What made you choose your engineering discipline?

Hey Smack

would you say by obtaining a mechanical engineering degree, you would be more desirable due to the course being very broad and will apply to many types of engineering? Or should people who are interested in engineering,to pick a course for specialty? How does job prospects and employment differ between choosing, for example automotive engineering or Mechanical engineering?

Thanks

Mechanical engineering is a speciality, but as a speciality it is very broad, with some parts overlapping with other disciplines. And I think that because of this breadth, mechanical engineering jobs can vary quite markedly between different employers and sectors - for example, a mechanical engineer designing oil rigs or petrochemical plants is going to be very different from one who designs cars or satellite equipment.

I think that mechanical is an easier degree to sell outside of the automotive industry than automotive engineering.

I've always been interested in programming and electronics and at the time I was reading a lot about control theory. So the automatic course that made sense to do was software engineering/computer science. However I looked at the course content and it didn't really seem that challenging as I already knew some of the stuff or they were something I could buy a book on and read easily. Also my maths teacher during gcse studied aerospace engineering so she told me about it and I began researching it. That's when I found out about space X, etc and actually their rockets rely hugely on programming/control, same with aeroplanes autopilot etc. So it was a field I definitely wanted to work in, because I like programming but I'd rather write code (or help design a control system for someone better at writing code to do it) than say, make mobile apps or something. Which is why I choose aerospace engineering. Majority of the stuff we learn in engineering, I actually have no interests in, especially materials and thermodynamics. I'm just here to gain knowledge about aircrafts/spacecrafts in general, improve my programming and maths skills, then do a great deal of systems design and control (through IP and masters). So I'm actually low key doing software engineering but officially I'm doing aerospace engineering. Also telling someone you study rocket science is cool :P


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Well I hate chemistry so chemical engineering was a no no, I found mechanical boring. But all those skyscraper, bridge and dam documentaries made civil engineering look cool so i chose that.

Mechanical engineering is by far the most popular but for some reason i don't find it interesting at all. I went to open days at several unis and at each one I didn't get the appeal.

As for aerospace, my uncle scared me by saying if i pick it I'll be jobless lol

Aerospace

Father was an aerospace engineer and in the US there are so many cool jobs out there And in general nothing gets me more excited than some plane talk

I have also gone for Civils - the concept of solving problems for the people by coming up with innovative solutions quite fascinates me. Id like to go into water and environmental (CIWEM) or do something with underwater infrastructure (like dams, reservoirs etc) What do you find to be the most exciting area of the degree course?

My sister would like to go for Aerospace - she finds some of concepts fascinating!

Sounds like you've got great intentions I admittedly haven't researched much of my course as I'm not even sure where I'm going!

But that sounds cool - how old is she?

I have a bit - but my dad doesn't think Ive thought it through properly and so is telling me to reconsider (due to the huge debt)

She's 17 this year - she wants to do Aerospace and then join the RAF

Ohh okay Lucky for you though - think about all the internationals! And even for me, a UK citizen who lives abroad b/c of parents.. I've gotta pay 3x the home fees if I want to come to the UK D:

Aww that's awesome! So that's now 2 females I know of doing aerospace.. They are such a rarity

Yeah, it is a lot of money - even more for internationals! Its quite bad the way the system works, you would have though that the government weld have wanted to encourage young people and not put them off.

Cool! on my open day yesterday there was just me and one other girl for civil engineering (out of 100 on the course)

OMG wow! Yeah I'm not sure if it's the same with aero.. @bigboateng_ could you verify?

HAHA suprisingly there's actually a lot of girls on my course. We have atleast 15.... out of ~140 aero undergrads. Thats actually a lot compared to tbh, also I've noticed about 70% of them are international.

That's awesome!

What would you like to do long term?

I'm looking at applying for phd at MIT or McGill university in canada, assuming I'm lucky enough to get into anyone of them and actually get a phd, I will be looking at SpaceX (if I get into MIT) or ESA (if I get into McGill). My second option is to get a job at google (or a big tech company that allows transferring to other countries easy) and transfer to USA and if I'm lucky to get a citizenship, I will quit and apply to SpaceX/Bigelow aerospace/NASA/all the other usa aerospace companies. Last option is to just get masters and get a 9-5 job using microsoft excel like every other engineer in uk