Where should I go to college?

[Sampa]

Yup, Aerospace is a pretty specialized field. How well does Mech Eng transfer to spacecraft design? I don't want to design the systems, but more like the whole booster.

What is an A&P rating? Atlantic and Pacific like the old store? No sarcasm, I don't know what one is.

A&P stands for Airframe and Powerplant. If you get that rating, you can be picked up by almost any company on the spot, especially since, at the school I mentioned, you are given FAA recorded hours!

[Dman979]

Hmm, Airframe and Powerplant. Is that basically designing planes and their engines?

[EdFred]

Hmm, Airframe and Powerplant. Is that basically designing planes and their engines?

No, it's fixing them, repairing them, maintenance, etc...

[Dman979]

Oh. That's not quite what I was looking for.

[Dman979]

Does anyone else have other tips?

[Beowolf]

Oh. That's not quite what I was looking for.

Sure, but take it from an old dude: It's super valuable to plan for an intermediate fallback job. Many tech jobs like Aerospace Engineer have boom/bust cycles depending on changing government priorities. Many of my older friends finished grad school around 1970 with degrees in chemistry or engineering...just as the Apollo program ended and thousands of those specialists got fired. Those fields didn't recover for 20 years or so. Same thing happened to some types of programmers after all the Y2K work got finished. Overnight they went from "so in-demand I can write my own ticket" to "nearly unemployable".

Getting a teaching certification is probably the most popular way to deal. I think the important thing is your backup has a certification requirement of some sort. That keeps unqualified people from flooding the market and driving salaries down.

An A&P mechanic might end up in a tiny rural airport doing oil changes on cropdusters, but he'll never go hungry, or be reduced to driving a taxi. I like it as a backup idea, though before you choose it look into what it takes to get certified and particularly how hard it is to maintain certification or get it back after being inactive. That'll also tell you how much savings you need in case your real job goes away.

Please don't let me discourage you from engineering. These boom/bust cycles are just a known part of every profession that's dominated by government spending. Just one more thing you plan for.

[Dman979]

Sure, but take it from an old dude: It's super valuable to plan for an intermediate fallback job. Many tech jobs like Aerospace Engineer have boom/bust cycles depending on changing government priorities. Many of my older friends finished grad school around 1970 with degrees in chemistry or engineering...just as the Apollo program ended and thousands of those specialists got fired. Those fields didn't recover for 20 years or so. Same thing happened to some types of programmers after all the Y2K work got finished. Overnight they went from "so in-demand I can write my own ticket" to "nearly unemployable".

Getting a teaching certification is probably the most popular way to deal. I think the important thing is your backup has a certification requirement of some sort. That keeps unqualified people from flooding the market and driving salaries down.

An A&P mechanic might end up in a tiny rural airport doing oil changes on cropdusters, but he'll never go hungry, or be reduced to driving a taxi. I like it as a backup idea, though before you choose it look into what it takes to get certified and particularly how hard it is to maintain certification or get it back after being inactive. That'll also tell you how much savings you need in case your real job goes away.

Please don't let me discourage you from engineering. These boom/bust cycles are just a known part of every profession that's dominated by government spending. Just one more thing you plan for.

Oh, no you haven't discouraged me at all.

Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't thought about those cycles. I'll have to plan for a fallback thing now. Do you think the focus on spacetravel and the lot will have died down, increased, or stay roughly the same from where it is now by 2067?

[Denks]

Commercial Space Flight focus is going up. A lot of aerospace is also planes though, and we always need planes.

For government jobs it depends on who is in charge.

[Sampa]

No, it's fixing them, repairing them, maintenance, etc...

not necessarily! the A&P is just a prestigious certification... if you have it, you can get into several fields, including design of spacecraft (some of the graduates from my school have gone on to be hired by Space X, Scale Composites, and even Boeing! )

Edited February 27, 2015 by Sampa

[Dman979]

Commercial Space Flight focus is going up. A lot of aerospace is also planes though, and we always need planes.

For government jobs it depends on who is in charge.

Of course, planes will not go away, no matter how quick spacetravel becomes.

not necessarily! the A&P is just a prestigious certification... if you have it, you can get into several fields, including design of spacecraft (some of the graduates from my school have gone on to be hired by Space X, Scale)

So, can you give me some more info re: A&P?

Also, does anyone know of any Aerospace college visits coming up before the end of June?

[Sampa]

Of course, planes will not go away, no matter how quick spacetravel becomes.

So, can you give me some more info re: A&P?

Also, does anyone know of any Aerospace college visits coming up before the end of June?

Sure, The hardest part of the entire program, aside from learning AC and DC electricity, has to be FARs (aka the Aviation Bible). The program I'm in right now has a workshop coming up in a few weeks. Here's a link to the school's website.

http://www.sjvc.edu/programs/technical-and-industrial/aviation-maintenance-technology

At the end of the 18-month program, you go into a licensing period and we have someone on site who can "get your foot in the door" to many interesting jobs for interviews (past that, we make NO guarantee of you actually getting the job you want initially). If you want job security, aside from the up and coming civilian space fields, you'd want to go into maintenance at a flight school (according to my current teacher). However, that is only a suggestion. Program starting points come up once every two months!

[pincushionman]

Where is the school your dad works? A quick Google of "Drexel" indicated Pennsylvania, and if thst's the case Penn State is an obvious place to start. I looked at Michigan (aerospace), Illinois (aerospace), Michigan State (mechanical), and MIT (aerospace; no offer), before settling on Purdue (aerospace; "Cradle of Astronauts," by the way. We're proud of that).

I work in Wichita, KS as an aircraft structural anslyst, and most of my co-workers went to Kansas, Kansas State, or Wichita State. I've listed a whole bunch of schools for you here because they're the ones I'm familiar with - but what you really should take from the suggestion is that any school with a well-developed (mechanical) engineering program will give you the skill set you need. Aerospace or automotive (yes, there's a lot of overlap) focus, all the better, but not required.

No one's mentioned it yet, but you want to be aware of the schools that have mature co-op or internship programs. Good grades in a prestigious degree are one thing, but you can not discount the foot-in-the-door power of, you know, actually having worked someplace before.

[EdFred]

not necessarily! the A&P is just a prestigious certification... if you have it, you can get into several fields, including design of spacecraft (some of the graduates from my school have gone on to be hired by Space X, Scale Composites, and even Boeing! )

Sure, tell that to the FAA when you get someone who isn't an A&P to do a repair (or sign off one) on a certified aircraft. See how long it is before they tag the aircraft as unairworthy.

[tater]

As my kids are in private school, it's a subject that is starting to come up. Many of our social group are science people (Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos, and UNM) or docs. The private schools are not big on AP, they maintain that all their courses are high-level, and that good schools don't take the AP as credits anyway (they look for admission, nothing else). Dunno. Something that has come up repeatedly is that the only school that matters is the last one you went to. Spending a mint on a high-end undergrad institution only matters if your graduate education is equal or better school wise. State school undergrad and Caltech for PhD trumps high-end undergrad with a state school for grad school, basically. If your PhD is from Mississippi, no one cares that you did undergrad at Harvard---they won't even know unless you tell them, and telling about lower school makes you look like a chump, anyway, lol.

That you know what interests you is FAR more important than where, IMO. People tend to focus on undergrad location more than what they want to study. Where ever you end up, work hard, for your discipline, you'll want a graduate degree, anyway, so think in terms of maximizing your chance of a good grad school, undergrad is a stepping stone.

[jmiki8]

That you know what interests you is FAR more important than where, IMO

True words. I study transport engineering at a not quite Harvard/MIT/etc-grade Hungarian engineering university (BME), therefore I always meet some people who study in the field of aerospace engineering. Even from here, numerous people went to work with the European Space Agency to work on big projects like the Rosetta probe's control system. Please note that (as you probably know) not only aerospace engineers work on space related projects. For example, my university sends mostly electrical engineers to the ESA.

And for one more time: this is not in the USA, but a far less developed Central European country with underfunded universities.

Of course I'm not saying to come here to study, I just wanted to tell an example. While you'll probably have better chances after studying at a renowned school, you won't avoid hard work. Studying is only one half of that hard work: companies (mostly) aren't looking for human robots, but for ones who seem to have real interest in the field. This applies specially to aerospace companies, where innovation (and thinking outside of the box) is crucial. This means that you will have to do something productive apart of studying which gives you something extra compared to other students at the job interview/in the CV. For example, one of my A&P student friends was accepted for a well-paid job at Lufthansa Technik, because apart of having decent grades, he built model airplanes in his free time.

Edited February 27, 2015 by jmiki8

[Dman979]

Where is the school your dad works? A quick Google of "Drexel" indicated Pennsylvania, and if thst's the case Penn State is an obvious place to start. I looked at Michigan (aerospace), Illinois (aerospace), Michigan State (mechanical), and MIT (aerospace; no offer), before settling on Purdue (aerospace; "Cradle of Astronauts," by the way. We're proud of that).

I work in Wichita, KS as an aircraft structural anslyst, and most of my co-workers went to Kansas, Kansas State, or Wichita State. I've listed a whole bunch of schools for you here because they're the ones I'm familiar with - but what you really should take from the suggestion is that any school with a well-developed (mechanical) engineering program will give you the skill set you need. Aerospace or automotive (yes, there's a lot of overlap) focus, all the better, but not required.

No one's mentioned it yet, but you want to be aware of the schools that have mature co-op or internship programs. Good grades in a prestigious degree are one thing, but you can not discount the foot-in-the-door power of, you know, actually having worked someplace before.

Yes, my dad is in PA, but that's about as far as I want to go re: where I live- things on the interweb have a way of going where you don't want them to.

Thanks for the list of interesting schools, and raising the intern possibility. * Please see the bottom of this post for the rest of my message .

As my kids are in private school, it's a subject that is starting to come up. Many of our social group are science people (Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos, and UNM) or docs. The private schools are not big on AP, they maintain that all their courses are high-level, and that good schools don't take the AP as credits anyway (they look for admission, nothing else). Dunno. Something that has come up repeatedly is that the only school that matters is the last one you went to. Spending a mint on a high-end undergrad institution only matters if your graduate education is equal or better school wise. State school undergrad and Caltech for PhD trumps high-end undergrad with a state school for grad school, basically. If your PhD is from Mississippi, no one cares that you did undergrad at Harvard---they won't even know unless you tell them, and telling about lower school makes you look like a chump, anyway, lol.

That you know what interests you is FAR more important than where, IMO. People tend to focus on undergrad location more than what they want to study. Where ever you end up, work hard, for your discipline, you'll want a graduate degree, anyway, so think in terms of maximizing your chance of a good grad school, undergrad is a stepping stone.

Thanks for the input! I agree, I'd never want to go to a college which doesn't have the program I'm interested in or a segway to it. Re: last school attended, how much of an affect would a previous school have? Also, do you know if it's very hard to go from state school to Caltech (as an example)?

True words. I study transport engineering at a not quite Harvard/MIT/etc-grade Hungarian engineering university (BME), therefore I always meet some people who study in the field of aerospace engineering. Even from here, numerous people went to work with the European Space Agency to work on big projects like the Rosetta probe's control system. Please note that (as you probably know) not only aerospace engineers work on space related projects. For example, my university sends mostly electrical engineers to the ESA.

And for one more time: this is not in the USA, but a far less developed Central European country with underfunded universities.

Of course I'm not saying to come here to study, I just wanted to tell an example. While you'll probably have better chances after studying at a renowned school, you won't avoid hard work. Studying is only one half of that hard work: companies (mostly) aren't looking for human robots, but for ones who seem to have real interest in the field. This applies specially to aerospace companies, where innovation (and thinking outside of the box) is crucial. This means that you will have to do something productive apart of studying which gives you something extra compared to other students at the job interview/in the CV. For example, one of my A&P student friends was accepted for a well-paid job at Lufthansa Technik, because apart of having decent grades, he built model airplanes in his free time.

Does playing KSP count? But seriously, I think that I could demonstrate a more-than-passing interest in Aerospace to any future employer.

Again, thanks everyone for the information!

*I've shared this thread with my school's college counselor, so she's helping me process all this data.

I can never have too much, so any more tips and info would still be helpful.

[Beowolf]

Oh, no you haven't discouraged me at all.

Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't thought about those cycles. I'll have to plan for a fallback thing now. Do you think the focus on spacetravel and the lot will have died down, increased, or stay roughly the same from where it is now by 2067?

I think interest will gradually increase as cost-per-kilogram gradually decreases. Lower costs from truly-reusable vehicles should make more space activities potentially profitable. How much will still be tied to government contracts and their cycles, I don't know. Historically, aviation and space investment have been so dominated by government that fairly small military cutbacks can put the whole industry into a recession. But if you plan for it you'll do fine. It's the poor schmucks who rush to buy a McMansion and a new Mercedes with their first big raise who end up bankrupt. Just don't be that guy.

[Sampa]

Sure, but take it from an old dude: It's super valuable to plan for an intermediate fallback job. Many tech jobs like Aerospace Engineer have boom/bust cycles depending on changing government priorities. Many of my older friends finished grad school around 1970 with degrees in chemistry or engineering...just as the Apollo program ended and thousands of those specialists got fired. Those fields didn't recover for 20 years or so. Same thing happened to some types of programmers after all the Y2K work got finished. Overnight they went from "so in-demand I can write my own ticket" to "nearly unemployable".

Getting a teaching certification is probably the most popular way to deal. I think the important thing is your backup has a certification requirement of some sort. That keeps unqualified people from flooding the market and driving salaries down.

An A&P mechanic might end up in a tiny rural airport doing oil changes on cropdusters, but he'll never go hungry, or be reduced to driving a taxi. I like it as a backup idea, though before you choose it look into what it takes to get certified and particularly how hard it is to maintain certification or get it back after being inactive. That'll also tell you how much savings you need in case your real job goes away.

Please don't let me discourage you from engineering. These boom/bust cycles are just a known part of every profession that's dominated by government spending. Just one more thing you plan for.

According to the FARs, you won't lose your certification unless you really screw the pooch. And the certification does not expire, you just have to work under the supervision of another active a&p mechanic to unfreeze your certification.

[Dman979]

I think interest will gradually increase as cost-per-kilogram gradually decreases. Lower costs from truly-reusable vehicles should make more space activities potentially profitable. How much will still be tied to government contracts and their cycles, I don't know. Historically, aviation and space investment have been so dominated by government that fairly small military cutbacks can put the whole industry into a recession. But if you plan for it you'll do fine. It's the poor schmucks who rush to buy a McMansion and a new Mercedes with their first big raise who end up bankrupt. Just don't be that guy.

Who needs a McMansion when you can have a McTrailer-Home?

So even though there might be minor setbacks, the industry as a whole will expand?

According to the FARs, you won't lose your certification unless you really screw the pooch. And the certification does not expire, you just have to work under the supervision of another active a&p mechanic to unfreeze your certification.

Sampa, I really appreciate the time you're taking to explain A&P to me. Can you send some more PMs?

[Sampa]

Who needs a McMansion when you can have a McTrailer-Home?

So even though there might be minor setbacks, the industry as a whole will expand?

Sampa, I really appreciate the time you're taking to explain A&P to me. Can you send some more PMs?

Sure, no problem. What information do you want to know?

[Dman979]

anything relevent.