<p>I'm not hugely interested in planes or computer programming. </p>
<p>My big interest falls in major industrial plants. Oil refineries, chemical plants, steel mills, power generators, etc. If it's involved majorly in industry, I'm generally interested in it, although those 4 I named are the most interesting to me.</p>
<p>What sort of engineers work at these sorts of places? Also, what schools place in massive industrial firms? Someone told me that they don't tend to recruit at the top few schools because students there are more interested in cutting edge research.</p>
<p>ChemE sounds like what you’re looking for, maybe MatSci would work as a near fit.</p>
<p>Industrial engineering, chemical engineering some materials engineers, and some mechanical engineers do the sort of things you seem to be interested. It mainly depends on what part of those processes and plants you want to get involved with.</p>
<p>Any state school would be a good bet, even the “good” ones.</p>
<p>By good I was being somewhat narrow - my intent was Stanford, MIT and Caltech. I’ve been told those people mostly go into cutting edge research type things.</p>
<p>I didn’t think that industrial engineering was hugely directly involved in massive industrial concepts - they were more involved in efficiency analysis. </p>
<p>Do Chemical Engineers work with steel mills, power plants, etc.? Would Berkeley be a good school to go to work in massive industrial projects like those?</p>
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<p>Well you never said what part of the big industrial plants you were interested in. Industrial engineers aren’t designing the piping or conveyor belts or the forges or anything like that, but they are doing things such as laying out the factory design for efficient workflow.</p>
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<p>Again, what do you want to do at these plants? We really can’t help more unless you are more specific. There isn’t just one kind of engineer that works at these plants. Steel mills won’t likely have many, if any, chemical engineers. Power plants very well may, though if you include power plants then you have to throw nuclear engineering into the mix as well.</p>
<p>IMO, if you got to a school like Stanford and MIT, you are much more likely to be working in (and you probably will want to work in) cutting-edge technology and innovation, as opposed to large-scale industrial manufacturing.</p>
<p>I’m interested in working at the plants, involved in making sure everything runs fine and maybe eventually working my way up.</p>
<p>What sort of engineer would be found at a steel mill? Mechanical?</p>
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<p>This sounds more like a Plant Technician than an Engineer.</p>
<p>Perhaps industrial engineering, operations research, or manufacturing engineering?</p>