Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Medicine or Engineering?

I'm in my final year of school and have just chosen my A-level options. So naturally I am looking forward to what I will be doing in the future: I was wondering if somebody could help me out and perhaps give me some insight into the courses and the pros&cons of each one
Thanks in advance

Reply 1

Helloworld_95

Ok so for medicine potentially offers over engineering
Pros:
Human biology focus
Well defined career path
Lots of options within medicine
Very good salary once you become a consultant

Cons:
Bioengineering offers that too
The career path may be well defined but there are a tonne of medicine grads who are unable to move on to the next stage of training, so while graduate employment is very high, 2+ years later you start to see incredible amounts of unemployment, we're talking 30%+ at some points.
Very difficult to get out of medicine or change specialties, whereas many with engineering degrees will go into finance, management, etc.
Low starting salary and certain jobs in engineering will pay similar amounts to consultants

For engineering compared to medicine
Pros:
Shorter degree and training length
More global opportunities
Much less competitive to get in, some unis are practically begging for engineering applicants and engineering departments tend to be very well funded

Cons:
The career path is all over the place, some companies want you to have a masters degree, others have a more competitive selection process for those with a masters and so it could be better to just have a bachelors if you're looking at chances of getting a job.
Saying you're an engineer doesn't have the same ring to it as saying you're a doctor, unless you're doing aerospace and let people believe you're a rocket scientist :tongue:

Reply 2

cxnner

Thanks for the help! What kind of work experience should I be doing to specialise in either of these?

Reply 3

Helloworld_95

Original post by cxnner

Thanks for the help! What kind of work experience should I be doing to specialise in either of these?

For medicine you'll need a week or so at a hospital or GP to even have a chance at interview (well you can get away with less providing you show you learnt a lot about the profession from it), you may also want to do some volunteering as well, nursing home/helping disabled kids kinda stuff rather than working a till.

For engineering, not really anything, maybe a summer internship while you're doing your degree but even that's not really necessary. Just read up on the different disciplines of engineering to decide what suits you best, and look at the courses, not just the business areas, as specific sounding disciplines may actually be very broad degrees. For example my uni's aerospace course is actually a mix of mechanical, materials, electrical, compsci and systems, with a couple of modules in law, accountancy and management and the ability to take a language on top. Although this won't apply for every uni, e.g. the aerospace course at Leeds is very mechanical focused.