Engineering & Math Career: Is a Double Major Worth It?

[Wingman5]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently a college sophomore and I just declared a biomedical engineering / math double major last semester. I enjoy math and I'm doing well in it at college, and I think BME is also very interesting. The double major also seemed like a good choice for me because I wouldn't have to overload too much to complete the two degrees since there is significant math overlap and I have a lot of AP credit.

I talked to several people who have the same double major as me and it seems that they are all headed to law school. I've never considered law school, although I certainly understand their aspirations (patent law earns a lot of money). My goal at the moment is to work in applied math, but geared more towards engineering than, for example, finance.

My question is, is there any significance to this double major combination? I feel that engineering requires some math but not a *whole lot*, and if I work as an engineer the math degree probably wouldn't aid me in my work or my pay. I read advice that a double major doesn't really help you if you want to go to grad school or anything either.

If any of you were some sort of engineering / math double major, what would you say about your experience with work, grad school, etc.? Were you able to combine your knowledge of math / engineering and do something math-oriented in the engineering field?

I guess the ultimate goal for me is to know the opportunity cost for me getting this double major. If the math degree is very unlikely to help *at all*, then there are better ways for me to use my time even though I enjoy math. I'm sure everyone here knows that a math major is not trivial, effort- or time-wise.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Jus]

Hi Wingman5,

The first thing that you need to be aware of is that Engineering (which ever one you do generally) contains a LOT of maths.

I studied Mechanical Engineering at university and have been working as an Engineer (currently designing pressure vessels) for over 10 years. The level of maths that you will study is very high. In my final year, I was doing modules that 3rd year maths students were doing!

It's not easy, but if you like maths then you will definitely be suitably challenged by Engineering. What's also interesting is that Engineering is really applied maths. For example, in school/college you learn about integration and differentiation and how to calculate areas under curves of gradients of curves. You may even touch on partial differentiation.

In Engineering, you expand drastically on this and start to look at gradients, divergences and curls of vectors which comes into computational fluid dynamics.

Yes Lawyers will get paid more and yes you will probably not be able to afford a Porsche straight away. But by doing Engineering, it may give you a better outlook when it comes to jobs then a Maths student. That's not to say that Maths students are less desirable than Engineers, it's just that from my experience I have known Maths students struggle to find work after they graduate.

In terms of the Bio-Engineering field, my final year project was actually designing a new artificial heart valve. It was very interesting and Bio-engineering is definitely a field worth entering.

I hope that I have been of help to you. Remember, whatever decision you make must be the right one for you. If you love Maths that much then a Maths degree will make all your dreams come true...just be aware that Engineering involves a lot of highly complicated maths as well. Afterall designing an airplane, shuttle, car or boat to work exactly as you intended and understanding and applying the laws of Physics to your work is no easy task.

Good luck...