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Mechanical engineering

The first two years are maths, physics and chemistry with engineering names on them. The mechanical part starts in the second year and never lets up.

Written by the Sidequest team. Reviewed 2026-09-05.

Try the career before you pick the major

Most of this work is deciding how a real thing gets made and then finding out whether you were right. Spend five minutes on that before you spend four years on it.

Marlow · the stools coming back

One page, and the moulds get cut in three weeks

  • •about forty thousand stools out there, four years of them
  • •about one in forty comes back cracked at the hinge
  • •nothing written down about what one is meant to survive

the blank page, before you start

Here is the bit that embarrasses me. In four years nobody here ever wrote down what one of these is supposed to survive. So start there.

In four years nobody at Marlow has written down what one of their step stools is supposed to cope with: how heavy, how often, how rough. So nobody can say whether the cracked ones are failing or just wearing out. You write it down now. What do you make it about?

The heaviest person who will stand on itHow many times it gets folded and stood on

Try a day as an engineer

A short, playful taste of the real work.

Try it out
Where it leads

Engineering work, more reliably than any other major here except nursing: 50 of every 100 graduates are doing engineering or science work a year after they finish.

The week

Fifteen hours of lectures and labs, and about 30 hours of problem sets behind them. Problem sets here have right answers, so you know exactly how it went before anyone marks it.

What people earn four years after they finish
WEAKEST PROGRAMS$85,285TYPICAL$91,131TOP PROGRAMS$101,347

Where people end up

Out of every 100 engineering graduates in work one year on, this is where they were.

  • Engineer or scientist50%
  • Software engineer or data analyst9%
  • Builder, driver or tradesperson7%
  • Salesperson6%
  • Teacher6%

The other 22 landed somewhere none of these five names reaches. Half in engineering or science is the highest share of any major here except nursing.

Top ways to become an engineer.

What a week is like

You take four to six classes at once, which comes out to about 15 credit hours a semester. It is that same load every semester for four years: 120 credits, eight semesters, done.

About 15 of those hours are spent sitting in class. The other 30 are work you do on your own, two hours behind every hour you spend in a room. Call it 45 hours a week.

It is spread across seven days rather than stacked into five, so you can keep your evenings or you can keep your weekends, not usually both. What it does not leave is much slack in the weeks when two big things land on the same day.

A waking week is about 112 hours. This is the share of it the degree takes.

  • In class15 hours
  • Work on your own30 hours
  • Yours67 hours

What those 45 hours are spent on.

  • with other people

    It starts with why a bridge stays up, then why a moving thing moves the way it does. After that: what materials do under load, how heat travels, how liquids and gases behave, and how you keep a machine steady. Each class assumes the one before it, so a term you half understood follows you around.

  • with other people

    A year and a half of calculus, then two more maths classes built on top of it, plus a year of physics. It is more maths than most people expect, and almost all of it lands in the first two years.

  • with other people

    You build the thing you calculated, find out where the calculation was wrong, and then stand in front of people who ask you why. The last year is one long version of that.

  • on your ownthe hard part

    This is the degree. Six to ten problems a week per class, each one a real object with numbers attached, and there is a right answer you either reach or do not. People who leave this major mostly leave here.

  • on your own

    Modelling a part exactly enough that somebody else could make it from your drawing, which is closer to the work itself than anything else in the degree.

  • on your own

    Writing, humanities and a social science class, spread thin across four years rather than done with early. There is one waiting for you in your last term.

  • Engineering classes and labs13%
  • Maths and physics50%
  • Everything else you still have to take38%
  • Classes you pick yourself0%

Half of your first year is maths, physics and chemistry, and barely any of it is engineering. Nothing in this year is yours to choose.

How much do you make?

Mechanical engineering pays about the same wherever you study it. The weakest programs land graduates at $85,285 and the strongest at $101,347, a gap of about $16,000.

  1. Right out of college

    $92,135

    Four years after finishing, the average mechanical engineering graduate earns $92,135, and that figure is people in work, not back in school.

  2. Midway through

    $120,000

    Between 35 and 45, the average mechanical engineering graduate earns $120,000.

  3. At the height of it

    $164,340

    The best paid tenth of mechanical engineers earn $164,340.

That flatness is the thing worth knowing. Computer science runs from $74,917 at its weakest programs to $144,179 at its strongest. Mechanical engineering starts higher at the bottom and stops lower at the top, so the advice to get into the best ranked school you can matters less here than almost anywhere.

It is also the biggest engineering degree by a long way and not the best paid one. Electrical, computer, chemical, aerospace and industrial engineering all pay more four years out.

What each engineering degree pays four years after finishing.

  • Computer engineering$109,015
  • Electrical engineering$100,647
  • Industrial engineering$98,442
  • Aerospace engineering$98,207
  • Chemical engineering$98,158
  • Engineering for medicine$93,451
  • Mechanical engineering$92,135
  • Civil engineering$86,517

Mechanical produces more than twice as many graduates as any of the others and sits in the middle of them on pay.

The average money still owed on student loans

$22,875

The standard plan clears it in ten years.

Is this you?

You do not really start mechanical engineering in your first year. Every engineering student takes the same core first, whichever kind of engineering they are aiming at: chemistry, physics, maths and drawing, all taught in engineering versions. That makes switching between kinds of engineering easy early on, and makes leaving engineering late expensive, because almost nothing you have taken counts anywhere else. Fewer people leave this degree than leave biology or computer science, and the ones who go mostly go in the first two years, over the problem sets rather than the labs.

Tap any that sound like you.

This is probably you if

Probably not you if

What people who did it say

  • defrost

    Hacker News, October 2023

    "I started out in Engineering and transferred out to a more serious mathematics | physics stream. The Engineering curriculum as I found it was essentially rote for the first two years."

  • FormerPhysicist, a physics major describing an engineering class

    Student Doctor Network, September 2013

    "There were engineering majors in there on their THIRD go-around with the class trying to finish it up for their major, and I was told it wasn’t even the hardest class (apparently Thermo is even worse)."

  • krschultz

    Hacker News, March 2015

    "My college used to say "mechanical engineering is the liberal arts of engineering". You will be able to handle it. I personally did 2.5 years as a professional mechanical engineer right after college, then switched over to software and have been doing that ever since."

  • 6thaccount2, a licensed engineer

    Hacker News, August 2019

    "As someone with a P.E. license that spent hundreds of hours studying and had to sit for that excruciating 8-hour exam twice, I don’t think even 5% of the software developers in the US could pass an equivalent exam."

Questions people ask

Is a mechanical engineering degree worth it?
On money it is one of the strongest here: $92,135 four years out, $22,875 of debt, and the number barely changes with where you studied. The catch is the other direction, a lower ceiling than computer science, whose best programs land graduates $42,832 higher.
Is mechanical engineering hard?
The problem sets are the hard part and they are the whole degree. What is easier than the reputation says is staying: about four in ten people who start engineering leave the field within six years, which is fewer than biology and far fewer than computer science.
Does the school you go to matter for mechanical engineering?
Less than for almost anything else. The weakest programs land graduates at $85,285 and the strongest at $101,347. What is worth checking instead is whether the course is officially accredited, because the licensing exam is built around that.
Do you need a licence to be a mechanical engineer?
Not to start. You need one before you can sign off a design as the person answering for it, and that means two exams: one of 110 questions taken around graduation, and a second one after four years of work.
What do mechanical engineers do all day?
They work out what something has to survive, decide how it should be made, write that down exactly enough for somebody else to build it, and then test it until it breaks. Half of graduates are doing this or something like it a year after finishing.

Where these numbers come from

Careers this major feeds

EngineerFounderInvestment BankerManagement Consultant

See the other majors