I’m a Computer Engineer and Electrical Engineering student and after reading a high-schooler’s post on choosing engineering or biology (including medical fields) as well as helping out my little sister find a major that will interest her, I decided to write my own incredibly biased test to see if you belong more in Engineering or Biology related fields.
Basically it comes down to how you study and how you solve a problem. See, I have a terrible memory. I constantly forget formulas or sometimes programming syntax and I have to look it up. I’m also very impatient. When given a problem, I want to immediately start searching for a solution. Searching for solutions takes time, so I start with what I know. Turns out that using mathematics you can manipulate information that you know to solve novel problems. The beauty of it is that you can get away and find the solution without even reading about it. I recently took a test in one of my engineering classes and I did very well, yet I did not immediately know how to do any of the problems. What I did was use the formulas that I did remember and manipulate them to get closer and closer to the answer until I got it. If I had memorized the formulas it would have been easier, but that’s the price you pay with a crap memory.
Also you don’t have to be a genius or a math wiz to be an engineer. Far from it. The number of times where I looked at a new problem and had no idea what to do and started questioning myself are many. But if you keep at it and are resourceful you eventually figure it out. Sucking at something is the first step at being good at something.
In terms of how they study, biology related fields however, are almost entirely the opposite. The little experience taking gen-eds and talking to my biologist buddies led me to believe this: In biology-related fields, If you do not read about it, or see it first-hand, you usually cannot derive the answers from past information. You must have strong reading skills and above-average memorization skills to succeed through the coursework. For someone like me, who likes to see stuff work first-hand either with a piece of paper and some equations on it, on a computer program, or on a circuit board, it is very difficult to study this sort of information. I see the biology majors nervously pouring over chapters in their textbook, chanting words with Latin roots and I always think that engineering must be easier. As long as your math is sound and you understand the concepts, you technically don’t have to memorize anything.
Funny thing is, every single biology student I’ve talked to is terrified of even basic calculus.
So in a nutshell, if you’re lazy and want to figure things out for yourself, you may be an engineer.
If you have a good memory, impressive reading skills, and a fear of advanced math, you may be a biologist.
Oh and the divide is also industry vs. academia. Biologists tend to be more research-oriented while engineers will usually pursue internships in my experience, but this is not always the case.
I don’t know, do you guys feel this is true? If not, please take into account that I’m incredibly starved of sleep.