Expert: Paul Soderman - 6/20/2007

Question
I'm interested in becoming an aeronautical or aerospace engineer, and was curious about what I should be looking for in a college. Some research of a few colleges I'm interested in shows that some have aeronautics or aerospace as an undergraduate degree, whereas some offer it only as a graduate degree and encourage a mechanical engineering or applied engineering undergraduate in order to study aeronautics at the graduate level. I do plan on getting a graduate degree, but am somewhat worried about how applicable  a program without aero_____ in the name would be to the field, when some colleges are offering them and some aren't.

Answer
Geoffrey
To be an aero engineer, in my opinion you need an MS degree in Aeronautical Engineering.  A BS degree in the same major might give you a very slight advantage compared to a Mechancial Engineering BS in areas like fluid mechanics, but not much.  I would guess that 95% of courses in AE and ME at the undergraduate level deal with the same basic math and sciences.  Many aero engineers at NASA got an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering and did graduate work in Aero.  To really see the difference, check out the course curricula from different engineering schools for different majors.  I don't think you could go wrong with either ME or AE.
Paul