<p>Just out of curiosity, which engineering degree is the most versatile? By that I mean transferring between disciplines and transferring to different types of jobs (especially scientific or management related jobs).</p>
<p>well, ECE would allow u to work in pretty much any company dealing with electronics or software… And that is a very large industry…</p>
<p>Every major is gonna have a limited scope… u can’t do civil engineering with an ECE degree or vice versa…</p>
<p>Management jobs, do a management degree after your engineering degree… That’s probably the best combination…</p>
<p>I would definately say either mechanical engineering or electrical engineering are the most versatile. And perhaps mechanical being a bit more versatile. My school only offers those two because we believe they are the most broad.</p>
<p>What Doc said. Sort of depends upon what you want to work with: things that go zap or things that go clunk. The sets of basic principles behind the two are pretty different.</p>
<p>I would swing toward EE as most versatile, just because there’s such a variety within the field itself, but really you want to take lots of (any) engineering classes with 1. projects and 2. math</p>
<p>The projects will help you with general engineering skills(actually building stuff) more than anything else and math is universal.</p>
<p>I would think Industrial Engineering would fit this too. Most IE end up in Management positions pretty quick. IE’s also are used in just about every industry from banking, hospitals, service, manufacturing, and so on.</p>
<p>since EE is really just a specialized offshoot of ME, I’ll put another vote towards ME being the most versatile degree…but it really depends on what field you’re going for</p>
<p>how about chemical engineering??</p>
<p>i heard you can get jobs very easily…</p>
<p>“since EE is really just a specialized offshoot of ME” </p>
<p>Where did you get that from!!???</p>
<p>EE has absolutely nothing to do with mechanical engineering. At all. The only part of EE and ME that is really related is control theory. They even use different math.</p>
<p>I’m interested to see what areas of EE you think came from ME…</p>
<p>As to chemical engineering - it is a certainly one of the more challenging fields of engineering, and has so many applications in today’s world - but I’m not sure a chem-e major could as easily transition to another area of engineering as other engineering majors. Definitely, chem-e majors get paid the most, though.</p>
<p>ver·sa·tile (vûrs-tl, -tl) adj.</p>
<ol>
<li>Capable of doing many things competently.</li>
<li>Having varied uses or serving many functions: The most versatile of vegetables is the tomato (Craig Claiborne).</li>
<li>Variable or inconstant; changeable: a versatile temperament.</li>
<li>Biology. Capable of moving freely in all directions, as the antenna of an insect, the toe of an owl, or the loosely attached anther of a flower.</li>
</ol>
<p>Versatility is not the same as “being able to get a job easily”. I’d say, strike industrial engineering and chemical engineering, since they’re relatively narrow fields in comparison to mechanical and electrical engineering… Also, not a chance that electrical engineering is “just an offshoot” of mechanical engineering. As a structural eng grad student, I understand the vast majority of what mechanical engineers are talking about, and virtually none of what electrical engineers are talking about. They have very, very little to do with each other.</p>
<p>IMO Mechanical engineering is the most versatile for engineering. The structural/mechanics side of it, and fluid mechanics too I guess, would have some overlap with CivE, and the thermodynamics/fluids/process side would have some overlap with Chem E.</p>
<p>The one area I can think of where EE meets Mech E is energy conversion/ power generation. Other than that, not much.</p>
<p>Industrial engineering is the most versatile for management jobs.</p>
<p>But really at some point one sacrifices versatility to a good degree in favor of the required amount of function-specific specialization.</p>
<p>I guess the other main overalp area between Mech E and EE would be electromechanical control systems</p>
<p>MechE and EE are obviously the big ones, and I’d hesitate to pronounce one more versatile than the other. While MechE covers more broad topics and overlaps with other engineering disciplines, EE has such a wide range of implementation. Just about everything is controlled by electronics, so with an EE degree you could get a job working with just about any type of product or service you can imagine. It all depends what you’re interested in.</p>
<p>Chemical, anything that has a process to design it. It can be in any area from food to computers to pharmaceuticals. I think chemE, mechE, and ECE are the versatile ones (along with GE & IE but they are designed to be versatile).</p>
<p>Isn’t materials science engineering also very interdisciplinary? It seems to have a vast scope of applications as well.</p>
<p>EE is the most versatile</p>
<p>I put my vote for EE</p>
<p>but I maybe little about this</p>
<p>In terms of material engineering, <em>materials</em> themselves are pretty versatile, as in, you use materials in pretty much everything. As in chemical engineering, it’s a niche that shows up in lots of industries.</p>
<p>I still think, though, that mechanical and electrical engineering, if you were to study both of them, you’d not only have the overall engineering mindset (great for deductive work), but you’d also probably be able to figure out how pretty much anything works, and talk at great length about it.</p>
<p>So, it kind of depends upon what sort of versatility you mean. Do you want to understand everything, or do you want to have a breadth of fields available for you to work in?</p>
<p>By the by, I really don’t think that industrial engineering that versatile as an engineering degree. It’s particularly about eliminating wasted money, time, and energy… It’s pretty specific, and can only really be applied to, surprise surprise, industrial applications, in comparison to EE and ME.</p>
<p>maybe not a “engineering” disipline, but i hear computer science grads can be employed in a HUGE number of fields, as the computer modelling etc is used virtually everywhere</p>
<p>And I hear that human resources people are employed in nearly EVERY business, in a wide variety of fields! But it still isn’t engineering… ;)</p>
<p>yeah ok but comp sci is basically engg</p>