College Life

Private Schools That Are Well Known for This Major

• Columbia University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Rensselaer Polytechnic
• Worcester Polytechnic
• Stevens Institute of Technology

State Schools That Are Well Known for This Major

• Colorado School of Mines
• Pennsylvania State University
• University of Pittsburgh
• Virginia Tech
• New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Classes in the Major

Geology. What is this lump of metal? Is it precious gold or fossilized dinosaur poop? Okay, you can probably tell those apart with just a look, but can you tell gold from iron pyrite? Probably not. If you're going to be pulling metals out of the ground, it's a good idea to know how to identify them. The more you know, the better you'll get at mining them. The last thing you need is to accidentally melt a vein of whatever it was you were after. That's a good way to get fired.

Engineering. It's right there in the title. What is engineering? We're glad you asked, voice in our heads. Engineering is the discipline of solving a problem by building a machine. Not necessarily a complicated machine. Not every problem goes right to "giant robot," no matter how cool that would be. Sometimes the machines are as simple as a pulley that can bear the weight you need it to bear. Most of your engineering will be centered around mining, but a good basis in the subject is a good idea. You never know what you'll need to build.

Physics. Sorry, you're going to be doing physics. It's part of that whole engineering thing. Unless you know how much energy you're using and moving around, you won't be able to engineer anything with which to do it. So you're going to be learning all about the ways energy moves, mostly so you can use it to move rocks out of the ground. You're learning how to defy gravity here. That's crazy.

Mathematics. This isn't your parents' math. Or maybe it is. They could be scientists. As you might imagine from this being a college course, you're not going to be studying things like addition and subtraction. No, you're doing the really advanced stuff: calculus, linear algebra, statistics, differential equations. You're learning this because math is the universal language and describing complex scientific ideas, as engineers do, needs complex scientific math. We're sorry to be the ones to tell you, but you are going to be neck deep in math.

Mining Methods and Machinery. Think of this almost as your trade class. While you probably aren't going to be the one in the hole personally, it's important to know what those people are doing. While this is the kind of thing that becomes obsolete, mostly due to people like you making things better, this is how you get the baseline of knowledge. The rest is all experience. The thing to remember here is that you can't make things better without knowing how things work.