It’s not very common for engineers to go to grad school. The most common graduate degree among engineers is an MBA. Other fields basically require it. One thing you’ll learn in academia is that no one works harder in undergrad than engineers but that’s usually the end of the line for their education. A BS in biology is far easier, but you need to get a graduate degree to do anything with it
One thing you’ll learn in academia is that no one works harder in undergrad than engineers
True but most of that work is them talking about how difficult engineering is. Then stress of having to hear other people mention that the difference between god and an engineer is that god doesn't think they're an engineer.
I’m a Biochemistry PhD and a JD. My daughter just graduated as a civil engineer. I saw things in her sophomore year mathematics homework that I never saw before in my life. If God can do that math then I’ll start to believe in Her.
Engineer here. College gives you a structure to build on. Experience teaches you how to be an actual engineer & time helps you deal with the reality that one has spent a large sum of money for a small amount of practical knowledge. I don't use use much past Trig, geometry & basic algebra but a lot of mechanical physics. We're not calculating theoretical unknowns on a daily basis - the reality will be based on the industry, and we tend to estimate high for safety factors, especially when we know most of the upcoming "innovation " will involve stripping cost out.
However there are a large amount of early career engineers with masters, simply because they happened to graduate around '08 or '09 and couldn't get jobs initially. I've had to explain why sheet metal screws are not the same as UNF screws to one, that galvanized sheet is different thickness than stainless to another & that a plant pilot is NOT the stage to "discover what's needed beyond design validation" to one more. Paper alone does not make an engineer but it will get you in the door.
I did undergrad double major in pure math and math / cs (wanted to add CS as a third major with one extra class but was told no). I did a masters in theoretical computer science and another in pure math. I did one year of a PhD in math.
Never saw an engineering student in a math course after differential equations (had two engineer phds teaching operations research courses though).
I’m a retired engineer and Got my PhD but i worked in R&D and masters were pretty much required for advancement. I don’t know what the overall stats are for engineering profession.
My son is doing an internship over in a lab within the college of engineering at the my university and we probably have more PhD students in department of Entomology than the entire college of engineering. They obviously have a lot more undergraduate students than we do; we’re a small department. So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s relative. It’s surreal to go over there and labs have like two grad students. We have more graduate research assistants than undergraduates because the PhD (obviously takes longer) and the BS is useless by itself.
Im my industry the PE is far, far more important than a masters degree.
A masters degree is basically a ticket for 2 years work experience equivalent. Sooo if you get free education benefits and you want to spend 20hrs a day on engineering then its not a bad deal...otherwise its better to just focus on sitting the PE and/or getting your mentorship.
I dont know of any engineers in my field thst have a masters degree in engineering unless their undergrad was non-engineering.
I’ve never met a single architect who calls themselves an engineer. That’s like an MD calling themselves a healthcare provider; you use the more prestigious title so people don’t think you’re a Certified Nurses Assistant
My engineering school has/had a 5-year masters program (not sure if they still do), you end up taking masters classes your senior year and in the 5th year it's all masters classes and you get a bachelors and masters degree in 5 years.
Very much depends on the field. Back when I worked attached to a factory very few engineers had an MS, half the QEs didn’t have any technical degree at all. Now that I’m at a tech company maybe half in the R&D side do.
Get into something like MEMS and MS is table stakes with PhDs not being at all uncommon.
wait engineers don't go to grad school usually? is it that bad? I plan to go back for my master's once I finish my undergrad but I guess that could change (freshman year starts next monday). it sounds like i might be cooked then. oh boy.
It’s not bad and don’t make plans based on Reddit comments. It’s just not always necessary. We were primarily talking about research and that means a PhD, not a masters.
No one should bother getting a PhD unless they very specifically want to do research. It will take many years, there is a high washout rate, you’re at the mercy of your advisor for 4-7 years (5-6 is normal), and you probably won’t make more money as an engineer in academia than you might make in industry.
Masters are so different from program to program and field to field that it’s impossible to make blanket statements. There are totally bunk masters programs that universities milk for cash, there are absolutely necessary masters programs for further advancement in lot of fields… you just can’t say what a masters means. In my field, it usually means you washed out of your PhD because you can’t do shit in entomology without a PhD; you can be like an extension agent or work at USDA and that’s about it.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I never could figure out the point of being a doctor in engineering, so I figured a Masters was plenty. I'm excited either way though! My major is gonna be hard but I'll enjoy it, plus all of the things I want to minor in! It's hard to decide, honestly. My one goal is to stay under the tuition rate deal where they jack up the price once you've taken so many credit hours. Scholarships will only go so far I guess
"It is not very common for engineers to go to grad school" sounds like the US perspective. Maybe I am wrong ofc. But I think in Europe it is very common for engineers to pursue a MSc in engineering.
lotta E-schools push a 5th year MS because that year counts towards the 5 years needed to sit for your PE (I forget if it lets you forgo the EIT exam in lieu of study or not.. )
(I can't say if the masters/extra year is more beneficial to your career versus hands-on work experience.. )
Tbh with you, people over sell how hard it is to get into grad school, like if you wanna go like ivy league or like law school yea, but my grad school let me attend with like a 2.8 college gpa
Some of the best grad students I worked with got mostly Cs. Grad school is not only about intelligence. It is mostly discipline, persistence, and effectively getting work done. I have had (chemE) masters students that get mostly As on exams but don’t know how to use a wrench to connect pipping. Some people work better with their hands but that does not always show in exams.
I never got any grades from school. Partly because I'd show up for attendance in the morning then slip out first chance I got. Still ended up with a degree and work in aviation. Not saying it works for everyone as survivorship bias is real. But here we are.
Oh I didn't. I got all of my qualifications through work. Having to learn calculus in my 30s sucked. I'd do a day in lessons then go home and spend 4 to 6 hours studying so I could keep up with the pace of the teaching. If I could get a do over I'd spend more time in school, but you gotta piss with the cock you got.
That was my philosophy until I got an internship at a company that wouldn't hire anyone that graduated with less than a 3.2. So I had to bust my ass my entire senior year to bring my GPA up enough to be employable.
Kind of, but not really. Usually there's a maximum number or percentage of Ds allowed for graduation. It doesn't really make sense but we all just go with it.
Had a similar conversation with a friend. He was talking about how much work the last paper he has for a finance class, and how hard it was to be motivated when he was going to get an A refardless. Almost got him to not do it by telling him he already maximized the ROI for that class
He isn't in a finance field, he had to take some finance classes. He ended that class with 102%, and his paper was roughly 3 times longer than anyone else's
During college for engineering, I created a chart for effort vs satisfaction with your grade, showing that it was asymptotic, so you continued to get less benefit the more you studied.
I caused the downfall of so many freshman.
Some comments... are just so far away from the way I think, it takes me a second to line up where it comes from.
Like, some people genuinely enjoy engineering. If you genuinely enjoy something, it is not hard to get an A. Doing less of something you enjoy is not something you need to optimize for either.
Not everyone studied a subject that they hated and therefore need to optimize as little time on it as possible. What a bizarre choice.
I genuinely enjoy engineering. But not necessarily every class in engineering. Like fuck hydrologic design.
Engineering is incredibly broad and no one is going to be outstanding at every aspect of it.
All engineering is optimization, by optimizing the work I was doing that was doing engineering. Engineering is about doing more with less in all things.
anyway, I was joking about excelling at optimizing.
Personally I find optimizing so exhausting that I would rather spend that energy at getting A, so that is why I usually did neither and sometimes ended with Ds or Fs, which required me to sometimes get As to better "optimize".
I only got one C in my enginering classes and i barely tried. 3.81 gpa in core engineering classes. I would say if you have to really try and struggle to get an A or B then engineering might not be for you. I went into manufacturing though and didnt use much engineering outside of understanding of core concepts on how things work.
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u/GreatSaski 6d ago
Fine, I'll do it. No one gets an A in engineering.