<p>I’m currently a chemical engineer, and I’m intimidated by all the biological research involved in chem e. I hate biology.</p>
<p>I think I’m going to switch to mechanical engineering or aerospace, where I get to work with and build machinery because that’s what I like - working with non-biological macroscopic stuff.</p>
<p>I just have one concern about aerospace. During this career fair, all these people told me that you have to be a citizen to be an intern. Is aerospace more or less a major restricted to citizens? I’m an international student, and I’m obviously limited in all engineering majors. But I’m also wondering if this is more so in aerospace.</p>
<p>Aerospace probably has a higher percentage of jobs that require citizenship, but it is certainly not required of ALL jobs. Where you really run into problems is government contractors. There won’t be many, if any, jobs working on government contracts, especially defense related contracts, if you are not a citizen. In other words, you won’t be working on any of the new, fun, secret stuff at Lockheed or Boeing, but you could always work on the commercial side of things. The other option would be to become a naturalized citizen, though I don’t remember all the hoops you have to jump through for that seeing as how I was born here.</p>
<p>You will run into more problems within Aerospace when you need security clearances. As boneh3ad said, it’ll be harder to work on proprietary technology without being a US citizen.</p>
<p>Since chem e is heavily intertwined with biology/biological engineering, what are examples of chem e (projects, internships etc.) that doesn’t involve biology, and how do they compare with those of mechanical engineering and aerospace.</p>
<p>I know I should explore these things myself. I actually got 3 professors on my list to talk to for a job. But it doesn’t hurt to ask.</p>
<p>I talked to a chem e professor today and she said that chem e and mechanical engineers are practically all involved in the same areas, only chem engineers get more insight on what’s going on.</p>
<p>ChemEs can do anything downstream that a Petroleum Engineer can do and most of the thermodynamic/combustion/heat transfer a Mechanical engineer can do.</p>
<p>Don’t sweat biology–a typical ChemE job can involve process controls, refinery work or other mixture processes.</p>
<p>Also, don’t forget that Chem E’s do a TON of materials research, and overlap in a lot of ways with Materials Science.</p>
<p>It would be hard to say that the commercial side of aerospace is any more/less interesting than the military side of things because it would be personal preference. Personally, I would be more interested in the military area since it has a lot more of the high risk/high reward type of R&D work, but the commercial area isn’t without that. The commercial area is usually pretty stable, and CAN be more stable than the military side of things since it isn’t dependent on government contracts, so you won’t have your project at Boeing canceled from under your feet just because some suits in Washington thought that Lockheed’s design was better. In the commercial side, it is all about market forces, and they are always looking to improve on current designs.</p>