<p>I agree. I'm not so much concerned about money as I am about the next 30 years. I'm not about to enter engineering just to be pushed into management when I get a little older. The logic is</p>
<p>30year old coder/engineer feels odd working alongside 20yr olds => feels pressured to go into management = !!end of engineering work!! => 4 years of study for 6-8 years of work => engineering degree means "temp job" => crappy management life between ages 35-60 => terrible mistake!!!</p>
<p>To *<em>SCIDOC *</em> ------ could you pleease give some details about medical versus engineering FOR YOU!??? Your comments above are a little terse, so if you can shed some light on details, your thought process for switching into medical (the nitty-gritty details), it would be awesome!</p>
<p>
[quote]
could you pleease give some details about medical versus engineering FOR YOU!???
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And why does it always have do be medical vs. engineering? Why not medical AND engineering? Yes, true, it is harder to do. But people stil do it. The majority of MIT students are engineers. Yet MIT still boasts of a 77% premed placement rate.</p>
<p>"And why does it always have do be medical vs. engineering? Why not medical AND engineering?"</p>
<p>Because medical schools don't admit many engineers....only 2% of engineers eventually make it into med school, as uggio pointed out. Also, a HUGE negative of engineering major is that you don't take the prerequisite courses to get into med school, so you spend double time frantically catching up to premeds. Also, your GPA drops while you're killing yourself to catch up.</p>
<p>"Yet MIT still boasts of a 77% premed placement rate."</p>
<p>MIT is not just full of engineers though....the 77% medical acceptance rate probably is broken up into</p>
<p>90% bio majors get into med school
90% chem majors get into med scholl
90% bio-chem, life sciences, etc. etc.
20% placement rate for engineers... (dramatization)</p>
<p>so your numbers again are misleading, since you don't know what fraction of engineers at MIT got into med school .....engineering hurts your chances of getting into medical school.</p>
<p>I think what all that refers back to is what was said earlier: If you're good and kick ass in engineering, everything will be open to you and you'll be way better off than almost any other major. Do you think MIT engineers with a 4.8 have trouble getting into Med school or recuirted to GS for ibanking?</p>
<p>If you didn't do that well, you can still have a career as an engineer. If you don't like engineering as a career, don't blame your major.</p>
<p>If you don't like engineering, then don't study it in college. Its simple as that. (If you did, and didn't like it, then don't blame engineering).</p>
<p>"Fact is, penicillin could be made over-the-counter, but it's not...why?...because doctors would lose money if it was by loss of patients! "</p>
<p>The reason Penicillin is not an over the counter drug is because we are trying to decrease its use, because bacteria build up resistances too it. In fact, the usefullness of penicillin has decreased so much since we started using it that we are constantly searching for new antibiotics. Even I know this and I hate the medical field. See <a href="http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/antimicro.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/antimicro.htm</a> for evidence of this, or google it, I know I'm right about this one. It has nothing to do with oversupply of doctors.</p>
<p>Second of all, the AMA doesn't control everything. If scientists discover and then engineers develop a new source of energy (and it will happen someday, hopefully, soon) that is cleaner and more efficient than coal and gasoline, factories will run cleaner production, and cars will not put crap into the air. Reduced pollution means reduced sick people. Reduced sick people=reduced demand for doctors.</p>
<p>Or what about nanotechnology? This is a cutting edge science that may eliminate the need for many operations. These are just two examples, but engineers work to improve technology and the environment, and in many cases will reduce sickness.</p>
<p>Doctors will of course always be in demand, but you can't guarantee that there will always be more positions than doctors. Engineers are an important part of society and our economy, and you should in no way underestimate that.</p>
<p>There's a whole lot of discussion about career prospects, job security, and money, but not a whole lot of emphasis on what appeals to the individual. If you can find a profession you really enjoy, you'll have a great career - you'll do great work, you'll put in long hours because it doesn't seem like drudgery, and even as overall prospects go up and down you'll be fine.</p>
<p>The worst reason to choose a profession are,
- high demand for grads right now
- high salaries right now
These tend to be self-correcting problems. Fields with high demand now may be glutted five years down the road.</p>
<p>If at all possible, get first-hand exposure to your career interests. Volunteer. Get an internship. See what people really do in that profession. Then, try to choose an undergraduate path that will give you flexibility in the future.</p>
<p>"Also, i'd love to hear some downright harsh truths about medical versus engineering!!, and if you could, please don't hold back anything...nitty-gritty detail that can make a world of difference would reallly be appreciated! Things such as tensions of working in groups (in engineering vs med), number of presentations/meetings, public speaking, fuzziness of job (engineering), salesy/schmoozy differences, clear career paths, age-ism after 30, etc.! These are fascinating to me, and I think to a lot of others as well."</p>
<p>Huh? From your posts it seems pretty clear that you already knew all of this.</p>
<p>Two of my cousins and an uncle are all trained as engineers. One cousin was an engineer for a defense company, but quit because she was having kids. The other is the head of a think-tank at TI(engineers don't get to do anything creative, eh?). My uncle, now retired, ran an incineration facility. They still call him back when there are emergencies because... guess what? He(the old guy) could do stuff which the young guys didn't know how to, or didnt do well enough.</p>
<p>As for the OP, egineering is basicly applied science. It is such a broad term that it is difficult to give a universal example, but I assure you it is not just Dilbert. My best advice to you, ignore aehmo.</p>
<p>
[quote]
MIT is not just full of engineers though....the 77% medical acceptance rate probably is broken up into</p>
<p>90% bio majors get into med school
90% chem majors get into med scholl
90% bio-chem, life sciences, etc. etc.
20% placement rate for engineers... (dramatization)</p>
<p>so your numbers again are misleading, since you don't know what fraction of engineers at MIT got into med school .....engineering hurts your chances of getting into medical school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Your numbers are way off. There are no 'biochem' or 'life sciences' majors at MIT. There are just Bio and Chem and Brain/Cognitive Sciences (which is basically Psychology). And the number of Bio, Chem, and BCS majors are very small compared to the number of Engineers, and certainly not enough to influence the numbers that radically. </p>
<p>But look, I agree, engineering can somewhat hurt your chances of getting into med-school. But remember, aehmo, these are MIT engineers here. You know and I know that they are still highly likely to get a strong MCAT score, and once they do that, they are right back in the running.</p>
<p>"The worst reason to choose a profession are,
- high demand for grads right now
- high salaries right now
These tend to be self-correcting problems. Fields with high demand now may be glutted five years down the road."</p>
<p>Well, it seems as if every engineering field in the last 50 years has has exactly 1 big spike, and then it went flat....never to pop again. E.g., aerospace was big when we were racing to the moon....now it's quite mediocre...civil was hot in the 80's, now it's not...same with mechanical. Computer eng was hottest in 1990, now people find it to be a dead-end job.</p>
<p>I don't think aerospace has made a comeback, and neither have civil/mechanical....they continue to be scutwork type of jobs, which is where computer engineering is currently at. The oversupply of engineers killed the field, whereas medical has been a hot field FOREVER, and I think the AMA has a lot to do with it, since it's controlling the supply of doctors.</p>
<p>I do agree that without regulation, jobs WILL get glutted over....but dental/medical fields are very sheltered from this major problem, don't you think?</p>
<p>"If at all possible, get first-hand exposure to your career interests. Volunteer. "</p>
<p>That's the BEEEST way to know the profession!!! Something might look great on the outside, but be terrrible once you get to it...that' s how i learned so much about the engineering field and am thinking of never getting into it.</p>
<p>There are plenty of jobs available. If you don't like engineering, then that's fine, but don't go running your mouth off and insult the profession, it makes you look a lot stupider than you probably really are.</p>