Which Engineering Discipline Should I Pursue?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hello! :smiley:
I am currently in highschool (Grade 12) and am looking to pursue a career in Engineering.
I came here because I know that this board is full of very smart people. I was wondering if ANY of you have ANY useful information for me about Engineering. I am trying to get into a Canadian University (I’m in BC) and I was wondering about which disciplines such as Chemical, Mechanical, Electrical, Materials Engineering were the most popular/fun/high paid :slight_smile: /interesting etc…
Feel free to share your stories.
Has/is anyone gone/going to McGill/UBC? Those are the two Uni’s that most interest me at the moment.

Thank you in advance for all your help! :smiley:

2

Electrical hands down. although this is an opinion question, i think electrical would be the best route to pursue. My experience? none. Try to get in the field of nanotechnology…if you think that is the direction we are headed
actually…disregard this post because i dont even know what im talking about, i just know that i would choose electrical…because my dad is an electrical engineer, and he told me that if i wanted to pursue engineering electrical would be the best way to go, because it combines so many elements…

3

Gravitonics. Gravitonics is the future.

4

One word: plastics.

5

Mechanical Engineering is the way to go. All the EE involves some spooky vodoo stuff, like “imaginary” numbers and what not.

6

EEs are weird. They call i j.

7

I’m studying civil engineering. If I’m not mistaken, it is the oldest engineering discipline. Besides there is something satisfying about driving by something that you helped to build 20 years ago.

8

Moved to IMHO.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

9

Mechanical, of course, 'cause that’s what I am.

Seriously, you need to match your interests up with the field. If you tend to like electronics and controls, go into Electrical. If materials and structures interest you go into Civil. If you like the workings of machines or the concept of energy transmission (heat, power) go into Mechanical.

Pay and opportunities will be similar in all fields. You will do best in what you are most interested in. Generally the first year in Engineering is completely general (in fact some schools have a General Engineering curriculum) so you can change after the first year with no loss of progress.

10

I hope you love calculus, that’s all I have to say about engineering.

Oh, and I guess I’ll put my vote in for chemical, since that’s what I took.

11

I would start out being a “general” engineer, take all the required classes and get a feeling for what type of engineering you might like the most. Doing what you like is the most important thing, peace of mind is priceless.

12

Heh. That’s not setting the bar very high. How about: Engineering starts with the letter “E”. There’s some useful information for ya.

Just kidding.

I’m not familiar with Canadian schools, so I’m afraid I can’t give you much feedback there. However, like KenGr said, nearly all freshman (and much of the sophomore) courses required are identical among the disciplines, so your choice now could easily be changed later without losing any credits. Also, many universities offer a one- or two-credit freshman level “Introduction to Engineering” course, the purpose of which is to help students like you decide which discipline they’re most interested in. Check out the course listings at McGill & UBC to see if something like that’s offered.

To choose a discipline, figure out what you like to do. Like taking apart radios and putting together compters? Try electrical. Like fixing bikes or cars? Try mechanical. Like the concept of working on BIG projects like dams? Try civil. Interested in the way plastics or carbon fibers are made? Try materials. And so forth.

My own perspective: I’m a mechanical engineer, because I like to work on things that move, and that I can pick up. Electrical? I can’t see the electrons moving around. Booooring. Materials? So you make a lump of stuff. Ho hum. Chemical? So you make a bottle full of stuff. Still ho hum. Civil? Big things, that’s cool, but so big that there’s no pride of ownership. Ah well. Mechanical? Now there you can make a widget and have it do things, and carry it around and show people. That’s fun. YMMV, of course.

As far as salary, I’d hesitate to make a choice based on that. However, here’s a couple suggestions, if you want numbers. First, most universities perform a salary survey of recent graduates. Ask to see this (they use it for recruiting, anyway). Second, check out the 2002 salary survey from the Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia (this is a pdf file). Average salary for recent graduates is about $45000 (Table 9). Unfortunately they don’t break out recent graduates by discipline, but you can infer from Table 13, using the “lower decile” numbers (average LD salary = $44000) that mechanical starting salary is about $45000, civil is about $43000, and electrical is all the way up at $63000. I’d caution you that these numbers might be highly variable as supply and demand changes, though.

-zut (BSME, MSME, PhDME, PE)

13

I won’t go into the specific discipline, as that’s a huge area for debate. I very strongly urge you to use the Search function, as this question does get asked quite a few times here, and there have been some very complete, thoughtful answers posted in the past which still apply.

Whichever discipline you enter, my advice is to make sure you take as many computing and programming-related courses as your electives allow. Or even do a double major of BS-ME/BS-CS/IT. A large number of Engineers coming out of school that I see are still pretty woefully ignorant of computers and their actual use in both the office and in real life design and consulting problems.

Note that a large number of Engineers do not stay in Engineering past 10 years. Due to an odd set of circumstances, I was moved into management at 5 years, and have been there ever since, but still doing the design and consulting work too. In fact, since I do sales trips around the world, write my own contracts, manage, do the accounting, and of course do the work and all presentations, I’ve been my own mini-company within my company for more than half a decade. And it’s very nice.

As for salary…I won’t comment on that either, other than to say the job market for Engineers sucks like a tornado in many areas right now, although some areas are still holding their own. My company has lately been through prodigious layoffs, and the only people who have survived have been the multidisciplined engineers like myself who can work anywhere they’re placed.

Una, MS-ME, PE

14

Unless you are HIGHLY disciplined and derive pleasure from things that others will never understand (problem sets, this neat integration formula that saves you oodles of time), I would AS AN ENGINEER advise against going into engineering. It is hard work. You will be doing homework 6 out of 7 nights a week, while your buisness roommate is out having a good time. It also involves CONSTANT self-improvement. You will be studying for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, the social status of engineers is poor. And the salary is not great. I have a PhD and work at a university and my sister the doctor makes TEN times what I do.

That being said. If you wish to become an engineer, you need to think of those thing which you enjoy doing. I started in EE and discovered that there was little practical hands on that I enjoyed. I became a materials engineer because we were in the labs from day one doing metallographic cross-sections. I also hated computers. If you like computers, you might want to do something that lives with computers, like aero (good luck getting a job) or civil (boring, but stable).

Anyway, good luck to you brother. (If sister, please disregard)

15

I’m an electrical engineer.

I know this sounds really pessimistic, and perhaps this is more applicable to the United States vs. Canada, but IMO you should make an attempt to answer the following questions before deciding:

“What engineering jobs can most easily be done in China and India?”

“What engineering jobs are difficult (or impossible) to outsource to China and India?”

With these questions in mind, it is my opinion that electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering jobs can be easily outsourced. (The easiest disciplines to outsource are computer engineering and software development, so I would definitely stay away from those.) The most difficult to outsource (IMO) are civil, nuclear, and aerospace engineering. So I would look at these first.

16

I’m an EE, and this is how our school worked. As a freshman, you took a bunch of generic engineering-type classes (physics, calculus, basic programming), as well as an “intro to engineering” class, where you did a little work in each major and took tours of the departments and such. It gave a very good sense of what each one entailed. And then at the end of the year, you had to pick your real specific engineering major. Twas a good system.

17

EEs and MEs build weapons. Civils build targets… :smiley:

18

So all three benefit from a war, eh?

I’m not an engineer but it looks to me like MEs get to do the most interesting work, and have the most versatile job skills (applicable to different types of work). You need one on pretty much any engineering project, right?

19

I’m in Chemical.

Learn what each of the disaplines actually does. Chemical Engineering is not engineering chemicals like MechE is engineering machines. Chemical includes platics and pharmaceutical design, but also process control, process design, sustainability (oddly not in environmental eng…) and a vast amount of product design. (Anytime the chemists come up with something, ChemEs get to fix it so human beings can use it. MechEs design the gear, ChemEs figure out how to build a million of them for $.25 apiece.)

After you have a true picture of what each disapline does, really, pick the one that interests you. You’re going to be doing a lot of it, for the rest of your life. The girl I hate most in my program is the one who whines constantly about how much she hates math, science, chemistry, heat and mass tranport, statics, kinetics, and reactor design. I have no clue what she thinks she’s going to do with this degree and its public knowledge that she has been borderline failing out every term. You are going to be doing homework just about every breath. You will live in the engineering building. Pick something you find fun, so that when you are slaving over a computer terminal/lab/homework set at three am, you are at least entertained by the experiance.

Oh! and like group work. If you’re one of those whiny geeks who is “a loner” and “doesn’t need other people”, please go away. Group work (at least in my program) is not an excuse to give 2 person’s worth of work to 5 people, the groups are 3-4 people because the project is going to take 180 man hours over the next 4 weeks. Haul your weight or go major in communications.

On classes, take computer courses, and at least one solid writing course. Yes, you need to be able to write well. (The downside to this is that when you end up being the only one with communication skills in your group, you inevitably get to do the write up for the project. Some write ups are a mere two pages…or not, as the case with the first lab in my program, where the lab reports routinely run 50-60 pages.)

And on who’s the oldest…cooking, tanning hides, and making fire are all Chemical… just sayin’…

20

I used to work in quality control in manufacturing at night I studied mechanical engineering. While the science of QC was fascinating, the practice broke my heart. I won’t work in a factory again.

I spent ten years operating heavy equipment, I have a class “A” CDL. I can grade and pave and lay pipe, one day I will be a civil engineer. If the targets are all destroyed, I’ll make more.