Mechanical is the best. It allows you to play with very very cool toys. Manly toys, not gadgets. I’m talking 300 h.p. engines here.
However, I agree with the general engineering approachand deciding from there.
I would have to agree with biomedical or biochemical engineering. IMHO electrical, mechnical, civil, computer systems, telecommunications, etc. are all mostly “over” What I mean by "over is that there will be few (if any) huge, major, life altering breakthroughs left in these fields. These fields are saturated and past their “discovery” stage, so to speak. Biomedical, and biochemical, however, I feel are only just beginning their “discovery” stage. The field is new, many many discoveries yet to be made, many many things still unknown/unexplained, etc etc. Nanotechnology, as much as it has been linked with computers, etc, is probably more biology/chemical based than EE or CS.
All just MHO.
I don’t have any cites I can link to conveniently on the web, but there has been a drawback in outsourcing engineers to India and other countries on a couple of fronts. Back in the late 1990’s we had several “bungee bosses” come in and tell us “We’re going to hire engineers in India! You can get PhDs to work for $5 an hour!” Well, it didn’t really work out that way.
First off, it was more like $12 an hour.
Second, it was not PhDs, it was mainly Masters students (note that many non-US Masters degrees are about equivalent to a US Bachelors, even in European countries)
Third, there were a ton of logistical and project coordination issues that lead to 200-300% man-hour over-runs.
Fourth, many of these engineers had no experience whatsoever and there were hefty training budgets, combined with enormous airfares back and forth to the US.
Fifth, half the office didn’t even show up for work most days, but still collected a paycheck. That had nothing to do with them being Indian whatsoever, but did have to do with the “out of sight, out of mind” aspect of farming work out.
Sixth, some of the half that did stay set up a for-pay pornserver that ran through the company firewall for nearly 20 months. On the client’s hardware, too. As in the above point, that had nothing to do with them being Indian whatsoever. Except maybe the porn content was influenced by their nationality…mmm - ankle shots! 
And seventh, since all the work we were doing on the project was for the public, everything had to be checked by US PEs anyhow, as Indian engineers generally don’t hold US State PE licenses.
So, after a 2-year trial, we kinda gave up on that, as did two of our competitors. However, we do still send small, Asian-market jobs to there.
YMMV, obviously.
If you have any specific questions on McGill Engineering, I’ll do what I can. 
I’m not an engineer, but I’ve worked with them all of my professional life, so I’ll mention Petroleum Engineering. If you’re at all disposed towards life in the outdoors, it’s an avenue to consider.
While I realize that job description covers people in downstream operations (refining, etc.), I’ll note that my experience is with people in the exploration/exploitation end of it. Considering your likely age, I’ll hazard the guess that this field has a good 50 years of being viable ahead of it. I’ll also note that the engineers usually outlast the geoscientists when a company must adopt a smaller profile (Ook! Where did I learn to express myself like that?). Also, as their efforts are directly tied to the bottom line, petroleum engineers can often become part of upper management. If that appeals to you.
And, the people I’ve known have enjoyed the option of working domestically, or all over the world.
I realize you’re in Canada, but this U.S. based information from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook entry on Petroleum Engineers may be useful:
Hmmm…, makes you wonder if you wouldn’t make enough raises in the two-three years it takes to get the Master’s a questionable investment. Well, it might make the difference in getting that first job.
I’m 50, and when I started working in my career field, most people started with Bachelor’s degrees. I understand that’s changed, and many go to the Master’s level. IMHO, somewhere between 5-10 years after you start working the difference is negligible.
Just thought I’d throw that in, nifu.
…“No, you’re both wrong. God’s a civil engineer, plain as your face’s nose, because…”
I’m an aerospce engineer. It’s a great field…I get to work with the coolest toys of all! Despite the flames that may ensue, I’ll also say that AE is probably the most academically intensive engineering discipline. It’s for the real masochists that want to be exposed to more math than any human being deserves to be.
It’s highly abstract, exceedingly mathematical, and more of a challenge to turn theory into application than most other fields. For these reasons, I tend to put AE in the same boat as chemical engineering. The application of science you find in the other disciplines—like mech, comp, EE, and civil—tends to be more “real.” Stuff you can usually see and touch.
As an example of how hands-off AE can be, my undergrad AE program was the only one in the school of engineering in which the senior design project did not involve building what you designed. The resources necessary to make a real aircraft were just too much. So we had to be satisfied with a “paper” airplane, one that never got past performance equations and detailed sketches. (Although, I built a glider in a structures class…ability to fly was not a requirement)
Don’t get me wrong…the work is great, and it’s as exciting and cutting-edge as you can hope to find. I get a kick out of knowing that I’m working on stuff which the rest of you won’t even know about for 15 years. I’m just making the point that it takes a different kind of mind to be an aerodynamicist. Having the ability to visualize the invisible really helps. I happen to be a weirdo like that, so I found my calling.
But it’s hard as hell to find a job in AE right now. I work for DoD, so I make about 10% less than I would with the same duties and experience in industry. Then again, I don’t worry about where I’ll be working in a few years, unlike most of my contractor counterparts. You can’t really put a price on job security in today’s work environment. I’ll trade a few bills for a safe job, anyday.
My son is looking at entering lubrication engineering. He met a consultant through work who does this. The consultant has made the job sound fascinating and has assured my son that it is very specialised, very few lubrication engineers are any good and much overseas work is available. It is early days yet in his research though.
I am currently a sophomore at Northwestern University. Last year I entered engineering school, but, like you, hadn’t decided what field I wanted to study. Pretty much all freshman engineers took the same courses: chem, math, etc. We also had a sequence called “Engineering Analysis.” This sequence covered stuff like linear algebra, statics, dynamics, basic mechanics, systems modeling, and differential equations. This sequence of classes is supposed to be a sort of general introduction to engineering, but also functions as “weed out” classes. These classes were extremely unpopular. Usually after EA tests you could hear “Rape Me” by Nirvana being played loudly in the engineering students rooms.
By the end of my freshman year I pretty much hated math and physics. Compared with other non-engineering majors (some exceptions, of course), the engineering courseload (at least at NU) is heavier. During the past summer I questioned whether I wanted to continue in engineering. I decided to try it for one more trimester. I made it about 2 weeks before dropping two physics classes for a philosophy class and German class. The philosphy class and German class actually ended up being my favorites classes I’ve taken thus far. I decided to switch out of engineering and am now “undecided” in NU’s liberal arts school.
In retrospect, I don’t think I should have entered engineering school. My reason was prettty weak. It was pretty much “I’m a guy that kinda likes science and math and stuff…engineering sounds cool.” I think now, that I more like “Bill Nye” science. It’s cool to read about and learn, but when it came down to it, I didn’t like it enough to spend crazy amounts of time solving diffeqs.
I’m definitely not saying you’ll end up in a situation similar to mine, just wanted to share a different perspective. Good luck!
Engineering will be all mixed up these days. A VCR is a combination of EE and ME. The engine of a car will have a brain box, alias computer. Civil engineers will use computer simulations. The laws of physics will be the same in all of them and many equations are common.
The advantage of EE is that it is cheap for a high school student to mess with. Buy parts at Radio Shack or order stuff thru the mail.
Most techs I have known fix mechanical and electrical stuff and many are better with their hands than EE guys. The schools teach people to be too theoretical.
If you can do engineering you can handle accounting. Don’t concentrate on a JOB. Concentrate on NET WORTH.
http://presidentjackson.no-ip.org/knavelacademy/homepage.html
Dal Timgar
Come with me some morning and move a few thousand tons of dirt from here to there or clear a few acres of trees. That takes a manly toy.
As far as courses of study, I agree with audilover regarding ASE - an intense program but very broad. A little EE but lots of ME and uniquely aerospace coursework. Most guys (and gals) in the program I attended were in it because they love airplanes and spaceships.
Of my friends who went to work for aerospace companies, several have been sacked and hired on with their competitors, or taken engineering jobs outside of aerospace - just the nature of the industry. In Wichita it seems like everyone has worked for at least a couple of the airplane companies during their careers.
Quite a few didn’t go into aerospace careers (like me!). We had a number of grads go into the petroleum industry. Several military officers (pilots and other operations, and engineers), and a couple into space operations. Several moved on to grad school, some in other engineering fields. I think this is true of all engineering disciplines.
Though not a practicing engineer, I’m definitely glad I studied ASE in college. I started in EE, but found that I didn’t love it, and I’m convinced nearly all of my ASE peers who stayed in past the first year or two were in it because they loved it.
Oh my sweet lord, read this paragraph again. The number of Professional Engineers I work with who can’t write a 3 paragraph note or lucidly explain a concept (technical or otherwise) is absolutely horrifying. I write reasonably well (IMHO (for an engineer, at least;) )) and this has definitely been a big boost in my professional career arc.
Knowing how to plug words into powerpoint is not sufficient.
- haardvark, BASc, MASc (Chem. E.), Waterloo
Ah. I shall have to show this to my management. 
I was told by our company controller, in all seriousness, that “engineers are not qualified to think in units of dollars.”
It took me a few more years to figure out why, but eventually I did, and I did not like the answer any more than the original statement.
In engineering school, we are thought to think of units as linear, algebraic quantities - i.e., obeying the commutative, associative, and distributive properties. In other words, a joule is always a joule, and a meter is always a meter, and they can be manipulated symbolically like a variable. In fact, unit analysis is one of the more powerful tools in the arsenal of a scientist or engineer.
Not so in accounting. It seems the only constant thing about units of dollars is that precision is always carried to the cents place. (Or to the unit dollar place if doing budgets and estimates.)
Otherwise, nothing is constant. A dollar here is not equal to a dollar there. It depends on many things, like which bucket the dollar comes from, which bucket the dollar goes to, how many dollars are in the respective buckets, how many other dollars are moving with it, etc… This is totally counterintuitive to a scientific mind.
And it gets worse. This inequality is deliberate and intentional. It serves sometimes to conceal and obfuscate the source and/or destination of a dollar, or to inflate or deflate another dollar’s value from some perspective or another. Sometimes this is done to add leverage to some particular dollars, and rob leverage from others. So many games and manipulations are played – for reasons as innocuous as traceability to insipid as politics and power games to as illegal as money laundering – that the unit of “dollar” is nearly meaningless.
And precision - don’t get me started on precision!! We will do estimates on projects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and we will provide ROM estimates of labor and material costs to our accounting department. In return, we get a cost “rollup” (they even do arithmetic backwards) that is a single grand total, with nine digits to the left of the decimal point… and with nine significant digits.
There is no possible way in hell that we did the estimate with that much precision. I know from experience that we are doing good to get two digits of precision in any estimate. And yet accountants – and managers, even those from scientific and engineering backgrounds – will adamantly insist that the nine digits of precision are necessary and valid, and get snotty if you express any doubt.
And they should get snotty. By questioning the validity of the precision in the estimate, you’re questioning 90% of their jobs. Most of the labor that went into achieving all that precision is ultimately a big charade, so if you question it, you’re questioning their very existance.
:rolleyes:
I’ll stick to the femtoWatts and nanoseconds, thank-you-very-much! Now I will gladly admit that I do not work with units of dollars.