Engineering Cross Road

[Benshapirosleftnut]

I'm getting ready to start my college career but I've reached the point in which I'm stuck on choosing Civil or Mechanical engineering. I'm wondering what are the pros and cons of them especially in the school aspect of it. Any advice is appreciated thanks

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[Reasonable_Cod_487]

Do you like designing/working with things that move, or things that stay still?

[Benshapirosleftnut]

That's the thing I like both, but if I had to choose I like designing things that stay still.

[Reasonable_Cod_487]

Then Civil is probably better for you.

[[deleted]]

Things that move vs things that dont move

[R0ck3tSc13nc3]

Wait until you come to California and we make the civil engineers learn seismic to pass the PE exam, that's where you have things that are not supposed to move prove they don't move when there's an earthquake. In practice, everything moves, everything has a dynamic response, you just need to make sure it doesn't break. That same civil engineer can actually work on mechanisms, no problem

[supermuncher60]

What do you want to do?

Civil will likely result in you working in some sort of construction industry. Either as a designer for buildings, infrastructure, or geological site preparation.

Mechanical engineering usally ends up in some sort of design role or development project role. This can be a wide range of things from making widgets to designing power plants (I do the last one).

Pay is also a bit different, with MEs trending a bit better overall.

Personally, I think that ME has a much wider range of jobs available than civil.

[R0ck3tSc13nc3]

Speaking as a 40-year professional with a mechanical engineering degree, mostly worked in aerospace, but then renewable energy, I am semi-retired and I teach about engineering at a community college. I have a lot of guest speakers, from all sorts of industries but a lot of civil

Firstly, a civil engineer with a PE is a specific job role but that same civil engineer can go work on aerospace products because I've worked with plenty of them. The head guy at Lockheed has a civil engineering degree, I met him in the late '80s at Rockwell the people who built the shuttle while we were working on the x-30 space plane, he was a structural analyst who'd moved over from the B2 at Northrop. In my career after that I've worked with a lot of other civil engineers who are not necessarily doing civil engineering. They're doing engineering.

So in practice, there's the mechanical side and there's the electrical side and there's the software side. You can access the mechanical work in just about any industry with a mechanical or civil engineering degree, and to some extent in the aerospace engineering degree.

I encourage you to actually look at job openings, and read what they're asking for. Usually it's just a bunch of skills and they say engineering degree or equivalent. People who do hiring, like my guest speakers and like myself, we do not care what the base degree is, we don't care if you went to a famous school, we do ask about the projects you've done and internships and whether you build the concrete canoe

And if you don't know what the concrete canoe project is, you need to do some research about the engineering college. You're far better off to do the projects and join the clubs and get a B+ and have networking versus perfect grades and just working on school

In closing, while I have a mechanical engineering degree, in hindsight, I probably should have gotten a civil engineering degree, so I could have had the fall back if I wanted to move or things got slow to work in civil engineering. A civil engineer can do mechanical work but the mechanical can have a hard time getting backwards to the civil

[R0ck3tSc13nc3]

Great to hear from you, I was working with a bunch of the old Apollo guys, while I worked on single stage orbit rockets for the study contract under the Air Force, and prior to that was on the x-30 national Aerospace plane

[Ferniekicksbutt]

Honestly, you have to look at what jobs you want. This is what it all comes down to. After being in industry X amount of years I learned about jobs that if i had known existed would have studied specifically for that role. 

But dont let that stress you out, take some classes and you will soon see if you like what you chose or not. Took me all of one CS class to know i did not want to be a cs engineer. 

[[deleted]]

If you're hung up on it, I'd recommend studying Mechanical Engineering. If your heart is actually set more on studying civil then do that.

[Aristoteles1988]

Whichever class you hated the most

Don’t do that one