PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Education: What A Levels and Degree (if any)?!(Apr '09)
Old 9th Dec 2004, 07:22
  #210 (permalink)  
Genghis the Engineer
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I don't know the Canadian situation, nor yours particularly - but regarding the subjects; aeronautical engineering is a tough and time consuming degree. It is however extremely rewarding, and opens up very many aeronautical professions - in fact there are probably none which would be precluded by this degree.

Civil engineering is going to be a good engineering degree, the entry requirements are usually rather lower than for aeronautics - but the only engineering job you'll be doing in the industry is probably designing airports. If that's your thing, fair enough - but it's one step removed from aeroplanes. A good halfway house, which you've not mentioned, would be mechanical engineering which is in many ways the same as aero-eng, with lower entry requirements but (most likely) none of the aviation specific stuff.

Business degrees at undergraduate level are aimed at future accountants. If you are registered on PPrune, you are probably far too interesting an individual to do that - they are also at many institutions only a couple of steps away from a degree in ladies basket weaving.

Aviation management degrees are generally aimed at future (or current) airline pilots who want to head into management in the airlines. In that context, they're great - but you still need to learn to be an airline pilot separately before it'll ever be useful.

"Professional Aviation"- I know what it is in the real world - but as a degree subject? Sounds like ladies basket weaving to me.

"Aeronautical Science" - this will be a technical degree which doesn't include the minimum core subjects to be "Aeronautical Engineering". Since some of these subjects are very tough (structural analysis was my particular hate, closely followed by thermodynamics) this makes the degree much more accessible. Unfortunately it also makes you a great deal less employable - most aerospace technical jobs actually do need those horrible core subjects, so if you can make the grades I'd strongly recommend going for an Engineering course (aeronautical, aerospace systems, or mechanical) rather than a "science" course. If science is really your thing, do a hard science like physics - it'll be much more useful to you in the long run.

You can probably guess that I did aeronautical (aerospace) engineering, and have no regrets - but I hope this is helpful despite my strong personal bias.

G
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