<p>Well, I am a student at UIUC and I can give you some insight based on my institution. First, I know that mechanical and aerospace are competitive at my school. However, I think Aerospace is more competitive but partly because I believe they accept less students into the program, only allowing about 100 students in. But again, they are both competitive so who knows how much more competitive one is than another. </p>
<p>Now based on your interest, I have a few things you may be interested to hear. First, about your hardware/software interests related to the Iphone, computers, etc you might want to consider electrical engineering or computer science, since both of these areas work with those aspect and I know the job market for a computer science student is extremely good. </p>
<p>Mechanical engineering has been told to me to be a more broad discipline but I know at my school, they seem to learn more of the necessary skills for what they might do. You will learn some fluid dynamics, structures, dynamics and control, some circuit analysis, coding and I believe do some specific work with engines and then be able to focus in some areas you choose. I know for my school, I see the main focuses as structures, controls/dynamics, robotics, engines, fluid dynamics, I have seen even biomechanics and probably others I am forgetting.</p>
<p>Aerospace stresses fluid dynamics a bit more than mechanical at my school, focuses a bit on structures, teaches you dynamics and control, flight mechanics, propulsion, circuit analysis, coding, numerical methods, a little robotics and then you can choose where to focus. The main focuses include aerodynamics/fluid dynamics, structures, propulsion, robotics and controls/dynamics.</p>
<p>Obviously, there are some shared focuses with both of these, but some of the courses you take to get the degree differ. My Dad’s friend is a Mechanical Engineer who has worked for Boeing and although he worked on planes, he never did anything like designing the plane so it was aerodynamic or doing wing design or anything. He did do engineering pertaining to more mechanical needs in the plane. However, I have also been told that there are plenty of Aerospace engineers that, when working for a big company like Boeing, end up doing something like structural analysis, often something people never think to do when they think of becoming an Aerospace engineer. Based on that, it is tough to say you will nail your dream job out of college even if you do Aerospace engineering and want to design planes, especially since plane design is so complicated, you generally need many people to work on it. However, if you happened to work for SpaceX, you may have a better chance to do meaningful design work if you chose that path.</p>
<p>Keep in mind there are many opportunities in all these disciplines you won’t know much about until you get to college and hear about them. For example, I came into college just wanting to do aerospace engineering to design planes, rockets, missiles, etc and try and do some defense work. Although I still do want to do all that, I have changed focus a bit on how to get there after finding out some new things I could do, which for me is doing a computational science focus and apply it to solving aerospace problems, specifically through computational fluid dynamics or something. There are many exciting opportunities in engineering you will learn later on so be open to a change of heart in some ways, and just do what you are passionate about.</p>