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What are some good options to become an engineer? Is it a good field for a frum jew? I’m interested in the field, but have been in yeshiva for many years. What would you suggest? I know Touro has a pre engineering program, but I dont live in the Northeast.
What kind of engineer?
Where do you live?
Where would you like to go to school?
Where would you like to work?
If you end up in the NYC area you should consider Queens College’s pre engineering program. They have an agreement with Colombia and if you maintain a solid GPA in undergrad you get into Colombia’s grad program.
Or just go to college where ever you live, I’m sure there are plenty of engineering programs there too.
In most cases a Master’s in Engineering is a waste of time. Companies would prefer to hire someone with a year of experience over someone with an extra year of coursework.
Machon Lev/Jerusalem College of Technology is a fantastic institution, which combines Engineering and other technical education with Beis Medresh learning. It is Israel’s leading school for electro-optics engineering.
It also has a specific program designed for Chareidi men on its Givat Mordechai Campus.
I’m a frum mechanical engineer and I am extremely happy with my career choice.
I think most people just aren’t interested or aren’t cut out for it.
One of the benefits of going to school in NY would be the ability to work out some kind of combination of yeshiva and college. Even if you don’t go to a formal yeshiva-college program, the mere fact that there are so many options will make it easier to work something out. I don’t know how easy it will be where you live.
I know they used to have an english program at JCT. Dont know if it is still around.
Its not Queens College that you want to go to, Its City College (CCNY) that has a very good engineering program
If money is a factor, there are obvious advantages in going to a school in your home state (or alternatively, moving to a state with a good public engineering program and living there long enough to establish residence). If money is not an issue, or if your academics are good enough for a merit scholarship, private schools are the same anywhere (and at the better private schools, merit and need scholarships can lower the cost to no more than what a public out-of-state student pays). Since there is minimal demand for engineers within the frum community (i.e. you will have to work for goyim sooner or later), you will have to be used to working with goyim, and going to school with goyim (as you are from “out of town”, that is probably not a problem).
Being a frum Jew in a field in which there are relatively few frum Jews (at that probably includes engineering and sciences) means you have to make more of an effort to manage, but you probably can market your presence as “diversity”, which is a popular buzz word. Compared to 50+ years ago there are far fewer problems with reasonable accomodation, and one finds frum Jews popping up in places that would have been unheard before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I heard recently that engineering is becoming common amongst Frum people in Israel. I heard this from a Dati Leumi friend whose daughter and son-in-law are both studying engineering. They are each studying different types of engineering – apparently there are a lot of different kinds.
Apparently the hours are better than the hours of computer programmers. I have a brother-in-law who’s an engineer and a brother who’s a computer programmer, and my bil seems to have much more normal working hours than my brother does.
If you are looking at Queens College due to its combined program with Columbia, just know that Yeshiva University also has a combined program with Columbia for engineering. Whether YU will be a better choice (also because it has Limud HaTorah embedded in its college schedule) than Queens College is up to your discretion.
Columbia is a waste of money. If you’re going to be in the city, go to City College.
Even if you’re from out of state it’s still a fraction of the price and they have an excellent engineering program.
One should remember schools often offer merit scholarships, and the richer the school, the more they offer in terms of “need based” aid. Also one has to consider where one wants to work (City University of New York is not well known nationally, whereas Columbia is). If you want to work in a different part of the country, choose a school well known in that region.
City University of NY (CCNY) is very well known nationally. It is not Columbia, but it is alot cheaper and columbia is hard to get into.
You should find a frum engineer and ask him/her for advice, starting with schooling and then job markets. Almost none of the yentas on this site – starting with me – sounds like an engineer. There was a time when Jewish (frum or otherwise) engineers got the door slammed in their face. That has changed. As for the suggestion of “akuperma” that you market yourself as a “diversity” candidate, that might be one of the most foolish things I have ever read anywhere. Your yarmulke will raise the issue, if it is an issue, and talking about how you will help a prospective employer with “diversity” will get you a lot of unseen eye-rolls, and your resume will go into the round file (which I suppose, these days, is a file with a picture of a trash can, not an actual trash can).
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