What is the difference between M.S and M.E?

At MIT, the Master of Engineering (ME) is a five-year alternate work-study course resulting in the Master of Engineering and one of the three bachelor's degrees. It has the theoretical qualifications of the BS degree, e.g. BSEE, but the added experience of working in industry. It's an absolutely great program, for the best students in a specific engineering category such as Electrical Engineering. I didn't take it myself, I got my BSEE at MIT and my MSEE at UCBerkeley, but the ME route would have been at least as good.

http://web.mit.edu/catalog/degre.engin.elect.html

When I was at MIT I considered the Master of Science (SM) and Master of Engineering (MEng) degrees as plateaus for those who were undecided as to where they wanted to go. Graduate transfers from other universities who were still finding their way.

http://web.mit.edu/catalog/overv.chap4-gdr.html

From this, you can see that a standard full graduate degree .... MSEE, MSCS, MSME etc ... is more clearly defined both at Uni and in industry. For much more knowledge of a specific subject, you should point straight at the PhD and be ready to do a reasearch-quality thesis.

Here's an interesting discussion among students similar to you.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/colleges-universiti...

From this discussion, I suppose one distinction at some universities might be whether a graduate thesis is required, or not. I'm only guessing, I was required to do both a Bachelor's (MIT) and Masters (UCBerkeley) thesis.

I haven't checked Harvard (we always thought of them as that girl's school down the street (Mass Ave))

Good luck, friend, it's a mysterious road in many ways, whichever your path, but a fine trip.

At my university, the ME and the MS degree students took the same classes. The MS degrees were awarded to those who successfully completed and defended an original line of experimental research. The ME degrees were awarded to those who either could not successfully complete their research and wrote up the results in a paper or who only completed a research paper without conducting an actual experiment.

In the almost 30 years since I got my MS in ChE, I have seen little difference in the treatment of ME and MS degrees in industry. The emphasis is on the fact you have a masters and there appears to be little distinction between the two. One exception would be if you intend to be in research, either at a university or industrial R&D, they generally do want someone with an MS instead of an ME, all other things being equal.

A "Master of Sciences" theoretically (!) does theoretical science.

A "Master of Engineering" theoretically applies the theoretical science to practical problems in an economic way (that's what engineers do, big picture)

Usually the engineer will make more money than the scientist.