Does mechanical engineering have more than one concentration?
I was just curious about different kinds of engineering. #engineering #mechanical-engineering
2 answers
Kate’s Answer
Mechanical Engineering is a pretty broad major. Most schools have mechanical and industrial engineering in the same department because they have the same intro courses and their electives can be taken by major.
While my college did not have concentrations for mechanical engineering you were able to pick your electives to match up with the field you wanted to enter. Some colleges have concentrations like Aerospace Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Mechatronics, nuclear power Engineering, Sustainable Energy, Robotics and Manufacturing.
However, to really specialize in one of these concentrations you can take a Masters of Engineering in a specific concentration.
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Vikas’s Answer
I'm here with some of my colelagues from Siemens who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree. According to him, Kate's answer is a great place to start understanding what type of company of products you may want to work with. From his experience, he had a variety of different foundational classes he could take for various concentrations like thermal, acoustics, fluids, etc. These classes mainly form the foundation of knowledge you need and you can gain more expertise in the area in 2 ways. The first is through graduate school or just graduate school classes. Some universities allow undergraduates to actually take graduate classes if they meet all the prerequisites, so if you find a concentration that really interests you, it may be possible for you to attend some of those higher level classes, but maybe only for one concentration. The other option is to gain expertise through work and finding a job that would allow you to work in the area that you want to gain a concentration in. Through work, it is definitely possible and encouraged to gain expertise in multiple areas at once .