pre-med reqs. Some should be required courses in my major anyway since I’m doing a sciency field. Then I can have that door open to me …when I graduate.</p>
<p>I’m probably going to minimize debt from undergrad whatever I do. Eng / Science degrees are pretty similar at all schools so I don’t need to go somewhere fancy. But as it looks now the high need meeting schools may be of similar cost to my in-state safety. </p>
<p>I talked to my mom tonight. She asked me why I was applying to UChicago. I told her I like the academic environment, common core, and proximity to major national physics laboratories. Many kids from UChicago go on to earn PhDs. She became unhappy when I told her that they don’t have engineering. I said I may have academic interests that extend beyond engineering. She holds the viewpoint that people should not go to a 4 year college if they aren’t sure what they want to do. I have been told its the opposite, that you go to college to find out what you want to do. By this logic, I don’t know why I would want to be an engineer since I have not taken any engineering classes.</p>
<p>She is assuming that I will fail and if I do Physics or Chemistry I won’t have a good enough GPA for grad school. But apparently I would have a good enough GPA in ABET engineering to get a job after graduation (>3.0). She says she doesn’t care what I major in though, since she won’t be able to contribute much paying for college. She wanted to be a journalist but had my half brother at 19 so she did a 2 year nursing program. I understand someone in her scenario would need the money, but because of her hard work I do not have to make these decisions. I was seriously considering engineering but after more research on what they do I am not as appealed to it.</p>
<p>I don’t really need or want a high paying job to be honest. I have so much fun with a few things (telescope, piano, laptop, books, I’m set). I don’t really like taking vacations. A simple lifestyle does not sound bad to me. I think she looks at my older brother as her “success story”. He graduated with CS and his wife has a PhD in math and they make tons of $$ and live in a beautiful house in Florida. I talk to him about physics whenever he visits, he says if he could do college over again he’d do physics. He has told me if that’s what I was really interested in, I should do it.</p>
<p>I think I’m sort of rambling now. I guess if there’s one thing I’m good at, its typing.</p>
<p>@DrGoogle “Defense jobs are somewhat boring”.
How is designing and testing the most advanced military weaponry (Guided missiles, Railgun, radar, lazer, directed-energy weapons (DEW), etc.) boring? Of course, I might be some what biased. However, I still think the majority of scietific folk would find this fairly interesting. </p>
<p>It depends on the defense jobs, some defense jobs are boring with lots of paperwork. For most people you won’t be doing all that work and not by yourself anyway. What you describe is more like research project may not a be development project.</p>
<p>Every single one of those examples mentioned are research and development projects, and there are many people working on them. Sure, defense contractors have some boring jobs, but they have a bunch of really cool jobs, too. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.</p>
<p>But not in large numbers. My brother works for a large defense company and he composes emails for his boss in correspondent. I worked at Reagan’s SDI which I thought was cool, kind of like Star Wars, optics, laser, etc. but I only worked at a small portion of this large project. Mostly software.</p>
<p>Yes large number work for them. Your brother’s experience is not typical for those with STEM degrees working at defense contractors. People are generally not tasked with composing emails for their bosses, especially as a primary job function. Yes, in large companies such as those it is most common for engineers to be working on a small part of a larger whole, but consider that these projects are gigantic with many systems requiring many experts from many disciplines. There is no one engineer capable of covering all of the areas, and it would be foolish to expect such a position. Now, some times (many times?) the jobs performed on these particular subsystems can be boring, especially at the entry level, but that is not universally true, especially for the stronger candidates or those with advanced degrees who are qualified for the more challenging, technical jobs.</p>
<p>Honestly, even as an intern I was never tasked with composing emails for my bosses. It wouldn’t make good business sense for these companies to make a habit of paying engineers $50k, $60k, $70k, $80k starting to sit there writing emails, and they don’t make a habit of it. Your brother’s experience is atypical.</p>
<p>I’ve had two Internships/Co-ops in the defense industry (Department of the Navy and Raytheon), neither have involved what DrGoogle has described. In both of them, I joined a team of Engineers and worked on some very exciting projects. I’ve had the opportunity to do design, simulation, testing and etc. even as an intern. If anything, I’d say the defense industy allows engineers to have more technical jobs. Again, this has just been from my limited exposure to the field. However, I have friends working at different defense companies and their experience seems to be similar. </p>
<p>He knew his boss from the GE day and his boss is a big shot. So his job is to compose emails for big shot. He turned down chief engineer position because of politics.</p>
<p>jc, these companies tend to rope in interns and give them jobs are interesting. I know that when I was working at one of the large defense employer, they went out of their way to court young interns. Cheap rates, but charge government more money. In the meantime, another brother said they call him in and many of his coworkers around his age and told them that they are expensive, and he knew he would be laid off soon and he did. His ex-work place, there is go away party for older engineers being layoff every month.</p>
<p>Layoffs are part of life, particularly for companies and business units that rely on government funding like many defense contractors. Naturally, if the goal is to cut costs, the first place you look is the older engineers who make more, particularly the ones that haven’t done enough to set themselves apart from the younger crop to be worth the extra money. Now, never having been in the position of deciding who gets laid off, I can’t say for certain how much cynicism is warranted in interpreting who gets laid off, but what I can say is that it is not generally the people who have set themselves apart and made themselves and their skills indispensable to the company.</p>
<p>It’s not always technical, the brother that writes emails should be laid off, while the other ones technically still performing shouldn’t been laid off. It’s very political process to say the least. All the young engineers told me they have jobs insecurity too. Layoff notices come out monthly.
At least in non defense companies, your actual performance is measured because there are real results to be reported to stockholders.</p>