How can one know if they'll enjoy being an engineering major?

[CarbonWater]

I find it odd that most people commit to engineering before they've even tried taking an engineering course. People who go straight to four year colleges generally get admitted to an engineering major in high school. Likewise transfers frequently haven't had a chance to take any engineering courses before they've transfered.

How can you learn whether you'd like to be an engineering major? Anything to think about or try? Does electric circuits 101 give you a good idea of what the electrical engineering major will be like?

Note that I'm not discussing job prospects or anything like that. Merely whether a student who enjoys studying physics and other sciences would like studying engineering.

 

[russ_watters]

I started college at the Naval Academy. We had a saying: It's not a great place to be, but it is a great place to be from.

I doubt any engineering major would disagree that college is more fun if you aren't an engineering major. But engineering majors go to college for a different reason than people who go for fun. Engineering majors go to get a good/marketable education.

So I don't think you are asking a relevant question.

 

[CarbonWater]

I started college at the Naval Academy. We had a saying: It's not a great place to be, but it is a great place to be from.

I doubt any engineering major would disagree that college is more fun if you aren't an engineering major. But engineering majors go to college for a different reason than people who go for fun. Engineering majors go to get a good/marketable education.

So I don't think you are asking a relevant question.

Uhh.. thanks for your opinion I guess... Of course one could make more money being an investment banker or lawyer if you only care about money. I am hoping that some people on physics forums have a non-monetary interest in physics and engineering.

And obviously I'm not asking whether engineering is going to be as "fun" as going to a party. I'm talking about whether it will be interesting and rewarding compared to physics specifically (or another science someone might be interested in).

Edit: maybe I should have posted this in academic guidance...

 

[Pyrrhus]

Well, the line between physics and engineering sometimes is not so clear. Many times during my engineering studies, I felt I should switch to physics, but I was only interested in certain parts of physics such as Vectorial Mechanics, and Variational Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics didn't really appeal to me, and I am interested mildly on relativistic mechanics. Later, I figured that my real interest is on applied mathematics or mathematical methods in engineering and sciences. That's also another problem. The line between applied mathematics and physics is also not so clear. Too bad that I didn't know of engineering science/engineering physics/engineering mathematics (they are the same, just different names under different schools) before. I would have liked to major in that degree, and focus on what I liked.

At the end, I escaped to Economics, but I am still using the same mathematical methods I learned in engineering, and others I picked up my self instruction along the way. Thus, I am quite happy.

 

[gdbb]

My high school AP Physics class was really the signal for me. I went in with very limited knowledge of what the subject of physics is; I didn't even know about Newton's Kinematic Equations.

I would highly suggest taking a physics class in high school. You'll be able to tell what you like. For me, kinematic motion is my thing. I cannot stand electricity, but magnetism is alright. Studying the motion of objects, though, is enjoyable to me. As such, I've decided to major in Mechanical Engineering. It's honestly what I would want to be studying in college, so I know I made the right choice.

Math courses are kind of standard throughout all of engineering. You can expect to take up to at least Differential Equations/Linear Algebra. There were many guys who switched out of MechEng after the first semester. Even more dropped out of the College of Engineering at my university. Not many people switch from somewhere else into engineering. Just keep that in mind.

 

[flemmyd]

I find it odd that most people commit to engineering before they've even tried taking an engineering course. People who go straight to four year colleges generally get admitted to an engineering major in high school.

You're right. And most schools post a 50% retention rate (or something) for engr majors. Some schools take your view to the extreme and don't let undergrads declare majors for 1 or 2 years until they've tried something.

How can you learn whether you'd like to be an engineering major? Anything to think about or try? Does electric circuits 101 give you a good idea of what the electrical engineering major will be like?

I haven't tried cake, but it sure does look good. But you're right-- I may hate it.

And besides, plenty of people do things before college that might lead them to want to be engr majors. Physics fairs, programming, robots, math competitions, projecteruler.com. Most people have an idea of what they like. Whether or not what they like overlaps with an engr major is a different story.

 

[physiker_192]

Does electric circuits 101 give you a good idea of what the electrical engineering major will be like?

No it doesn't. Electrical Engineering is a rather large term which covers different derived specializations e.g. VLSI design, Automation etc...

So a first year in EE school is often just the basics of electrical circuits and electronics plus some computer programming.

If you want to know whether the certain engineering field will be to your liking or not, then look at the syllabus/programme courses. My general observation is, students like courses that follow after 1st year more than those in the first year.

 

[Thermalne]

I have been involved in engineering courses since the start of high school. They were never specifically aimed at one specialty, but there were certain aspects of each field.

I've enjoyed doing the course work and internship work since starting college. I'm not doing it for the financial reasons, I'm doing it because I love what I'm doing. Yes there are hard classes, but I love the challenge.

Do what you love, and take a few courses and DO some type of real work in your field.

 

[CarbonWater]

I would highly suggest taking a physics class in high school.

I've already taken physics courses and like them. But that just tells me that I like physics. It doesn't tell me anything about engineering as far as I can tell.

I have been involved in engineering courses since the start of high school.

I assume that's in Israel. It's too bad the US doesn't have engineering courses that early. Well maybe some schools do but it has to be very rare.

If you want to know whether the certain engineering field will be to your liking or not, then look at the syllabus/programme courses.

I guess I can do that.

 

[johng23]

First of all, the most important thing is to look at the courses required for each major you are thinking about, and see if you have any sense of which looks more appealing. But that can be difficult to judge coming out of high school, as everything may look unfamiliar.

If you're wondering about this from an enjoyment perspective only, there are a number of things going against engineering. At most universities, engineering will probably have significantly more course requirements than physics (or pretty much any other major). This is because engineering programs are accredited, and need to cover a large number of subjects which are considered important, even if those subjects aren't important for you as an individual.

I did materials engineering as an undergrad, and I had to take a number of courses which I thought were useless because of this reason. For example, I had a thermodynamics class which was all about turbines, heat exchangers, using steam tables, looking up thermodynamic data, etc. It didn't teach the fundamentals of thermodynamics in any satisfactory way. That's probably typical of many intro thermo classes in engineering, but to me it is a waste of time. From my perspective, if you have a thorough understanding of the laws of thermo and the way the various thermodynamic potentials are defined and used, you will be well equipped to figure out how a turbine works or use a steam table later on, should you need to do that.

There were other situations in engineering where I felt that courses weren't providing me with any fundamentally new information. For example, I had one on processing of electronic materials. It seemed more like a superficial survey of topics from solid state physics and other areas of physics, applied to integrated circuit design and processing. Again, the theme is the same. If you have a deep understanding of the physics, you should be able to read about materials processing and (almost) immediately understand the important concepts. But because I was taking classes like this, I didn't have a chance to take a real solid state course.

Particularly if you go to grad school, the main value of your undergrad degree will be how much it helps you in learning new concepts, because chances are, whatever you end up working on will be something you haven't learned yet. Either physics or engineering will provide you with the necessary problem solving skills, calculus, differential equations, and basic scientific intuition needed to approach new topics. However, the hardest situation for self-teaching is when there is an entire formalism you never learned about, for example Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics, or relativity. This is the situation I'm in now. I'd love to learn about these things from the perspective of interest, but they only come up peripherally in my area, and it's hard to justify the time it would take me to learn them.

Also, since physics will probably leave you with more choices for your classes, you will be free to take a few engineering courses on the side if there are topics you find are missing from the physics curriculum.It may seem like I'm totally pushing for physics, but that's just because that's what I would have chosen. If you think you are more interested in learning how man-made systems function, or how to design things, by all means, choose engineering.P.S. Since your question is "will I enjoy engineering" I would say that yes, you probably will. At the core, it's still science and you will cover a ton of interesting things. It's just the overall emphasis that may or may not suit you. I still ENJOYED my degree, I just think I would have enjoyed physics even more.

 

[Thermalne]

I assume that's in Israel. It's too bad the US doesn't have engineering courses that early. Well maybe some schools do but it has to be very rare.

No, USA actually. I went to a high school that encouraged enrollment in a focus area. I went with pre-engineering (intro to engineering concepts, principles of engineering, basics of aerospace, basics of electronic... you get the idea.) while others went with Drafting, Autoshop, and more.

It's not that rare, you just have to be lucky to be at a school that offers it.