I went to engineering school with plenty of women, I work across the hall from a woman right now. Yes, there are less women in engineering, but I would not characterize it as "hardly any girls".





My father is an engineer, so I was exposed to what engineering would be like, and decided that I could do it 40 hours per week and be happy with that. I am a civil engineer who specializes in bridge engineering.





We cannot recommend you a career - that's something only you can figure out, based on what interest you and what you want to do for a living. The good news is that everyone takes the same classes for the first year of engineering, and many engineering majors have the same courses their second year as well. This gives you plenty of time to explore all of your options. I recommend attending open houses at your school if they have them - typically, the graduate departments will do this to show off the cool stuff they are researching, and it gives you a good idea of what is out there. I also recommend attending career fairs in the spring during your first year - meet company representatives, learn what kind of engineers their company hires and what they do, and also find an internship for the summer. There is a lot to explore, don't pass up opportunities.

My gf and I went into engineering, where we met. We both graduated last year.





There are many fields. I chose the field that interested me most. I read descriptions about the different engineering majors offered by my school and looked at the course roster and read the description of the courses. From there, I chose what I thought would be my favorite and most interesting engineering major.





There are few women in engineering because of sexism. In the past, women have always worked as nurses, secretaries, customer service, maids, bank attendants, etc. Those are typically women dominated jobs.





Men typically fill the jobs as engineers, firemen, police officers, guards, CEO's and business owners, sales, etc.





Also, there is Einstein, Edison, Faraday, Henry Ford, and other men known for being great scientists, engineers, and inventors. There is no science/engineering idol for women.





Because of this, there are few women interested in engineering. Most women do not even consider it as a choice.





It will be hard. Where ever you go, the company will be filled with mostly guys. You may be the only female engineer in whatever company you work for. Because of that, many guys will flirt with you. It will be hard to move up and become a manager since the culture in those companies are that women work as secretaries. At the same time, it is easier for women to find a job in engineering because women are rare in engineering.





Engineers are respected and they learn a wide variety of subjects, making them well educated overall so they could talk about various subjects in conversations in every day life. In addition, they make a comfortable salary and have a great work/life balance with lots of benefits and vacation/sick time.





Good Luck.

Engineering can be a very challenging but fun program as it stimulates the mind a lot of the time. This is the time to start figuring out what type of engineering you would like to study or if you want to study engineering at all. Of course, if you are undecided then technically, you have until the end of your first year of university or whenever the date is for that decision. This still gives you a lot of time.

During now and your first day of university, I suggest you start working on your own projects. You will probably have lots of school work to do so working in a project or two into your school work might be a good idea. Here are some great websites with lots of projects for examples:

Instructables,

Make,

Nuts and Volts,

Servo,

Everyday Practical Electronics,

Circuit Cellar,

Let's Make Robots,

www.geofex.com,

Arduino,

Processing,

WISC-ONLINE - for lots of great tutorials on lots of subjects including electronics,

AVRFreaks,

MicroChip,

PICAxe and their homepage,

Atmel,

the odd music page,

hydrocordion on YouTube: