Is it possible to work as a Mechanical engineer with a degree in physics?

Hi Jane

 

The difficulty with your question is that ‘mechanical engineer’ is such a broad term. It’s a bit like ‘health worker’ – yet a surgeon, a nurse, an ambulance driver, a family doctor, radiologist all do such different jobs.  A mechanical engineer could design pumps, could oversee quality control in a factory, could do high level math on bolted joint strength for turbines or boilers, could work in a very small consultancy or factory designing either products or production lines, or for a multinational company or a high tech outfit like NASA, or become a sales engineer, or an academic. You could (often) become a project manager or team leader, rather than remaining a designer.  It’s already a generalist degree – other similar degrees are the ‘other’ engineering degrees (civil, electrical, mechatronics, chemical, environmental etc) or as you have identified the ‘applied science’ type degrees.

 

If you are concerned with getting into the ‘right’ course, you need to set a goal to assess ‘right’ against – do you want to work in local manufacturing or travel the world, do you want a ‘project manager’ type role, or do you want to work in a particular industry (mining, medical devices, packaging) or to design robots or space stations?  Obviously some jobs will take 10 or 20 years experience to actually obtain, but if you look at the job you think you want to have after 5-10 years experience, and then go look at the qualifications people doing that job have, it is likely there is a ‘common’ degree and to an extent a common career path (working for a corporate first, or experience in a particular aspect of an industry, or a postgraduate degree at one of a small handful of top end universities).  

 

If you are not yet sure of your direction and are looking at ‘keeping options open’, try to think about the big picture and longer term such as: availability of jobs (probably fewer jobs for theoretical physicists than for design engineers), immediate and long term pay levels in that line of work (civil pays less than mechanical, as a rule), gender based issues  including pay, promotion and workplace flexibility (could be fewer issues in large corporates, but not always). What percentage of the board or top management is female? If women cannot get to the top in that organisation, long term it is not a ‘great’ place to work.  Also look on the internet for other factors people use to ‘rate’ occupations and jobs against each other.  I’d write all your thoughts down on paper – something to keep referring to.  Then do a ‘generalist’ engineering (or physics) degree that gives good options in each of those areas – this is part of setting up to succeed rather than to fail. 

 

I can’t comment on the situation in Malaysia, but certainly in Australia, if you want to work as a mechanical engineer, you are going to need a mechanical engineering degree to get your first job. I have no doubt there are transferable skills and knowledge in physics degrees and that such people could do the job – but consider, as an employer looking for a graduate mechanical engineer – you receive 200 resumes. 179 of them are from people studying mechanical engineering. ‘Wrong course’ resumes won’t even be read properly, let alone assessed into ‘no / maybe / definitely interview’ stacks, which is my own technique for first cut sorting (whether or not fair to the candidates, it’s what happens. You can’t spend an hour on each one).  If I get half a dozen in ‘definitely interview’ I won’t even go back to the ‘maybe’ pile until after interviewing the first group and deciding none of them were suitable.

 

I will even go further and say that employers are going to look for demonstrated interest in their particular industry, for example from the electives selected in the degree and from any work experience / internships completed.  That alone will move a resume ‘up’ one stack!

 

On the other hand, you will no doubt find plenty of examples of people who have transitioned from, say, applied physics, to mechanical engineering, during their career. Say they start out working in research on a product that involves cutting edge optics. The employer might prefer a physics scientist. As the research becomes a commercial product, the person may be doing the same job as a colleague who has an engineering degree.  However, this is chance rather than intention.  If you wish to be a mechanical engineer, I’d recommend that is what you study.

 

Best of luck

Belinda

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