Which Engineering Major?

[saywhat? 5,000+ posts]

Thermodynamics will kill lol. I personally thing its interesting, but I guess it can be boring to some. Gotta have it for mechanical engineering though.

1st law:energy cannot be created nor destroyed but can be change from one form to another.

2nd law: (hard to put in words, but how i was taught is) there cannot be a release of energy without a relative loss of heat.

pretty much, anything moving causes heat...................try overcoming that //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[Untouchable11 10+ year member]

The Civil class I took at first was too boring, and EE seemed like a bigger pain in the *** than it was worth.

Mechanical Engineering was the only program at my school that the professor seemed to be very very into the succession of his students..

 

[envengineer 10+ year member]

I registered just to give you my advice on this subject. Look at the Civil degree very seriously. I have an Environmental Engineering degree and I have been out of school two years. Research the fastest growing careers and you will see that several environmental fields will come up. More regulations are passed every year and industries and municipalities need more and more help to maintain compliance while not hurting profits.

Another bonus with environmental is that if you have some skill, you can get into consulting very easily. It is important to look at the global manufacturing environment as well. A large amount of manufacturing is headed overseas where they not only have cheap hourly workers, but cheap engineers. Mechanical, Electrical and Chemical get covered easily. There will always be environmental issues here in the U.S., and a comprehensive understanding of U.S. rule and regulations will virtually assure that you remain a commodity over the next few decades.

I honestly love my job and the money is pretty **** good too. Good luck with your decision, and remember you can always change your mind.

P.S. I started as a Computer Science and Systems Analysis major and I hated it. Oh yeah, pay attention in Differential Equations too, it's more valuable than it seems at the time.

 

[saywhat? 5,000+ posts]

What is it exactly that you do in your job? Im looking at going to Mississippi State (engineering based school so it seems) and was looking at mechanical, not for the money, but because it is what I love. Building/designing things, be it large or small. I love motors/hydraulics, thats fluid dynamics and im guessing Kinematics (finding the range of something mechanical? in a nutshell?). Correct me if thats not right, as thats how I took the description of it. I would personally love acoustical engineering, but its not offered, so mechanical is what I chose to look at.

Was also looking at Civil. Not sure between the two yet.

 

[BassAce 10+ year member]

J/k Electrical

 

[NoLimit 10+ year member]

I'd be careful about anything related to computer programming, as those jobs are all getting outsourced to India, because of cheaper labor, etc.

 

[envengineer 10+ year member]

What is it exactly that you do in your job? Im looking at going to Mississippi State (engineering based school so it seems) and was looking at mechanical, not for the money, but because it is what I love. Building/designing things, be it large or small. I love motors/hydraulics, thats fluid dynamics and im guessing Kinematics (finding the range of something mechanical? in a nutshell?). Correct me if thats not right, as thats how I took the description of it. I would personally love acoustical engineering, but its not offered, so mechanical is what I chose to look at.

What I do changes pretty much daily, I'll use last week as an example. Monday I spent most of the day working on a large capital project, basically specifiying equipment and modifications and evaluating total project cost + or - $100,000. Tuesday I spent a lot of time coordinating and supervising the installation/repair of a 500 hp variable speed motor and pump assembly. Wednesday, I worked on finding a solution to a problem we were having with a 20 ton hydraulic actuator on a scrubber and troubleshooting some control loops in our control system. Thursday I was in a meeting with the State environmental agency all day. Friday, I caught up on the other stuff that got tossed aside.

If motors and hydraulics are your thing, ME might be right for you as I really only deal with those things when I have to solve a problem quickly. You may also want to think about becoming a reliability engineer with an ME degree. Our reliability engineers work closely with maintenance to ensure that all of our equipment is maintained in a precision state to constantly increase our MTBF (mean time between failure). Those guys get to disassemble broken stuff all the time and come up with better solutions.

I like mechanical too and I definitely considered it. I get my mechanical fix through my hobbies (building a kit car, fixing up my house, and constantly perfecting my 2 channel home system).

Fluids was my favorite class, and wastewater puts those skills to use constantly.

 

[saywhat? 5,000+ posts]

well see, thats really what i want to do. design/build custom frames/suspensions. and the mechanical engineering is where thats at im guessing. Of course I want money in life.....but thats not my first priority over doing something i want to do, and being happy because I do that for a living.

That being said.....I want atleast 50k a year because I want to move BACK to orlando when im done schooling as I love that place, and I grew up there. 50k is about what you need to survive on your own anything south of georgia LOL. I love cars, car audio, figureing how things work, why they work, and the reason behind the design, and then finding another way to do the same thing, be it more complex or simplified.

Do you have an email you could give me, as I would like to talk to you more in depth if you don't mind. You can private message it to me, if you don' want it to be publically (sp?) known.

 

[saywhat? 5,000+ posts]

whats the point of paying for school, if all you do is buy the books and read them. They have class for a reason......or so I thought?

 

[pwnt by pat 10+ year member]

I was between mechanical and civil but the though of designing all that cool shit kinda makes me feel like god. Like I can **** so many people up, or help them. Plus there's so many jobs. Also, architechure for the mother ****ing god **** shit piss **** **** win

 

[mattmcss 10+ year member]

i'm in ME right now, I've been thinking a lot about how the country needs to change in the next 5-10 years, and I really want to be a part of it.

Being a ME I could help develop cars with greater fuel effeciency, without sacraficing power, solar hydrogen fuel cells, etc.

I'm stoked.

 

[saywhat? 5,000+ posts]

see thats why i want to do civil, the architecture side of things has always intrigued me......but so has suspension/frames/all things mechanical.

 

[saywhat? 5,000+ posts]

i'm in ME right now, I've been thinking a lot about how the country needs to change in the next 5-10 years, and I really want to be a part of it.
Being a ME I could help develop cars with greater fuel effeciency, without sacraficing power, solar hydrogen fuel cells, etc.

I'm stoked.

then you come in and say something that turns me to mechanical LOL.....mechanical or civil, i think it would be a blast either way. (aside from friggin calc)

 

[mattmcss 10+ year member]

what calculus ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus

Check it out, math is FUN when it involves REAL applications.

 

[saywhat? 5,000+ posts]

your right, too bad my teachers around here blow and they just put equations on the board.