I'm looking for some career advice here. I've been in the MEP Engineering field for 5 years, since graduating college with a degree in Math. My official title is "Mechanical Designer" but what that basically means is "CAD guy". I also do load calcs, static pressure calcs, survey work, and generally don't work from redline markups like a straight "cad guy" would, but my primary role on projects is the drawings, and I work for a senior engineer. Meanwhile in my company there are kids straight out of school with engineering degrees that are doing their own designs, working under project managers and department heads, which is what I want to be doing. They've told me I'd need to get an Engineering degree to move up to that position, so I've been taking classes at night that are pre-requisites for grad school and I'm trying to get in to a MSME program. If that falls through my backup plan would be a BSME degree which would be my second BS degree, but either way it's going to take three more years to finish taking classes at night, and I feel I'm ready to design my own systems now. I passed the FE exam in a state where they don't make you wait to graduate to give it to you, so I am a registered EIT
So I'm trying to get a sense for whether what I'm asking for is reasonable. I plan on getting my resume out there to see for myself, but not until after I get in to a Master's program so I don't have to interview looking like an undergrad. In the meantime I'm looking for some input on what other people have experienced and witnessed. In every state, with enough experience you can get your PE without any college degree, but you need to show you have experience doing actual designing, so there must be some point where your experience starts to count for something. My question is when? If I start sending out resumes saying I'm looking for a job as an Engineer based on my 5 years of experience, should I expect to get a lot of responses?
So I'm trying to get a sense for whether what I'm asking for is reasonable. I plan on getting my resume out there to see for myself, but not until after I get in to a Master's program so I don't have to interview looking like an undergrad. In the meantime I'm looking for some input on what other people have experienced and witnessed. In every state, with enough experience you can get your PE without any college degree, but you need to show you have experience doing actual designing, so there must be some point where your experience starts to count for something. My question is when? If I start sending out resumes saying I'm looking for a job as an Engineer based on my 5 years of experience, should I expect to get a lot of responses?