Majoring in mechanical or aerospace engineering?

[RadicalDisconnect]

I'm currently a mechanical engineering student finishing up my first year at UCI, and I'm currently contemplating whether I should switch to aerospace engineering, due to my interest in this area. However, my counselors and classmates are telling me that compared to mechanical, jobs for aerospace engineering majors are more scarce because it's a more specialized field. Not only that, because my parent are from legal background, I have no personal connections or contacts in the mechanical or aerospace industry. My main concern is internship opportunities and employment outlook after graduation. Since this is a predominantly aerospace forum with quite a few engineers, I'm wondering what members of this forum think about this issue.

 

[blackkite]

Re: The choice of college major

Oh UCI!
It is important whether you have the clear target for you to be engaged in aerospace industry and to finish this absolutely.
Aerospace industry is the very severe world.

 

[blackkite]

Re: The choice of college major

Of course I mean SST. ;D

 

[DSE]

Re: The choice of college major

I'm currently a mechanical engineering student finishing up my first year at UCI, and I'm currently contemplating whether I should switch to aerospace engineering, due to my interest in this area. However, my counselors and classmates are telling me that compared to mechanical, jobs for aerospace engineering majors are more scarce because it's a more specialized field. Not only that, because my parent are from legal background, I have no personal connections or contacts in the mechanical or aerospace industry. My main concern is internship opportunities and employment outlook after graduation. Since this is a predominantly aerospace forum with quite a few engineers, I'm wondering what members of this forum think about this issue.

First, there is no such the as "THE ME or THE AE" degree at most any university. In any sense it is only a title which has a general representation of some level of education. In either degree your chosen coursework can mold the flavor of the degree. It is more important that you look for a field of work that you are interested in. Then can you get applicable coursework in the given degree? If the answer is no, then the choice is easy, if the answer is yes, then a bit more murky or open to your interpretation about what you wish to do and the how other courses you will be required to take in a given program might support that choice. In the end, technical competency, and the continued ability to learn and grow in your chosen field is what really matters, to you and any employer worth their damn.

There can be an initial snobbishness in parts of the aero industry, particularly in SoCal Aerospace. At least that was the case in the mid-80s when I interviewed for my second position. There can be the mindset that AE's do flow related stuff and ME's do nuts & bolts (structural) design. Nothing is can be farther than the case in the real world. But if you put your real background, coursework and experience out there, they can be convinced.

In my example in the state I went to school THE AE program was only at one school upstate. So I went through the ME undergrad and grad programs at my school. They had two different concentrations, fluids/power and materials/structural design. I was in the former and by the end of grad school had taken nearly a dozen fluids/gas dynamics/heat transfer courses. When I explained this to my SoCal interviewer, they were amazed. They thought MEs just did structural design. Most of the AE's had airplane related control and theory of flight courses with a smattering of a fluid or gas dynamics course. But the job in hand dealt with high temperature internal supersonic flows. Just my background.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[AeroFranz]

Re: Majoring in mechanical or aerospace engineering

I can only speak for my experience at my company, but if i'm sitting in an interview with a candidate who wants to do aircraft-related work, i am mostly going to look for classwork and projects the candidate has been involved with. While you may not get to take aircraft design senior capstone courses as an ME, you can certainly do a lot of heat transfer, FEA, and CFD, which are in high demand. If you can also show participation in extracurricular aero-oriented projects, that's a plus. We have a lot of MEs doing detail design, powerplant installation, etc., so you can certainly get hired in an aerospace company with an ME degree, but I would make sure I have experience in the area I'm applying for. In the case of conceptual aircraft design, i would not hire someone who's never taken the senior sequence of aircraft design while in college. It's usually a year's worth of work and I doubt you can gain the same experience doing extra-curricular projects. For jobs in controls, structures, and propulsion, an ME can probably get the same level of education. So i would recommend you figure out what discipline you're interested in first. You should figure it out after taking one or two courses in that discipline.

my counselors and classmates are telling me that compared to mechanical, jobs for aerospace engineering majors are more scarce because it's a more specialized field

Very true. That being said, you should go for the job you are interested in, or else you are going to find your days in a cubicle VERY long...

 

[Sundog]

At the university I attended, Purdue, there is an ME degree and AE degree, and while they do overlap, there are major differences. I didn't attend the main campus the first two years because I thought I could save some money that way, so my first two years were in ME (The local campus didn't have AE). However, when I transferred to the main campus I had to retake many of my sophomore year engineering classes. One specific example is in dynamics. In ME sophomore dynamics, we mainly concentrated on solving equations at a specific point in time. For Aero, we write the equations of motion for all time, then we just plug in for the time we want the results calculated.

Also, if you majored in AE, you have more AE oriented classes. I majored in aerodynamics and minored in propulsion. I remember having some ME's in my propulsion classes, but none in my aerodynamics courses. I also didn't have any ME's in my sophomore introduction to aircraft design course, or my senior aircraft design project course.

I would say if you plan to go into Aero, plan on getting an advanced degree. In fact, IIRC, if you wanted to get into the propulsion field, most of the students I knew weren't even planning to apply at the majors, P&W, G.E., and Allison at the time, if they didn't at least have a Masters degree.

For reference, I've spent almost all of my life doing ME work. So don't think because you go into Aero, you can't get a job as an ME either.

Mainly, I would say kind of what DSE said to you. Figure out if there is a specific area which you want to concentrate on. For instance, much in line with what DSE said, there was a lot of overlap at Purdue at the time between Propulsion and Thermodynamics. All of the thermo classes were taught by the ME department, but most of the propulsion classes were taught by the aero department. To a certain extent, I would say the Aero department really was just a more specialized offshoot of the ME department. While there was a lot of overlap in the basics, I don't think there was much in the way of orbital mechanics in the ME department, or as much fluid mechanics.

But think about what you want to do, or order them in number of most interested to least interested of what you would most like to do. Aircraft design/configuration layout? Performance analysis? Structures? Aerodynamics/Propulsion? System integration? Stability and control?

Also, the only place where my degree kind of held me back was when I worked for a couple of years in structural engineering. They prefer civil engineering degrees, because they are specialized for that field, but I did alright there and learned that there are a lot of architects who are really crappy at designing structures. But there were some who were actually very good as well, but they were rare.

 

[RadicalDisconnect]

Thank you all for the feedback. Yes, for my school both aerospace and mechanical fall under the same MAE department. The introductory coursework for the two majors are nearly identical, but the two majors really start to branch into their separate ways in the third and fourth years. But I'm always hearing talks from classmates about ME's much greater scope and versatility and AE's much greater focus and depth.

In any case, my main areas of interest are aircraft design and aerodynamics. It's very likely that I'll pursue graduate school, though I'm not sure if I want to do so right after getting my undergraduate degree.

As a side note, UCI does have a very strong AIAA DBF team. We've done really well in the last three years.

 

[AeroFranz]

If you like aircraft design, then my recommendation is to go the AERO route. I participated in DBF three times, it's a great competition and a valuable experience. Something often neglected is the experience writing the technical report. Keep in mind that an engineer spends a third of his/her time documenting/presenting his/her work.


AS for internship opportunities, there are a number of smaller companies in your area that do interesting work. Look up Swift engineering and Dzyne technologies. the latter is a very recent startup, but with top-notch engineers.

 

[shedofdread]

Not a lot to add to what's already been said but do remember, there's a lot more you can do with aero eng than just design aeroplanes. There's motorsport to name but one...

Best of luck with whatever path you choose.

 

[gtg947h]

Thank you all for the feedback. Yes, for my school both aerospace and mechanical fall under the same MAE department. The introductory coursework for the two majors are nearly identical, but the two majors really start to branch into their separate ways in the third and fourth years. But I'm always hearing talks from classmates about ME's much greater scope and versatility and AE's much greater focus and depth.

As another data point, I was an AE major with a focus on orbital mechanics and launch vehicles. I'm now a systems test engineer working on transport-category aircraft, doing a little of everything from hydraulics to instrumentation to flight controls, I do some manufacturing support, and I'm now being trained in structural analysis. ME would have been better for my current job, but I'd still rather have done AE just from a personal interest standpoint--there was no question at all that I wanted to do something aerospace related.

In any case, my main areas of interest are aircraft design and aerodynamics. It's very likely that I'll pursue graduate school, though I'm not sure if I want to do so right after getting my undergraduate degree.

If you're serious about doing grad school, I'd do it as soon as you can. It just gets harder to find the time later on, between work, other activities, family, etc. And you'll have forgotten a lot of the math if you wait--in fact, you will likely most of the quantitative parts of your education within a year or two of graduating. Also, don't neglect your structures classes as so many AE's (myself included) tend to do. I'm paying for it now...

As a side note, UCI does have a very strong AIAA DBF team. We've done really well in the last three years.

Do that, or some other AIAA competition. Do internships or a co-op program to get real-world experience. Try and find hands-on experience wherever you can (including at least a little shop time if at all possible). This will pay off in the long run, both when searching for a job and when doing the work. Most undergrad AE programs tend to put a lot of focus on the theoretical side and provide good preparation for continuing with theory and research in grad school--which is fine, except that most engineering students go on to work in industry. The point of engineering is to turn concepts into reality, and having at least basic familiarity with manufacturing and operating will pay dividends.

 

[DSE]

Of few other thoughts, regardless of which path you chose. Ground yourself well in the fundamentals. Do all you can to get an understanding how any answer you are interested in varies with the variation of your inputs. Be able to do back of the envelope calcs using basic principles to allow you to bound the problem before embarking on a higher fidelity solution, especially new problems. I've seen people who were great at very in depth FEM of combined mechanical and thermal loads get asked what would happen if the heat transfer were changed by 20% either way who's only response would be I'd have to run the full up analysis again. Help your systems engineer and program manager by having some idea of the magnitude of change. Is it small or is it a design stopper? Experimental people have long been asked to provide error or uncertainty bounds on measured data. This is now being expanded to derived quantities and even purely computational solutions, FEM, CFD, etc. including modelling uncertainties. For instance in CFD say for a supersonic inlet what is the uncertainty of the predicted critical operating point after which the inlet unstarts? What margin do you have? This is an example is a non-linear problem, so as you try to optimize the system little changes can have a large impact on the system operation. This would be an important problem when say trying to optimize the range of a supersonic airbreathing missile, like the T-3 being discussed in another thread on this forum. Remember that in complex systems frequently the goal is to optimize the overall mission, not any given component, another reason to be aware of the sensitivities to your design variables. This leads to a final thought. Learn about the use of Design of Experiments in your field if possible/applicable. DOE use is now gaining real ground in wind tunnel testing and in design/analysis activities.

 

[RadicalDisconnect]

Thanks all for the advice. It seems like in the end, success and versatility really hinges on how well one can master all the fundamentals. If I make the switch to AE I'll try to take as many engineering as I can to increase my scope and breadth.