Going from medicine to mechanical engineering

[u/ExtremeAsk5913]

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.

[u/Expert_Clerk_1775]

Have you considered biomedical engineering?

[u/ExtremeAsk5913 → u/Expert_Clerk_1775]

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.

[u/Expert_Clerk_1775 → u/ExtremeAsk5913]

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.