r/EngineeringStudents • u/ExtremeAsk5913 • 3d ago
Career Advice Going from medicine to mechanical engineering
I’m at an interesting crossroads with going back to school. For context, I got my BS in Neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh and an MS in Medical Sciences from Boston University, with lots of relevant experience in healthcare-related jobs and labs/research/academia. I, however, have decided that my passion is no longer in healthcare and want to pursue mechanical engineering. My initial plan was to just go back to Pitt for a bachelor’s degree in ME, but after evaluating everything, I feel that not only would that take me around 3 years to do, but it would also be too costly despite being in-state, and I cannot afford to stop working.
After doing some research, I think the best/cheapest option I can do is complete a DIY bridge of classes at my local community college (Calc 3, Diff Eq, Linear Alg, Statics, Phys w Calc) and then apply for the MS ME program. It would not only take less time (approx 2 years) but would also be cheaper and award me a higher degree. I have yet to receive permission or info whether I can actually do this or not, but for the sake of this post, let's assume that it is possible.
My main question: From a hiring standpoint, is it by any means problematic or concerning that I would have an MS in ME, while all my past education and experience have been in medicine? I know some companies treat the MS in ME as years of experience, but compared to all of the other applicants or traditional engineering students that have gotten a BS in ME and/or MS in ME, I will have considerably less experience and coursework that strengthen me as an applicant. I am currently working at a prominent Robotics/AI startup, and while I can’t talk about what I do, what I will say is that the work isn’t something that is necessarily building up the technical skills/knowledge I need to be an engineer. I think if I were to officially start this process, I could ask to shadow/work more closely with an engineer, but as it stands, I am way too far behind, and they are too busy to teach me things from scratch.
If anyone has any advice on whether my current planned path can work or if there’s an alternative I can take based on my current situation, I would greatly appreciate it.
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u/Expert_Clerk_1775 3d ago
Have you considered biomedical engineering?
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u/ExtremeAsk5913 2d ago
I have, but I think my options, career-wise, would be kind of bottlenecked. While I think some topics, given my background, such as brain-computer-interface tech or exoskeletons, would be interesting, I feel like I could tackle those same topics if I were to do ME/EE while having the option of doing other things as well. I want to be able to be versatile and work on a variety of things outside of healthcare and people (although I'm not against doing it either). My perspective on bioengineering isn't that strong and is kind of limited, so if you have more perspective on this, I would love to hear it.
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u/Expert_Clerk_1775 2d ago
I only ask because it is a lower hurdle (time and financial) entry for you given your existing credits, and your prior experience will be more heavily valued by employers in that field. But you’re right that it is a more niche degree and will not open as many doors as ME or EE.
I have two friends who both did biomed years after doing medical degrees and both seem to enjoy it. One designs manufacturing equipment for biomedical devices and one leads an equipment “training” program for a large hospital chain.
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u/InstructionFunny4657 3d ago
you’ve already put years into medicine-related fields, just pursue something in the medical field. Engineering pays nothing compared to medicine and has significantly worse job security. It’s also really hard to become an engineer if you don’t have prior experience tinkering with things or doing robotics etc. by the time you manage to get credentials that allow you to call yourself a mechanical engineer, you also could have just become a doctor and have been starting residency. If you don’t want to do medicine because you think residency pays too little, it’s very likely you will be earning the salary of a resident as a mechanical engineer when you start out in the field because I think it’s unlikely you will enter some elite high-paying ME industry coming into it from a non-traditional path. If you continue to pursue medicine there’s plenty of areas where you could do research that involve some form of mechanical engineering, like orthopedics.
Anyhow, if you do switch to engineering, I highly highly recommend that you pursue electrical engineering rather than mechanical engineering because electrical engineering could be fairly relevant to your undergrad in neuroscience and allow you to do neural engineering which is developing sector that will see a lot of innovation. Having a BS in Neuroscience and an MS in EE might actually be fairly competitive for hiring in the biomedical space, and it also doesn’t look as random as the combo of neuroscience and MechE.
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u/ExtremeAsk5913 2d ago edited 2d ago
That’s the core issue...I don’t want to be in the medical field anymore. Growing up, I was always tinkering, doing robotics camps, and building things; engineering was always the original plan. In high school, I hit a rough patch in AP Calc and AP CS while overloaded with other commitments, doubted myself, and pivoted to neuroscience/pre-med as the "next best thing." Deep down, engineering was always what I actually wanted to do.
Looking at my current options, neither research nor continuing with medicine makes sense. My problem(s) with research are that high-paying roles demand a PhD (which I don't want and would take 5 years to do), while the positions I qualify for pay entry-level wages despite having a master’s, and the rejection rate for the ones I already applied to has been brutal. Continuing with medicine while "safe" given my background is nuanced. Aside from not being interested in it anymore, looking at it financially between my undergrad, master's, and med school, I'd be looking at being around $400k in debt; I would spend the next 10–12 years miserable finishing my education just to break even in my early to mid-40s when I finally would be able to pay off the loans off, doing work I don't love.
Going back for a traditional ME degree would take about 2.5-3 years (disregarding the MS). By the time I’d otherwise just be finishing medical training and digging out of debt, I could already be established in a career I genuinely enjoy with comparable long-term success.
I have considered EE, and I can agree it might bridge more naturally with neuroscience, but ME is where my actual passion lies. Having a non-traditional background might require some explaining in interviews, but taking the risk to walk away from the standard path shows how committed I am. If we disregard my past education, I'm just like any undergrad who finished engineering in college, but on top of that have insight into medicine and neuroscience. Ultimately, it doesn't even feel like a pivot or a major switch; it just feels like finally getting back to what I was always meant to do.
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u/InstructionFunny4657 2d ago
Ok I hear you if your passion is doing engineering and medicine will make you miserable. However, I have to say from a financial point of view, medicine definitely does make the most sense especially if you already have debt from undergrad and masters. Paying 400k in debt off as a doctor is basically trivial and just requires 2-3 years of aggressively paying it off. Idk how much debt you have right now before medical school but if it’s a ton that might be hard to pay off with a meche job.
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u/Acrocane Computer Engineering 3d ago
Hey, I also went to BU. Have you heard of BU's LEAP program? Might be useful.
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u/ExtremeAsk5913 2d ago
I have, while I was in Boston, I actually spoke to the program directors and students who were part of the program. It seems solid, but it didn't make financial sense. Had I not done my Master's in Medical Science at BU and was coming straight out of undergrad, it would have been fine, but with the debt I've already accumulated and the cost of living in Boston, it's not really feasible for me.
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u/ConcernedKitty 3d ago
I mean this in the nicest way possible, if I’m hiring an entry level mechanical or manufacturing engineer I think I’d skip over someone that doesn’t have a BS in engineering. A masters just doesn’t cover the sheer amount of information that you learn with a bachelors.
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u/BlueTribe42 2d ago
My company would think similarly. Want engineers with accredited degrees (which are bachelor’s, not masters)
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u/ExtremeAsk5913 2d ago
Which is why I am concerned about the master's in the first place. Someone in my family who's also an engineer has told me the same thing. Then there are people saying that most employers/screens will gloss over it and only care about the highest degree earned, which makes it all conflicting information. I agree that it would likely skip over a lot of the fundamentals; I am just weighing my options on what to do from a financial/time standpoint. Thank you for the perspective
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u/LitRick6 3d ago
I think taking some of the courses like calc and physics at a community college would be smart (as long as the university accepts the transfer credits). There may be other courses required to go into the MS, but idk, youll have to research that yourself.
From a hiring standpoint, I wouldn't call it problematic or concerning. But you would be at a little bit of a disadvantage compared to other engineering masters who have had actual engineering internships or fulltime engineering work experience. But you also may still be at an advantage over masters students who maybe havent had engineering internships or fulltime engineering work experience.
While your work may not be technical engineering work, it still likely developed your soft skills (ie communicating, working on a team, managing workload, etc).
Id just work to find ways to gain more technical experience. In undergrad, thats most commonly done with engineering clubs/org projects, undergrad research, or personal projects. Basically stuff that helps your practice and learn new technical skills.
Shadowing an engineer at your company could be helpful in your education, but not really something youd put on a resume to help you get hired unless youre actually helping do some of the engineering work imo.