There are a variety of engineering schools nationwide, and all of them have differing levels of competitiveness in terms of admission and degree program structure. Some schools and departments, such as MIT’s department of mechanical engineering, will accept graduate students who do not have undergraduate degrees in engineering, and some, such as the University of Illinois’ department of industrial engineering, will not. Some offer different kinds of degrees to students who have a non-engineering backgrounds. For example, Purdue University offers a Master of Science, or MS, degree in mechanical engineering to students with non-engineering undergraduate degrees, but the Master of Science in Engineering, or MSE, is reserved for students with a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
Math degrees translate better to some advanced engineering degrees than others. Software engineering, systems engineering and industrial engineering are all specialties that are more likely to admit mathematics degree holders, as is the case for industrial engineering at the University of Central Florida. Some engineering sub-specialties, such as operations research and control theory are math-intensive. Acquiring a master’s degree in control theory is actually equivalent to obtaining a master’s degree in mathematics, as is pointed out on the Louisiana State University Mathematics Department website.
Some engineering schools, such as John Hopkins University and Rice University, will admit a student with an undergraduate degree in mathematics to a graduate engineering program, but they will require the student to take remedial courses to catch up. Top programs, like MIT’s MSE in mechanical engineering, will expect students with math degrees to take initiative in their undergraduate years to acquire “undergraduate-level exposure to the core ME disciplines (applied mechanics, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and heat transfer, materials, control, design and manufacturing), and to be familiar with basic electric circuits and electromagnetic field theory.”
One of the ways in which math students can achieve “undergraduate exposure” to engineering topics is to acquire useful and relevant internships. As “U.S. News and World Report” recently reported, so many students are now entering college that quality internships give bachelor’s degree holders a competitive edge.