Recent content by carlgrace

Typically if you do research on superconductors you would be an employee of a large institution or company. If you work at a company (like IBM for example) it would be very difficult to make a product on your own. If you work for an institution (like a national lab) you may be able to, and you...

I don't know if the number of engineers is as many relative to the number of opportunies as for accountants, but I can say that there are some very good engineering schools in Australia. Did you go to Monash? Or maybe U. of Victoria? Both are highly regarded in the States. As for traveling...

I had classmates from all over the world in graduate school. Many were from smaller institutions and from smaller countries. I think you have a chance to get in.

Tobias, Calculus is harder than it looks, and it is the foundation of virtually all physics and engineering. Make sure you understand it as well as you can before you start jumping ahead. Think about physics as a house. It's tempting to start putting in the windows and paint right away, but...

Sweet! You have an anecdote! That overturns years of survey data on average salaries for STEM graduates. Sarcasm aside, your friend did quite well. Certainly a sigma or two above the mean. Must engineers don't work with their hands, but you could look into equipment installation and...

If you get a Ph.D. in mechanical engineer you are entering a specific subfield of mechanical engineering almost by default. I don't have much specific knowledge of ME, but I would imagine there are interesting subfields where Ph.D.s are important credentials in industry. Like EE, there are...

I'm sorry you're having difficulty finding employment. If you really think you're coming off as arrogant this is something you should try very hard to work on right away. It could be sabotaging your job hunt. One of the most poisonous things for an engineering team is arrogance. It can...

When you have a bias on the gate and you slowly increase the drain-source voltage, the depletion region (the channel) at the drain gets smaller and smaller. Eventually, you will reach a point where the depletion region goes to zero right at the drain. This is pinch off, or otherwise called...

For my own experience, typically for leading edge mixed-signal integrated circuit design, the MS is the minimum degree and the jobs are usually "Ph.D. preferred". If you're just out of school, the Ph.D. is a BIG help. For example, ADC Analog Designer at Apple Senior IC Designer at Maxim

The company typically doesn't "buy" a Ph.D. Historically it was common in the USA for a company to fund an employee's Ph.D. research (and pay them a salary). The student and the student's advisor chose the research, the company just paid the student and tuition. This was a great deal indeed...

Also typically in engineering the salary premium you get with a Ph.D. is minor, and often doesn't make up for the fewer years of experience you have. Overall, you probably end up behind financially if you get a Ph.D. over an MS. That said, having a Ph.D. in Engineering gives you some different...

Those kinds of industry-funded Ph.Ds are getting rarer and rarer. Most companies just aren't interested anymore. The only people I know who have done them worked either for National Labs or the Areospace/Defense industry.

PhDs have a VERY high opportunity cost.

I have a Saturn that had similar problems. Turned out the EGR valve had gone bad. Do you have a rough idle?

While what you listed sounds like a very interesting and truly useful class, I don't think that is what the course in question is going to be about. An optimization class in engineering (I took one) is about casting (or you might say contorting) engineering problems into specific forms with...