What do I study?

I want to build roller-coasters and other thrill rides when I get out of college. What should I major in?

This might help a little.

http://www.guidetothepoint.com/thepoint/cpplace/thread.asp?ForumID=1&TopicID=2787

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Brandon Sorc
Millennium Force count:67
www.spiritofthepoint.com

without clicking on the link above..I'm gonna say that you should major in Mechanical Engr. My BIL is majoring in that and says That topic has come up in many lectures regarding the designing and building of Coasters...Good Luck

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http://www.msu.edu/~armbrus9/cp.html
mf laps = 100! No More No Less!!

Wow, from the link above the roller coaster designing industry sounds pretty exclusive. That's ok though, I dont have a problem designing carnival rides. They are fun too! And the way roller coasters are going, I might think about going into aerospace engineering!!!

I'm going to do design roller coasters, and I'm probably going to major in mechanical or civil engineering. *** This post was edited by CP_bound on 10/13/2000. ***

I don't want to upset anyone on here, but based on this and past threads, it seems like there are a bit many unrealistic people out there, most of whom are in high school, who seem to think that because they love roller coasters that it should lead to a career designing them. Sometimes we have to distinguish between something we love as a hobby and something we love as a job, because more often than not they are not one in the same. I'm all for following your dream, but u have to be realistic. There's probably thousands of teenagers out there who love music and are convinced they're going to be rock stars. Just because coaster design is not that glamorous of a job doesn't mean that its an easy one to get into. There's just simply not that many coasters designed each year and not that many firms or openings for that matter, and there's always the risk that the industry may go stale again as it did in the middle part of the 1900's (poor Riverview park : ( ). But if u simply must try to pursue this i would suggest trying to go to U of Illinois since they are generally regarded as having the best engineering program in the nation.

Hopefully I can keep my 4.0 GPA up throughout high school, and I plan on going to Purdue in Indiana. I though Purdue was known for the best engineering school.

I go to U of Illinois. Except I am in LAS because I couldn't get into the Engineering school, I should get in within 2 years though. I realize my chances of becoming a roller coaster designer are slim but I am not majoring in Aerospace Engineering just for the sake of roller coster designing, I like the other aspects of it as well, such as high-speed Trains, etc. There are also other things than roller coasters. There are plenty of thrill rides out there to be made. For instance I wouldn't mind at all working for S&S Power (makers of the Power Tower), and a new big shot pops up every other day. *** This post was edited by gio367 on 10/14/2000. ***

I'm fairly certain that time and time again MIT is ranked as the best engineering school in the country. But that place is a little unrealistic for those of us with ACT scores below 36. I think I want to major in mechanical engineering, but I'm still slightly on the fence. I have apps mailed in to Michigan (Ann Arbor) and IIT so far.

What I really wanted to say in this post was, if you don't like and or excel in Math, engineering is probably not for you. We're talking a whole lot of semesters of Calculus (thankfully I'm taking AP Caluculus as a senior this year).

My brother got an ACT score of 34, and an SAT score of 1540. But I don't think he's going to become an engineer of any kind.

Here is an idea, buy Rollercoaster Tycoon and you can build all the rollercoasters you want!!!

Better yet, purchase UltraCoaster. The physics model used is a little more realistic. Unfortunately, pysical info (speed, height, length, G's, etc) isn't reported back to the user.

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Scott W. Short
scott@midwestcoastercentral.com
http://www.midwestcoastercentral.com