Resources for Exploring Engineering Disciplines

My S27 is very interested in Engineering in general, but really isn’t sure which discipline he would prefer. Other than googling or watching random youtube videos, does anyone have suggestions of specific resources they found helpful for a student looking to learn about different engineering majors and the types of careers they would lead to? So far, he has read some descriptions of different majors on a couple of college’s websites, but he would like to go into more depth.

We have a few personal contacts we could talk to in a couple of engineering disciplines (biomedical, chemical, civil), but no personal contacts in the disciplines he is gravitating toward to some degree at this point (mechanical, electrical, aerospace). He’s had some hands-on experience in engineering related projects via involvement in FIRST Robotics, but he isn’t quite sure how those experiences relate to specific majors or career fields (he doesn’t necessarily want to study robotics in college in particular).

While I realize he could start college in two years as an undecided Engineering major, given that not all schools offer the full range of options, I’m hoping that a bit of exploration will give us some direction on which school to be touring in the next year.

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Go to a summer session (if you can get in) like Purdue STEP or RHIT Operation Catapult.

You might have a closer one.

Some schools - all kids have the same curriculum year one so they can learn and then choose - like Purdue. Sometimes those have competition to get the major you ultimately choose.

So if they aren’t sure, at many schools, they’ll be fine.

At 17 years old most haven’t a clue what they want to do.

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Yeah, we will definitely consider a summer program for next year. I think his possible interest in Aerospace is one thing that causes me to encourage his desire to learn more (this isn’t just me pushing him to figure it out, he is wanting to learn more too, but isn’t sure the best way to go about it). A lot fewer schools offer aerospace than say, electrical or mechanical. If he can rule that out, than yeah, probably pretty much any school that offers Engineering will work.

My older two kids (D22, S25) were both very certain about their desired major when they started looking at schools, so even though I am feeling experienced about the college search process in general, having a kid who is less decided on a major is a new experience for me.

In addition to doing a summer program at a college, NASA does summer programs for high school students. They’re pretty competitive and the application opens early, but it would be worth doing if there is an interest there.

Work your engineering network to see if your son would be able to shadow for a week with someone over the summer.

If you have a university nearby, you can also see if he would be able to sit in on a class or two.

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Unfortunately nothing close by for just a casual drop-in to a class - nearest would be the state flagship about 90 minutes away. (Most likely opportunity would be when we take college tours or visit his older siblings at their schools).

We don’t have any aerospace employers near us at all, so that is the least likely discipline for us to be able to explore directly…I think we would be talking several hours away before we would find any, it’s just not much of an industry in our area as far as we can tell.

Many colleges like MSU and Milwaukee School of Engineering have wonderful summer like 1 week programs that used to be affordable. Your son sleeps over and it’s really fun.

Also Ace Mentoring is an after school program through out the US. It’s wonderful. Even if it’s not the engineering your looking for it creates a fun way to learn engineering with real site’s and engineers.

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Note that some colleges offer aerospace as an elective subarea under mechanical, and aerospace employers hire various kinds of engineers (mechanical, electrical, materials, computer, chemical, industrial, …).

Mechanical engineers design all kinds of things including high profile things like aircraft, spacecraft, and vehicles, but also lower profile things like door handles, home appliances, many parts of a mobile phone, etc..

Electrical engineers design things like electronics, computer hardware, communication systems (e.g. how a mobile phone communicates wirelessly to a tower), and power generation and distribution systems.

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A good thing to know is that a lot of people who work in aerospace did not major in aero specifically. There are many who majored in something like mechanical or electrical. So even if he’s set on aero as a career, you can definitely get there with a more general degree. In my opinion, when in doubt, go with the more fundamental degree as opposed to a specialized degree. But many people are thrilled with their specialized degree too.

One good tool is to go to linkedin and see who is working in a variety of positions that might be of interest and see what they majored in and where. You might be surprised at the variety you find.

Most schools offer some sort of exploratory first year within engineering, whether that’s formalized as a program or not. It can be called “first-year engineering”, “exploratory engineering”, “engineering undeclared”. That was important to my kid who didn’t know what discipline he wanted but was pretty sold on engineering in general. Only a couple of his schools required you to apply to a specific engineering major but all of the ones like that on his list were flexible in reality. One was RHIT, but they said not to worry and that it would be trivial to change his major: he applied to mechanical there, since that’s kind of generic.

However, at a minority of schools it can be difficult or impossible to change into certain major (sometimes large competitive publics). You’ll have to find out each school’s approach.

I agree with trying out a summer engineering camp. My kid did RHIT Catapult (Purdue STEP was cancelled due to covid), and it was very helpful. He picked a coding project on purpose and learned that, while he enjoyed coding, he did not want a computer-focused major.

The youtube videos can be helpful for learning about the different disciplines and what they actually do. Looking at course requirements can be helpful to see how much math, physics, whatever they’ll be taking for different majors.

All engineering degrees have high median salaries, but some jobs are more plentiful (e.g., more demand for civil compared to aero). Salary differences aren’t usually big enough to justify picking a major that you’re not super interested in. Once my son narrowed it down to mechanical, civil, electrical, chem, or biomed, he decided he just really liked chem/bio stuff. He thought electrical would frustrate him. To choose between chem and biomed, he learned from reading online that the chem degree was more versatile and had more career prospects. Realizing that he could still work in biomed with a ChemE degree helped him with his final decision, and he’s been very happy studying ChemE.

So use a lot of different information sources to narrow it down, and don’t stress too much about it. While it’s possible he may need to decide on an exact major before applying at a small minority of schools, most schools don’t require that and in fact some mandate an exploratory first year. He may also get into a major and change his mind, which is okay too.

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My husband works in a biomedical industry, and he works with people with many different degrees - some biomedical but a wide variety other degrees also! I really know nothing about aerospace so it is good to know that’s the case in that field also.

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UIUC has a week long, aero specific, summer program for HS students.
JHU and Cornell have them too.

The Purdue STEP program is much more of an introduction to various disciplines through projects, but students get to pick two discipline specific tours of campus labs/buildings, and also go on company tours. There are a number of aerospace companies in Lafayette. There are also a number of current Purdue engineering students acting as mentors so they sit on panels to talk about their experiences, classes, etc… FWIW, my daughter got a lot out of that program.

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Maybe a bit too young (13-16) but ERAU is aerospace in spades. More aero focus than engineering.

But note that some of these first year undeclared engineering programs do not have free choice of major – to declare more popular majors may require a high college GPA or competitive admission process, due to capacity limitations in those more popular majors.

Also note that some schools with direct admission to engineering majors may have some majors filled to capacity, so that changing into them after enrolling may be difficult and require a competitive admission process.

Both of the above are more likely at larger schools with relatively high selectivity, where the number of students interested in and capable of doing engineering exceeds departmental capacities. Examples would be many of the more selective state flagships.

Yes that’s all true, and it can get kind of confusing. This is, like you say, most common at the large competitive schools where there is high demand for popular majors such as Aero, biomed, and CS. Switching to other majors might be do-able. Some of these schools you apply direct to major, others have a mandatory first-year exploration year and then competitive secondary entry to major.

At some other schools, you apply directly to major. But you can switch to anything you want – this is most often at smaller/private schools.

It varies by school and they’ll have to find out each school’s policy. It’s particularly important to learn the policy at the big publics famous for engineering since those can be more restrictive.

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Probably a cheaper version of this (preferably includes field trips and some coursework with labs)

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Bucknell also offers a weeklong summer program for high schoolers to explore the different engineering disciplines, including aero if not specifically called out in the link below. My DD participated last year and really enjoyed it.

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Jackling at Missouri S&T is a great program and you can back to back it with explosives camp. Even if there’s no interest in majoring in that, it’s just fun.

https://summer.mst.edu/browse/jacklingintroductiontoengineering-session1/

https://summer.mst.edu/browse/explosivescamp-session1/

You can also narrow by asking a few simple questions, like moving vs. non-moving and tangible vs. intangible. It’s not a foolproof method, but typically students fascinated by moving things don’t gravitate to civil. Those who like to work on highly tangible things will usually exclude electrical.

Then there are areas like mechatronics that combine disciplines, in this case, ME, EE and CS.

Be reassured that no matter where they go, and what major they choose, their interests and focus will likely evolve as they move forward in school, and even into their career.

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I know there are discussions about pay to play programs. I never understood this. My won did some programs that we paid for. He loved them and came back with more confidence each time. One he flew to Berkeley and did a program there. First time flying alone. But the other programs I mentioned each brought a new set of confidence that he proclaimed. “I can do this”. MSU was one of the first Robotic week-long programs. Everyone he did was so much fun and he learned a ton.

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I know…I think it is one thing when people criticize “pay to play” for programs for high schoolers to get research published or when people are just looking for something to pad an application or resume… Paying for a camp to explore an interest seems totally reasonable. No one expects extra music ensembles or sports teams to be free. I wish we would have been a bit more on top of the game to find a really interesting camp for S27 for this summer, but with S25 working on making his college decision and then graduation, and a busy winter/spring season for S27 and S30’s extra curricular activities, I just had no mental bandwidth to consider it.

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I don’t think attending the camp enhances admission…or perhaps for the specific school as it shows DI.

But it’s about being exposed.

So I’d agree with your assessment on pay to play and research or other things that one uses to hopefully move the needle.

But camps do educate the student on what the field may be like - and that’s awesome.

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Well Michigan told him after the fact they liked he was educating himself. Ace Mentoring was also during the school year. Sometimes these programs can be viewed as Privledge also since not everyone can afford them. But it really helped him explore different parts of Engineering.

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