A.S. in Mechanical Engineering to B.S. in Physics?

[zachdr1]

How hard would it be to make this transition? It seems to me that the engineering classes I would take in my associates would make a few classes in my bachelors very easy.

 

[Choppy]

It seems to me that the engineering classes I would take in my associates would make a few classes in my bachelors very easy.

Why do you think this? It sounds like a potentially dangerous assumption to me.

It's probably best to assume that upper level undergraduate courses in physics are going to be challenging, and require at least as much effort as you've had to put into your current classes.

One challenge you're likely to face in transitioning to a different school (assuming that's the case) and if not from one program to another, is that the curriculum is usually designed for students who start in that specific program. Professors will teach courses assuming that you've covered certain material in their prior classes, and covered it in specific ways. Meeting the prerequisites at another school is generally sufficient for a keen student to fill in the holes as needed, but there WILL be holes to fill in that your peers will not have to deal with. How frequent and how deep those holes are will depend on the degree of overlap between the programs.

 

[zachdr1]

Why do you think this? It sounds like a potentially dangerous assumption to me.

It's probably best to assume that upper level undergraduate courses in physics are going to be challenging, and require at least as much effort as you've had to put into your current classes.

One challenge you're likely to face in transitioning to a different school (assuming that's the case) and if not from one program to another, is that the curriculum is usually designed for students who start in that specific program. Professors will teach courses assuming that you've covered certain material in their prior classes, and covered it in specific ways. Meeting the prerequisites at another school is generally sufficient for a keen student to fill in the holes as needed, but there WILL be holes to fill in that your peers will not have to deal with. How frequent and how deep those holes are will depend on the degree of overlap between the programs.

Well, I will have taken classes dedicated to learning statics, dynamics and thermodynamics. While they won't satisfy any requirements for the B.S. in physics that I would be going for, statics and dynamics are still topics that are gone over in classical mechanics; I'll probably know more about statics and dynamics going into classical mechanics than most students know leaving the class just because I've taken classes dedicated to each topic.

And this is true, but this challenge comes with transferring into any degree at any school. I'm not too worried about it though because it's unavoidable.