<p>I was wondering if I wanted to study Engineering, but wanted to study at a liberal arts college for undergrad, would it be possible to major in something like Physics or Chemistry, or any applied sciences course, and then apply for Engineering at graduate school for MS?</p>
<p>And if it is, how badly does the student damage his job prospects (I'm assuming a BA is worse than a BS in the eyes of an employer looking to hire an engineer...I'm not exactly sure if this assumption is right) ?</p>
<p>It is possible and happens all the time. It generally won’t hurt your job prospects because companies will feel secure knowing you passed the MS coursework for that major, which presumably means you are at least as qualified as a BS in the same field (though whether this is necessarily true is debatable). The biggest danger is that you may likely have to take some remedial coursework to catch you up on prerequisites that you missed.</p>
<p>What you are describing is certainly possible and not even particularly rare. Employers are not generally going to care about your undergrad - while you will not have the breadth of knowledge as someone with an engineering BS, once you have your masters they are not really looking for breadth anyway.</p>
<p>The only downside is that without the engineering undergrad your realistic engineering MS options will be curtailed in breadth or quality. While there are a number of specialities in each engineering field that will take a physics or chemistry major with equal stature (or better!), there are other specialities where you will be less competitive - to get into those specialities you will need to be a distinctly better candidate than the engineering candidates to make up for the additional work you will require to come up to speed.</p>