I'm wrapping up my mechanical engineering undergraduate degree and all of my professors are pushing me to go to grad school even though I didn't originally plan to. Would it make sense to combine a graduate degree of some sort in condensed matter physics with my undergraduate ME degree? I have a lot of really wide ranging interests from machine learning to manufacturing, but I feel like I might be able to do some interesting stuff with training in CMP.
What do you guys think? I literally had no plans whatsoever for grad school and now everybody wants me to do it.
>>8039667
oh indecision...
why can't youu work yourself out?
I'm sleepy now, time for bed.
>>8039678
Partly because all of this has blown up over the last couple weeks, faster than I can comprehend it all. Also partly because the research I'm doing goes waayy beyond the scope of mechanical engineering and I'm curious what else is out there.
My goal in life is to work on as much awesome technology as possible, and I'm trying to figure out the most effective way to do that.
>>8039682
I was trying to be clever but I guess it didn't work.
Big decisions involving a lot of outside influence and future plans often can leave you at a standstill wondering what could happen. Fortunately, life isn't exactly like ME and you can't live it the most efficient way. If you take your degree now and get a job, who knows where that will take you. If you keep going to school, you could end up teaching or with another job which will take you to who knows what. Take it with a grain of salt, which is hard considering it's your future. If you make a decision and stick with it you will realize it was the right one.
For grad school, I think a very important question to ask yourself is if you can see yourself devoting the majority of your time to your work. And I don't mean "because your advisor will expect you to have no life outside the lab," but because the only people I met in grad school that were happy there were dedicated to their work. As in working on their research is what they would prefer to be doing.
>>8039687
That seems very insightful, but I'm afraid that it's not really practiceable when taken as advice.
>>8039697
Yes, I live for research. Though I'm curious, how much busy work is there in graduate school? Will it be like right now where I'm spinning my wheels with lots of weekly homework problems instead of actually working on interesting stuff?
Keep something in mind OP - not going to grad school now doesnt remove the option for you in the future.
getting a job in industry can often help you realize what exactly it is you want to do with your life, and be much more driven towards that goal if you do decide to go to grad school.
>>8039729
How much coursework you have will vary from program to program as well as where you are in your graduate studies. A Master's program could be entirely about coursework with little regard for your research beyond some minimum requirement, for example.
I suspect that my personal experience is somewhat relevant since I went for a CMP PhD and so will tell you what my program was like: The first year was heavy in coursework as you were prepping for the qualifying exam and greatly extending what your undergraduate curricula covered with some intensive core courses. After that (and passing your qualifying exam), you are basically only taking classes because they cover stuff relevant to your subfield and everyone accepts that you aren't there to do coursework.
>>8039758
Do you think there's any sort of correlation between the amount of coursework and the type of school, like state vs. private, "prestigious" vs "less prestigious?" I'm really not interested in grad school if it just means wasting time on classwork for several more years.
Also, how much freedom is there with research? I really like to jump between disciplines, but will I be pigeonholed into working on one relatively narrow subject? What if I have research interests that combine my graduate study area with others?
>>8039848
>Do you think there's any sort of correlation between the amount of coursework and the type of school
Not that I have noticed from conversations with other people. Within physics, at least, the graduate core curriculum seems fairly standardized.
>Also, how much freedom is there with research?
This will depend largely on your advisor, but as a graduate student, you generally end up as an expert in a fairly narrow field simply because your thesis supposed to represent an advancement in a well defined field.
>>8039667
Going to grad school is good but I'd say look at whatever it is you want to do and look at the median salary of a bachelors vs masters/ Ph.D.
If you can get some company to pay for you that's even better. If you're going into the industry I highly suggest you work in your field for a little bit to see if you enjoy it.
>>8039899
I think I should probably add that, depending on what you want to do afterwards, program rankings should weigh heavily in your decision on where to apply. As one of my undergrad professors once expressed, how many researchers do you know with a PhD from podunk university?
>>8039667
>> Undergrad ME
>> Grad student in CMP
Dunno about your school/where you plan to go but at mine the physics undergrads treat mechanics/thermo much more rigorously in contrast to what you see in ME/AE. Not to mention you probably don't know electromagnetism beyond an introductory level and certainly aren't versed in quantum. Those four subjects are the foundation for everything else you would do in a graduate physics program.
99% of the engineering (predominantly ME) kids I've seen try to take junior/senior level physics classes get assraped because its drastically different from how engineers are taught to think. I couldn't imagine diving into graduate level physics with only an engineering degree.
Doesn't sound like a good idea imo, unless you're fairly fucking good at physics. Most MEs I've encountered are scrubs.
- Dual major in astrophysics/aerospace engineering from a top us university about to graduate and go into physics phd program
>>8039729
You take enough courses to pass your qualifying exams, but after that homework and exams cease to exist. You'll probably take seminar classes and have to present, but that's much better.
