The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

So the application opens up this August for the 2011 round of scholarships, and I am torn between majors.

Background:
I applied for this scholarship in the 2010 round with electrical engineering as my major. I was named a semi-finalist, had an interview with a facility, had an interview with the SPO (SMART Program Office), but in the end I did not receive an award. I mostly blame that on funding seeing as I was applying for a 3 year scholarship.

I have been contemplating switching my degree to aerospace engineering, and I am unsure if I should do this.

Pros
The Aerospace field is what I would most like to work in.
The projected job growth is 10% from 2008-2018, compared to only 2% for electrical engineering.
The median salary is approximately $10k more than electrical engineering.

Cons
There are roughly half the amount of dod facilities that sponsor the Aerospace Engineering STEM field compared to those that sponsor electrical engineering.
The facility that interviewed me last year does not sponsor Aerospace engineering.
If I do not get the scholarship, I would imagine it harder to find a job with a degree in AE.


In the end, I am afraid if I change my major and do not end up getting an award the 2011 round I will regret it. I feel that my chances will be greater if I stick with electrical engineering because so many facilities sponsor that field.


Are there any Aerospace Engineering or Electrical Engineering majors out there that could give me some advice? I am still taking my basics and I have not taken any degree specific classes so therefor I do not know much about the type of work I would be doing in either field.

Thanks
Matthew

Matthew,

There are fewer facilities looking for aeros, but there are probably a lot fewer aero's applying too. Only 2500ish graduate each year in the country.

As far as aero goes, it was definitely the right decision for me. I like electronics a lot too, and the RPI cirriculumn happened to also have a number of required courses that built on this:
Modeling and Control - Basically feedback loops, transfer functions, and bode plots. Also had a lab portion dealing with analog circuitry
Embedded Control - Digital circuitry and microcontroller programming (in C). Worked on RC Cars and Blimps
Electronics Instrumentation - Analog Circuitry and Basic Digital circuit including opamps, Schmitt triggers, basic logic gates, 555 timers

I also did electronics for my senior capstone, and I have done a fair amount of work with Atmega Microcontrollers under the Arduino framework. I think what you need to find out is if you really really want to learn a lot about analog electronics and do lots of fun stuff like multivariable integration. I love electronics, but frankly, I just want to be able to use the stuff, not understand every mind numbing detail.

Aero on the other hand is great stuff unfortunately, most of what I say will mean little to you without experience in the subject. Basic curriculum is a) a decent number of Mech background for beams, stresses, and failure and b) aero specific courses. Aircraft stability and it's derivatives, aeroelasticity and flutter, propulsion systems, Aerodynamics (including circulation principals and source panel/vortex calculations), Fluid Dynamics (basically a whole semester devoted to the Navier Stokes Equation), and Wing Structures.

It's all great stuff, a lot of math, but it's mostly manageable. Diff Eq is all you really need, multivar, not so much.

Thanks for the advice Chris. I believe I am going to make the switch to Aerospace because thats what I really want to do, and people say "do what makes you happy". Multivariable integration....no thanks. haha
The few things you mentioned about Aerospace work looks very attractive. And when people ask what I do I can say oh I'm just a rocket scientist. haha