Engineering

[Guest Heya]

Hey,

 

I was wondering if anyone could tell me about doing an engineering degree?

Is it really difficult? How many hours a week will I have to work?

[Guest UWOMED2005]

My brother is in Aerospace engineering. He's doing well (roughly A to A+ average) but he works his butt off - I'd almost classify him as a workaholic, and he doesn't have many activities outside of school. He enjoys the engineering though so he's pretty happy.

 

Most of the other engineering students I know have a rougher time of it. Many of them were just looking to graduate so they could get the 'iron ring' and start looking for jobs. . . some of them struggled to barely pass.

 

If you really enjoy engineering and are willing to work hard, I'd say go for it. If you're going to eventually shoot for a postgrad program where GPA is critical and aren't driven, I'd suggest another field of study. . .

[Guest medwant2b]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote>Quote:<hr> If you're going to eventually shoot for a postgrad program where GPA is critical and aren't driven, I'd suggest another field of study...<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END-->

Heard that before...

 

I have heard more than couple people say they thought about engineering--but thought they'd get screwed there because the people in the program are smarter and they wouldn't be competitive. Second-entry programs (law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy... etc.) are very marks driven--no disagreement here. What wasn't said is... too many applicants look for The Easy Way and have only one narrow focus--getting in! I don't think a narrow focus is good. Sorry if I sound a bit cynical about some of the 'typical applicants' --but I've had a few people look at me in a way that seemed to suggest they were thinking 'Hey buddy, you studied engineering, you can't possibly be applying to meds!' I think too many study what they think is The Easy Way-- as opposed to what they think they would enjoy.

 

I think the main thing is 'know yourself.' Ask yourself if you'd enjoy engineering. If you just want to go into medicine--engineering is a hard way. It is a fair deal of work--25-30 hours of class/week + 2-4 hours of homework/night -- of course, experiences vary and schools differ. Then again, in the end medicine is a crap shoot any way you cut it. The vast majority of applicants get rejected. Engineering in that case, IMHO, leaves you a few more options, and it is a real bonus if you think it is interesting.

 

Based on what I've seen I don't think the odds are really worse. Students from the physical sciences on average do better on the MCAT than those from the biological sciences and specialized health services (click here -- AAMC web site). Also, I have seen some admissions numbers--my impression overall is if you are an engineering student/med applicant your odds are comparatively slightly better than if you're a life sciences/health sciences student.

 

Personally, I can't imagine my premed years another way. I had some nice jobs in industry, did some awesome biomedical projects and with managing my time still had the opportunity to be involved. The considerations above aside, I think the system here can use more physicians that are technologically current, in addition to well-versed in the life sciences.

 

Cheers, medwant2b

[Guest UWOMED2005]

Hope I didn't sound like I was completely advocating the easy way out - I don't agree with that either! But it would seem to me that Engineering would be among the MOST difficult routes to medicine, and for many people I could see it being impossible to get into meds from engineering, whereas they might be able to do a biochem, life sci, or neurophysiology degree - which aren't "easy" but might not be as challenging as engineering. I think the most important thing to do is assess yourself honestly - are you someone who could handle the challenge of shooting for 80%+ in every engineering class?

[Guest RoMoCoco]

Hey there,

I just graduated with a civil engineering degree and am waiting to hear back from medical schools. Although, medicine wasn't in my thoughts when I started my engineering degree, I think having a major that wasn't biology got my foot in the door at the schools where I interviewed. It was a lot of work, but really enjoyable and more "human" than some of the other engineering disiplines...but if you're just studying engineering to get your foot in the door of medicine, I don't think you'd be motivated enough for 4 years hard-core work.

[Guest Heya]

2-4 hours of homework a night for engineering....

 

approximately how much is there in the regular science stream?

[Guest macmed04]

Well, I went the engineering route too, even though my only goal was to get into med school. I figured if I didn't get in the first time I applied, at least my engineering degree would give me the ability to go out and get a good job pretty easily. Of the three programs I applied to, Queen's Engineering was the only engineering one.

I never regretted my choice at all. I think I had about 28-30h of classes per week, and can't honestly remember how much time I spent on homework. I know I did try to get a fair bit done during the day between classes, and did maybe 1-2h a night. I pretty much never did any homework on Saturdays, and made up for that on Sundays so that I could get all my assignments done for the week.

The thing I liked best about the program at Queen's was that I didn't have to pick a discipline when applying - we all did a common first year, then decided. I didn't take the easiest of routes - took Engineering Physics, Electrical Option (this despite the fact that I got my worst grade in physics in first year!). At least I got a 14 on the physical sciences part of the MCAT... And the math/physics courses were hard, but it wasn't impossible to do well in them. I know of three people who graduated in 95-96 in my program who ended up going to med school (Ottawa, Western, Mac). I had a far easier time of it getting good marks in courses where there's a right answer than in stuff like English where it's more subjective.

The hardest part was figuring out how to work in all the courses required for different med schools. I had to take Biology and Organic Chemistry in summer school one year, and did languages for my arts electives in the regular school year. I had to take Anatomy and Pharmacology by correspondence last year to get me the last prereqs for U of T.

In the end, it was a really good thing I took the route I did, because I didn't get into med school on the first try despite 3 waitlist spots. I found a job working for Nortel overseas, and thought I should stick it out for 2 years before reapplying so that I wouldn't have wasted the money the company had invested in training me up. I ended up loving work and staying for nearly 5 years before moving back to go to med school.

Engineering's not that awfully hard - but you do have to be good at math etc. My roommates doing Life Science degrees seemed to do more work than I did a lot of the time. I still had time for tons of extracurricular activities. They had to do a lot more memorization work, whereas I had to understand lots of concepts and learn how to solve specific problems. I think I was probably better suited to what I ended up in.

The other bonus was that I was 1 of 4 women in a class of 36-40, so the profs all knew me. And in a class that size, I was able to get to know some of them pretty well too, which enabled me to get one of my favourites to write me a reference letter 5 years later. If I'd been in a class of 300 with 60% or so women, I don't think I'd have been that memorable...

I also think that doing engineering enables you to try out another potential career (through summer jobs etc) so that you can have an even better answer to the question "Why do you want to become a doctor?" And with technology being so important in medicine too, having a technical background can't hurt!

Sorry this turned out so long!

[Guest khoberian]

Hi, I am not a Med student and so if you are looking for information to get into med school via engineering, I apologize but I won't be able to help you with that.

 

What I can do is give you my perspective of engineering so far:

 

Yes, engineering is pretty difficult. There are differences, however, amongst various engineering disciplines and probably among schools as well. For example, doing an Elec/Comp Engg degree is probably more challenging than is a Civil Engg degree for example. I apologize to all Civil Engineers out there because I might be making a very bad generaliztion. So if you are deciding on doing engineering, carefully consider what sort of a school you are attending and what program are you interested in. As I said, there are differences that you should be aware of and taken into account.

 

Secondly I really have never sat down and counted the number of hours that I work for. I just know that I work a lot and still am not getting med school grades. You will amazed at the difficulty level of the labs that we have to do. I will give you an example. For one of our circuits courses, we were doing the orientation lab and there were about 10 students in our lane. All ten of us had no clue what the heck the lab instructor was talking about for three hours. Now, I don't want to sound arrogant but we're pretty smart people. Plus if you clump together ten of us, you would expect better. But we seriously were lost as were the 30 others in the lab. I have slept in labs for my past courses and things will only get worse.

 

And finally the most <!--EZCODE BOLD START--> important<!--EZCODE BOLD END--> thing I can tell you about Engineering is that you cannot do a good job at it if your heart is elsewhere. I did not come into this field with a passion for computing but as a backup for medicine. Now, I wonder if I will make it to Med school given my less than stellar marks.

 

I didn't mean to give you a pessimestic view but please be realistic when setting your goals. If you think you're up for it and have a passion for engineering, then please go for it by all means. If you plan to use it as a backup for medicine, it is simply put not a good idea. You're better off in one of the more traditional premed programs.

[Guest Jim2375]

Hi Khoberian,

 

I would have to disagree with you when you say, one cant perform well in engineering if they really intend to go to a med school later on.

 

I am an electrical engineering student who is planning to apply to med schools and I have a pretty decent GPA. I thoroughly enjoyed my years doing the engineering undergrad because it not only gave me a technical background but also taught me a well-structured and organized way of problem solving.

 

In engineering, they have always focused on a process based learning approach which is the direction all the medical schools are moving towards. Also, the use of technical advacements (especially in the field of electrical and computer engineering) is becoming more and more widespread in the field of medicine. For instance, the telerobotic surgery.

 

Therefore, in my opinion, any engineering degree is an excellent premed degree to persue.