Nemtriosk

I don't have any personal experience in this since I only have a BSc in MSE, but the jobs are soso, depending on where you go and what you want to do. Things are still a little tight economically so a lot of the time companies would much rather hire a BSc than an MSc I find. They still have to train both, but more education means higher salary. I'm basing this around what I've heard though locally. I know that here (Alberta, Canada) the only difficulty with BSc is that a lot of people don't know what a materials guy does, but most of last year's graduating class has a job now. Unless you want to go to graduate school for a very particular reason I would suggest first looking at the job availability you have access too. Mechanical engineers are very often hired for a lot materials jobs too if that's your particular interest - anything steel related works. Of course there are certain MSE jobs you couldn't get - think semiconductors and advanced materials. For that it might be worth it simply to get that materials qualifications. It does vary a lot globally too, and I only know about Alberta, which is doing okay with the oil and gas industry.

Thank you for the quick and very detailed response, it's helped me quite a bit. I will start out by saying that while I do know some these sites exist the one I heard about was very specifically for biomedical programs (it's where my girlfriend found a few of the schools she applied to) whereas materials engineering is much closer to the physics side of things (well the solid state design part at least) so likely similar to physics, which is a big help. I've been doing searching by myself, but for the most part I keep finding either places that I wouldn't be able to go to (programs aren't accepting, no funding, etc), or really big name schools. I didn't think of some of the tips you had though especially the gradschoolshopper.com, and graduate school fairs (which exist but aren't advertised at my school). Thank you very much for your reply

Hey, I honestly have no clue how to search for something like this which would normally be my first approach. I know a few people that found the schools they ended up going to for grad studies by registering in some particular forum or website, having their information online, and then certain schools if interested are allowed to contact these students to advertise their programs and see if the student has any questions. Unfortunately I have no idea of where to find one of these, or what search terms to use, but has anyone ever heard of them? It sounds perfect for finding schools that are good, but don't reach it into the billion top 50 lists of MIT's and Caltechs of the world. It's sort of an outreach program I guess? Any help would be appreciated. If it helps I'm trying for either biophysics (tentative since all bio and physics is self-taught and shaky) or materials science (my background) in either bioengineering/mimicry of materials, or nanofabrication. But honestly this would be a good enough resource for anyone that it'd be cool to know about things for other fields as well. Thanks!