Undecided which school to go to for Engineering

I work with actuaries and I am married to an engineer and mother of another engineer. Both actuaries and engineers are very smart, very quantitative, etc. People who are strong in math and science will do well in both career areas. To me, however, there are many differences in the personalities/mindsets. I might not really be able to articulate everything, but I’ll try to point out some differences. The actuaries love to crunch numbers, delve into details, examine all angles of a problem, and have sort of dogged determination about getting the right answers. My engineering family members are also problem solvers, but in a more hands of way. They love to take things apart (fix their own iPhone screens or disassemble a dishwasher) or put things together (build a robot or launch rockets). What can you really dig into? Would you rather take math classes or physics classes? You need to think about what you are willing to do for hours on end. There are some career surveys that a school counselor can give you or you might be able to find them online. They are not the only indicator, but they might help you pinpoint things about yourself that will influence your career satisfaction.

Man I just can’t stand the “take stuff apart and fix it” stereotype. I’m mostly lost under the hood of my car, never built a radio, am afraid to try to fix my phone for fear of voiding the warranty, and just generally don’t think any of those traits are necessary for engineers.

I’ll second @boneh3ad’s comment about the take it apart and fix it stereotype. My kid loves engineering and never took things apart, played with Legos, did robotics or programming in high school, or any of the typical things engineers are “supposed” to do. She’s thriving in her engineering program at IIT. She had three summer internship offers after her second year, and already has an internship with a fourth company lined up for fall. She is planning to graduate in four years with both a bachelor’s and a master’s. Her classmates have similar opportunities.
If you are accepted and can afford the schools you are discussing, I don’t think you’ll have any bad choices among them.

Sorry for generalizing. In my family that’s what I observe and I should have couched my comments that they were only based on my own experience. That doesn’t mean it’s the same for you or your kid. I have a nephew who is not mechanical at all, but he’s an ME. He got an MBA and works in a project management role and is not hands on at all. I still maintain that the actuaries who surround me are very different and so are the kids I know that are coders. Everyone told my neighbor to major in engineering because she’s good in math and science. She did, hated it, and is now majoring in actuarial science and finance. She thrives in it. The point is, the original poster needs is some help determing which path is right for him or her. A lot of kids are drawn to the money in these fields without regard to their personalities and true interests. There is a website called tryengineering that might also help the original poster, which is what we should be trying to do here. There might be something similar for actuaries. Good luck @steve0533. Also if you work at Aon, ask if you can shadow a couple of actuaries for part of a day. That would be a great way to learn more about that field. Actuariries do different things (believe it or not) --valuation, pricing, R&D – which is hard to learn about on your own.

I am a ME. One of my friends used to say I take the “mechanic out of mechanical engineer”. I did like to take things apart when I was young, but I certainly don’t like to try to fix things. I am not particularly good at building models, but I am quite good at understanding how something can be built by others in production. There are a lot of different skills needed in engineering.

I’m a big fan of actuarial science and I recommend it to my kids, but they seem to be more interested in areo and civil. Coursework for the various types of engineering are not necessarily interchangable and neither are the specific work environments. Decide where your interest lie, what specialization you might like and choose the school with the best program for your specific interests

Coursework is almost 100% interchangeable for the first two years of engineering, so I am not entirely sure where that assessment comes from. In higher courses, the amount of overlap depends on which fields you are comparing, but that’s true of literally every other course of study and is not unique to engineering.

So every engineering major takes chemistry for their first two years?

A couple things:

  • []All engineers take one semester of chemistry and many take two.
    [
    ]I said, and I quote, “almost 100%”

The differences between the first two years of engineering degrees are generally so slight that switching after the first year isn’t going to delay your graduation at all, and switching after the second year will likely either not delay you or only set you back a semester.

But by all means, continue to nit pick.

One man’s nit picking is another man’s extra year (or two) of school. The op is already has two years of college, I hope we’re not suggesting that. He mentioned chem eng but if he doesn’t already have two years of chemistry then he is either out or on the six year program. All courses are not offered every semester. There are prerequisites and they have to be taken in order. If you miss one you may have to wait a year to pick it up. Maybe he can switch between mechanical and computer in his third or fourth year but I wouldn’t be recommending this.Best to go in with your eye on the prize, identify the shortest path, do the needful and reasses after you graduate.

The OP has (or will have) completed two years at a community college, so regardless of what field he enters, he’s going to have that same two years available to him. It’s likely that, since he had a rather generic pre-engineering (presumably) education at a community college, that it will take him 2.5 to 3 additional years to finish his degree regardless of which he chooses. That’s just the nature of going to community college first, regardless of what degree is eventually chosen. It is very unlikely that any of this would result in “the six year program”.

If his community college track was specifically geared towards a specific engineering flavor (e.g. chemical), then perhaps if he went with that flavor, then finishing in 4 total years is doable. Going with a different flavor is not likely to be dramatically more, though (probably an extra 2 semesters or so, which is usually still cheaper than 4 years at a four-year university). Either way, there is a lot of overlap between the first two years of essentially all engineering degrees, and it just isn’t accurate to say that they aren’t very interchangeable when probably 80% or so of the coursework is the same.

@boneh3ad @user4321
I already finished these courses chemistry I&II my English courses as well with a history and a sociology, I’m finishing this summer with my calc class on the fall I will take calc II and a physics as well. For my spring semester I’ll take calc III and physics of engineering II with a CS course

“So every engineering major takes chemistry for their first two years?” - No. But at my school all engineerers took two semesters of chemistry. Most of us followed the same freshman sequence (incl fall chem1, spring chem2). Chemical engineers had many other chem classes / labs beyond that.