<p>To all you engineering undergraduates over here, can you describe an average day of your life and also state what branch of engineering you study. I'm just curious.</p>
<p>Civil. Wake up at around 7-7:30, usually have classes from 8-5 with tons of breaks in between. Some days are easier and emptier than others. Use breaks to surf the internet, eat, do homework with friends or go to a computer lab and work on labs. If not too busy and there’s a huge gap, go to gym. After class, go back, get comfortable, start lazily doing homework/ studying/ hang out with friends/ have dinner. Occasionally have club meetings at 6:30pm, but usually counts as dinner because free pizza! Go to bed before midnight (usually around 11:30). Repeat. </p>
<p>I usually pace myself/ procrastinate, so Friday evenings are for fun, saturday is the easier work and more fun, sunday is for catching up/ getting prepared for monday.</p>
<p>IE and CS. I wake up about an hour before classes (usually around 9:30 - past few semesters my earliest class has always been at 10:40 and it takes about 40 minutes to get to class) go to classes (I try to schedule them all together in blocks). Usually get lunch when I’m done with my “morning block” of classes, and I usually have another class or two somewhere from 5-9. If I stay at school all day then I usually go back home after my last class. If I have a long break like 4 hours with nothing due immediately, I might just go home and come back later for my last class, possibly staying after to do whatever work I have to do. </p>
<p>My schedule isn’t very regular, I generally just do whatever I feel like doing whenever I want.</p>
<p>Optical Sciences and Engineering. My schedule has varied semester to semester so I will give my upcoming semester as an example. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I have class from 10 am until 3 pm. On Tuesday I have class from 8 am to 6 pm. And on Thursday I have class from 12:30 pm to 6 pm. Depending on what I have going on, I will either get to campus on time for my first class or come in early to work on any projects, homework, etc. that I have going on. I have breaks in between these time periods ranging from 1 hour to 3 hours. When I am on one of these breaks, I am typically either in the library or my department building studying and doing homework, both in groups and alone. If I find that I don’t have a lot of homework or studying to do, (that only happens regularly the first couple of weeks of school) I will fiddle around on my laptop. I also fit lunch at the student union into these breaks. When I finish classes for the day, one of two things happens: 1) I go home (I live off campus) and exercise for an hour. Then I start doing any homework/studying that I could not get to in between classes that day. I have dinner. I love TV and movies so I always make time for TV and movie watching before going to sleep Or 2) I go to work until 8 pm, come home, eat dinner, do as much homework as I can, watch a little TV, and go to bed. I usually go to sleep between 11 and 11:30 pm. I work part time 15 hrs. a week so I am not working every day.</p>
<p>My friends and I make an effort to coordinate our schedules to have lunch together at least once a week. In addition, we do a lot of hanging out on Friday nights and the weekends. I have always found that Friday nights are good hang out nights because most people don’t study or do homework at that time, no matter how much they have to do. I spend my weekends doing some homework and studying, but I try to get most of that done during the week if I can.</p>
<p>Aerospace
I’m on the 5 year plan, 12-15 credits per semester. GPA 4.0 so far.</p>
<p>Starting third year,
14 semester hours</p>
<p>Monday - Friday
600-730 wake, morning chores
800-830, drop off daughter at daycare
900-500 classes/hw/study/internship 6 hours
530-600 pick up daughter from daycare
630-1030 evening chores, games or hw depending, bed</p>
<p>Weekends
Internship another 9 hours. “Free” time unless behind.</p>
<p>I quote “free” because when you’re married with a toddler and live in a fixer upper house, you don’t just sit around all day playing video games (at least not every weekend :-P)</p>
<p>I technically have an 8am class and an evening lab tuesdays, so my wife takes care of daycare tuesdays.</p>
<p>Biomedical Engineering. My schedule varied greatly from year to year. My most recent semester, I basically had class or work everyday from 9am-5/6pm (I worked ~16 hours a week on campus), Monday-Thursday. I would usually wake up 15-20 min before work or class and bike to campus :P. Fridays I had completely free. </p>
<p>I think my class schedule was actually very chill every semester (except for one semester where I took 5 engineering classes… I still don’t know why), but working definitely made my schedule more busy. Money is always nice! I was also on a dance team for a few semesters, but we practiced ~10 hours a week, so eventually I quit. Also, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights were always open for house parties, bars, clubs, etc… And tried to explore throughout the weekend. Random weekend trips (Vegas and Coachella!). Almost never did any work from Thursday until Sunday night 
still graduated!</p>
<p>Interesting to know what year of school you are.</p>
<p>^ In response to that. I am a senior.</p>
<p>Second Semester Sophomore due to Co-ops.</p>
<p>I just graduated last semester.</p>
<p>Thanks all! </p>
<p>How would those of you who have done it compare junior year to freshman and sophomore? </p>
<p>Full disclosure; I am the mother of a rising junior, and I’m a little worried about it getting even harder than the last two years, but I’d rather tell you than him.</p>
<p>The first semester of my sophomore year was essentially the same as my Freshman year. I was enrolled in gen eds, math courses, gen chem, physics, and had one major course and one lab in the first semester of my sophomore year. Those first three semesters were fairly straight forward. The second semester of my sophomore year was a little harder as more major courses were added. The first semester of my junior year was harder still with even more major specific courses, but still doable. My most recent semester this past spring was a living hell. It really tested me as a student and made me do some deep thinking about if I really did love my major enough to continue on. My upcoming two semesters look as difficult as that semester (and I have the added stress of a senior capstone), but I am told by graduates of my program that if I could get through the second semester of my junior year, I can finish off strong. So I am hoping that is the case.</p>
<p>This will vary from field to field, but I am of the opinion that if you can make it through junior year in your engineering program, you are home free.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Thanks all! </p>
<p>How would those of you who have done it compare junior year to freshman and sophomore? </p>
<p>Full disclosure; I am the mother of a rising junior, and I’m a little worried about it getting even harder than the last two years, but I’d rather tell you than him.
[quote]
</p>
<p>Any of the harder classes should (presumably) be at least somewhat more interesting to him than general Calc, Physics, Chem, etc. So it sort of compensates. Also they are generally curved higher (those general classes where I go are generally curved to the bottom of a B- whereas major classes are generally curved to a high B-, maybe a B, and upper level classes are generally curved to a B+) so it’s not so bad.</p>
<p>Mechanical Engineering here, bout to go into my junior year. heres my plan for this upcoming semester. wake up at 830, go to the gym grab breakfast be back around 10, shower go to classes. Grab food in between classes/ go to library to study a bit. Be done with class around 4-5, go back to dorm and hang out a bit. Go to library around 6 and study until 11 or 12. Go back to dorm, hang out then go to sleep. Weekends, try to hang out mostly, go play some basketball, then go out at night but try to get work done if needed. its really not too bad if you are expecting to do work. what really sucks are the week of the tests, those are some crazy stressful times as some of my tests are literally make or break and are worth like 40% of your whole grade.</p>
<p>The life of an engineering student really isn’t all that much different than the life of a college student. You’re expected to prepare for lectures, do homework, learn the material etc… If you have excellent time management skills, there’s no reason why you can’t get all your classwork done and do a bunch of other stuff as well.</p>
<p>But don’t you have to study more as an engineering major rather than a… let’s say business studies major?</p>
<p>Wake up, study, eat, study, sleep. Computer science.</p>
<p>Interesting thread, and I have a related question. I’m just starting my freshman year in MechE and, initially, my schedule doesn’t seem as though it will be stressful (for fall semester, Calc 1, intro to eng, eng graphics (SolidWorks), English and one other GE). I’ve got a 40-minute commute (each way) to campus, and was happy I could fit the above into three days a week to keep the commute manageable. But I suspect that as time goes on that may be difficult to do. At this point I’m planning to go through in five rather than four years. But as I get into more courses that involve labs etc is it likely that my three-day-a-week class schedule will be hard to pull off?</p>
<p>Aichuk - There was a study done a couple years back that polled students of different majors by asking how much they studied. It was found that folks with engineering majors studied most on average. See this: <a href=“http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/thechoice/2011/11/17/nsse-survey/[/url]”>http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/thechoice/2011/11/17/nsse-survey/</a></p>
<p>Of course, this is not the be all end all. Studying usually varies from individual to individual.</p>
<p>Angeleno23 - I think it depends on how many sections of a course are offered every semester. My senior class has only 40 or so students, so classes only have one section and are offered only once a year. So essentially, we as students are at the mercy of their scheduling. When you have more variety in course sections offered, it is a lot easier to make a more relaxed schedule. Because labs are so long, you may find it more difficult to get a 3 days per week schedule, but again that can also vary.</p>
<p>-Wake up/Go to school
-Study a bit if there’s time available before class
-Class(es)
-Extracurricular
-Go home/Do homework and study</p>
<p>*Study and/or screw around during breaks between classes</p>