<p>Please help out those seeking to pursue a career in engineering by providing us with advice and information on what an engineering major will bring to our future college lives. Is there something you wish someone would have told you since the beginning?. I would be really interested in hearing study skills or habits which have helped you learn the material more efficiently and perform better on exams. Any type of advice is welcome, from freshman year to seeking internships. Also, on average how much free time , if any, do you have per day and (if it's a small amount) is this a result of procrastinating? Have you had many all-nighters in your college life due to work-load? Please let us know the school you attend and your gpa as well. I would really appreciate the info, and I'm sure many others would be interested.</p>
<p>bump 10char</p>
<p>Heres the truth about engineering school. You will work your ass off. Theres no doubt about that. Engineering is difficult. Your friends in other majors wont understand and you will have to choose: social life or grades. I recommend balancing the two, but favoring grades over the others. If you procrastinated you will have to do all nighters. I made it through without any all nighters.</p>
<p>The best piece of advice that i have though: don’t compare yourself to your peers. Do your best. You will find pretty quickly that there are two types of engineering students: those with talent and everyone else. Those with talent breeze through the courses, the homework and the tests. Everyone else struggles. If you have talent, then it won’t be very difficult for you. Just don’t be a jerk to everyone else. If you don’t have natural talent, then work hard, and don’t compare yourself against those who do. Otherwise you will just get frustrated and want to quit. On a related note, professors teach to the ones with talent,which is why classes can seem so hard at times.</p>
<p>Profs aren’t there to fail you, or weed you out. Even if it seems like it at times. Put your nose down and work hard and youll do fine.</p>
<p>Engineering isn’t as demanding as people make it out to be. I assume it’s a hard transition for those who didn’t need to focus in class or study much for tests in high school, and those without the needed prerequisites (I’m talking about the knowledge/skills, not grades/classes taken). </p>
<p>Sure, engineering is demanding when you compare it to many other majors, but in my opinion that says more about those majors than it does about engineering.</p>
<p>I was nervous before I started, and would have liked to know that the only people who don’t succeed, are those without the necessary prerequisites and those who spend way too little time studying. If you spend 35-45 hours a week on school (classes,homework,labs,studying,etc) there is no reason that you or the average person wouldn’t succeed. Honestly, all you need is to have a firm grasp of algebra 2, some trig, and a decent work ethic and engineering shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Of course, having taken more advanced classes would be a benefit, but by all means not necessary.</p>
<p>Engineering students only think they work their ass of because they compare themselves to students in majors that require very little. I have yet to meet a student in one of my math/engineering classes that does not posses the required intellect to do well. I have however met many students who do posses the required intellect, but still do not do well, be it because of partying, lack of motivation or whatnot. The thing they all have in common is that they simply don’t spend enough time with the material (35-45 hours would more than suffice).</p>
<p>For many students college is the first time in their lives that no one is looking over their shoulders, making sure they do what they are supposed to. There isn’t any more handholding, you need to wake up in the morning, get to class and do the required work. I’ve seen valedictorians crumble and C-students soar, from the new responsibility given to them. The most valuable and important trait a successful engineering student has is maturity. Posses it, and you will be fine.</p>
<p>Great post Tomas.</p>
<p>Agreed-I’m going to show ur post to my son-looking into ME Thks</p>
<p>Keep your “ear to the street” as far as what is hot and in demand. There are already too many things in life to compete for so why add on to it? Tailor you curriculum so you don’t HAVE to ace everything to advance, so you CAN party and socialize.</p>
<p>Once you start working in a high-demand industry, trust me…it feels good. Almost makes you feel like you are “entitled” or something.</p>
<p>The one thing it took me a while to figure out, but is harder to do. Don’t procrastinate!</p>
<p>I found high school very easy, hardly had to study at all to get almost a 4.0. Granted, High school is more demanding now than when I went years ago. </p>
<p>I thought I could just cruise through like I did in H.S., but no, that didn’t work at all. College turned out to be much more difficult, a lot more work in a shorter period of time. </p>
<p>If you keep up on your studies everyday, do the homework everyday, go to all the classes, study long before and up to the tests it a lot easier. Get help right away if you don’t understand something.</p>
<p>I know this sounds basic, but seems like a lot of kids don’t do it. They wait until 3 days before a Calc final to start studying for it. That’s what I did at first. It was hard to pull a C, doing this. I worked my butt off for short periods of time, only to get mediocre results, or worse. When I finally stopped procrastinating, and started doing the work every day, getting A’s & B’s felt a lot easier than the way I was doing it as a freshman, and getting C’s.</p>
<p>Any advice on how to prepare before college starts for the engineering curriculum (specifically ChemE)?</p>
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<p>Take one semester at a time and remember that the INTERMEDIATE goal is to get admitted to the last 2 years of the program. If that means taking less credits during fall and spring semesters and using the summers for some of the general education courses…so be it.</p>
<p>At some universities, credit units assigned to a course are supposed to be proportional to workload, but often are not. You’ll want to find out from other students which courses are heavy versus light workload for their credit units. Then try to even out the workload by not taking too many “heavy” courses together. Or take fewer credit units when you have more “heavy” courses and more credit units when you have fewer or no “heavy” courses.</p>
<p>Usually, courses with labs, large term projects, or lots of computer programming tend to be “heavy” courses.</p>
<p>bump 10char</p>
<p>I did not major in engineering, but my son is currently a mechanical engineering senior. Here are my observations based upon comments he has made over the past 4 years. </p>
<p>He goes to all his classes. It seems like only about half of the students regularly attend.</p>
<p>He starts his problem sets as soon as they are assigned. He tutors a few younger students, and is amazed that they wait until 2 hours before they’re due to start them. (Maybe that is one reason why they need to go to the tutoring center.)</p>
<p>He studies for the tests much ahead of time. He rereads the textbook, his notes, and reviews the problems from the homework.</p>
<p>He attend sessions the professor offers for extra help, even when he has an A average. Sometimes the professor offers extra insight which was helpful on a test.</p>
<p>He sits in the front of the classroom and gets to know the professors.</p>
<p>This must have worked for him. His GPA is 3.9. He is smart, but he also works hard.</p>
<p>He starts looking for an internship each year in early fall. He had one after freshman, sophomore, and junior years. The one in the summer before senior year worked out well. They offered him a job in October, and he will start work shortly after graduation.</p>
<p>He does have some time for fun, but certainly not as much time as students in “easier” majors. I think the above advice about work/fun balance and not procrastinating are key.</p>
<p>The trick to success in Engineering and technical classes is to avoid memorization it will never serve you well. Instead learn to think, do Problem Sets, ask questions, and don’t take some fact for granted, think it through. Even notorious “memorization” classes like OChem really only require limited amounts of actual memorization if you can think through reactions, mechanisms, and structure.</p>
<p>ahhh thank you soo much for this thread! i’m a prospective mechE major who’s thinking about attending Georgia Tech or Carnegie Mellon. I was soo nervous about my future because people make it seem like majoring in engineering in college is practically impossible unless you’re a genius. </p>
<p>could you tell me what colleges/universities you attended?</p>