<p>I'll be heading off soon as a freshman in chemical engineering. I'd just like to hear some stories from veterans of any engineering major, and I'd appreciate tips you could share with me which might have made your life easier. I've bought a coffee pot, so I'm good to go there!</p>
<p>More specifically though, how did you organize your papers? I have five classes, so should I just get five spiral notebooks and five folders? Sounds idiot-proof enough.</p>
<p>It’s good to write down everything you know before each exam in a concise manner (don’t just fill up pages with things you don’t fully understand). If you do this effectively, you get 90s on every exam and a nice review packet before the final. Keep your homework, exams, and cheatsheets in a folder and have 1 folder/notebook per class. When doing homework, don’t procrastinate and try to finish to problems on your own. Be confident in your answers and make sure you understand your mistakes. Don’t memorize stuff… oh wait.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Read the book ahead of time. When the proff says “read this chapter for the next lecture” do it. </p></li>
<li><p>Don’t rely on solution manuals. You’ll only end up memorizing solutions rather than learning the subject.</p></li>
<li><p>Take notes. Not just what the professor writes on the board but also what he talks about–use different color pens if you need to. </p></li>
<li><p>Learn the CORE concepts. Pay attention in your core classes (Physics, Thermo, Fluids, Dynamics). Also, be damn good at calculus and don’t rely on the TI-89. You’d be surprised where it pops-back up. I’m looking at you Taylor series. </p></li>
<li><p>Review your notes/lectures every day. Spend 2-3 hours just reviewing the notes to keep it fresh in your mind. Trust me, this will free up time for the weekend and circumvent cramming.</p></li>
<li><p>Write in your books and make them your own. I haven’t sold any of my books and still find myself referencing them. If your proff assigns his own HW, get an older copy of the book.</p></li>
<li><p>DON’T MEMORIZE–focus on concepts. Derive equations yourself and convince yourself that they are right. Don’t just say “oh you use the same equation from #4”–instead strive to learn the concepts.</p></li>
<li><p>Find what works for you studying wise. It might be using flash cards in the library or models at your desk. Find your own groove and go with it. Don’t be pressured into group study sessions if you feel you won’t get anything out of it. </p></li>
<li><p>Most importantly, HAVE FUN. Engineers work hard but should also play hard. Go attend the parties, get drunk, break a few hearts and have yours broken as well.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“Most importantly, HAVE FUN. Engineers work hard but should also play hard. Go attend the parties, get drunk, break a few hearts and have yours broken as well.”</p>
<p>LMAO!</p>
<p>^ Some of us do have time to have fun…even if that’s a very small percentage…</p>
<p>I certainly had lots of fun as an engineering major in college. I had enough fun that I was out at least twice a week doing whatever I felt like at the time, yet still graduated with a 3.5 and a full ride to grad school, so its not impossible.</p>
<p>This leads me to my first advice:
<p>2) Time Management!!! It took me a bit of time to get this one down, and as such, my earlier semesters look worse than my later ones. Still, learn to manage your time effectively. This takes on different forms for each person, but make sure you have some way to keep track of assignments, exams, quizzes, papers and projects and when they are all due so that you have it all in front of you when you need it and can plan accordingly. My life got a lot easier when I bought a whiteboard to keep it all on and hang in my room where I would see it every 3 seconds reminding me anything that I may have forgotten. Just find a way to stay organized and on task that works for you.</p>
<p>3) Don’t become a workaholic. It is important to keep up with your studies, but you need some “you time” as well, otherwise you will go nuts. I know that for me, if I didn’t take breaks and do fun things from time to time to break up the studying, I started to get very inefficient.</p>
<p>4) I second what nshah said about learning core courses (including calc). I definitely chuckled when I read the Taylor series comment. That came up and quite a few classes surprisingly. If you are ever wanting to do fluid mechanics stuff, then the more advanced courses will use Taylor series especially, as well as things like delta-epsilon limits (yuck). The core courses for your major are also very important. Make sure you don’t just skate through them.</p>
<p>5) Again, I have to agree with nshah and say don’t just memorize and regurgitate. Know the physics behind what happens, not just the equation that describes it. If you understand the physical parts of a subject well, you should be able to derive (or recall) any of the applicable equations, as well as the problem solving method.</p>
<p>6) Here is a very important one. LOOK FOR INTERNSHIPS EARLY!!! It is increasingly important these days to go look for summer (or semester) internships and/or co-ops. Get experience out in the world, and get paid while doing it. That is perhaps the best way to boost your resume as a student and to help get a job later. Start looking as a freshman. Go to the career fairs. Not a ton of companies hire freshman (though some do… Rolls-Royce, for instance), but even if you don’t find anyone hiring, you will at least get experience going to career fairs and talking to employers, so that the next time, when you COULD get hired, you will have been through all that before.</p>
<p>Here is where I differ from nshah.
In my undergrad, I did not spend 2-3 hours per night going over my notes, and I didn’t write in my books or any of that. I went to class, took notes, and kept those notes organized and then would go do the homework, and if I had problems on that, then I would come back to my notes and go over what the prof said. However, this is really a personal preference thing. What you really need to do is just see what works best for you. Maybe start with the extreme stuff like nshah suggested, and if it seems like it is overkill for you, then scale it back.</p>
<p>Last, but not least: Make sure you are enjoying your course of study. The fastest way to be unhappy is if you don’t like your major, and therefore, eventual career. Don’t be afraid to add an extra semester or two if you have to switch majors later, because in the long run, you will be happier, which pays dividends.</p>
<p>I agree with the points that bone made.</p>
<p>Maybe studying 2-3 hours per day is a little crazy–to be honest, I never really studied too hard in engineering but still got a full ride to graduate school for thermal-fluids. </p>
<p>Most of my advice stems from a graduate student/industry guy looking back at what things I would of changed when i was a UG. My main point about learning the conceps stems from my graduate classes, especially Incompressible Flow. If you don’t know the bare basics (NS derivations or mathematical definitions such as curl/divergence) you’ll be hopelessly lost. </p>
<p>I COMPLETELY AGREE with Bonehead’s point on getting an internship. I absolutely feel that you should strive to have something productive during your summers–though it is rare, try to start internship hunting your sophomore year summer (before Junior year). You need an internship before your senior year to have any real hopes of getting a job in this economy. Co-op/intern as much as possible. Trust me, it’s well worth an extra semester or a hard summer to have the connections/point of contact for future employment.</p>
<p>An alternative is UG research which will look great for graduate school and can be spun well for job interviews. Start early and find a field that you are interested in, if all goes well, you might be able to get a Masters after 2-3 years of strong UG research.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that you shouldn’t sit idly by and focus on just academics.</p>
<p>Haha, I laughed at your comment about the NS derivations. In my first grad fluids class, when the prof said the NS equations were just F=ma, there were a lot of shocked people. I couldn’t believe so many people had never actually seen the equations derived before.</p>
<p>bump any other great advices ?</p>
<p>thanks to those already commented</p>
<p>Use office hours - don’t waste the time trying to figure something out that will take less time to be taught… unless you have that time</p>
<p>Study groups are for discussing what you already know, not learning what you don’t. So, don’t count it as studying.</p>
<p>Get in a study group. For why you won’t learn anything you may actually start to understand something.</p>
<p>Join your AiChE EEE or whatever</p>
<p>C affine doesn’t make you stay up later, it just makes you more confused. Spread out your studying over the quarter/semester and avoid all nighters and get plenty of sleep.</p>
<p>Find a good spot in the library that stays open 24 hours or the latest.</p>
<p>All because the computers in the lab are networked, doesn’t mean they like you playing games with your friends on them.</p>
<p>Don’t miss a class.</p>
<p>I would say that time management and the control of it are the most important.</p>
<p>1) Use office hrs when needed
2) Join as many study groups as possible
3) Never take an 8am class, even if it’s video taped
4) Try to find old exams
5) Try to take classes where the professor has high marks from student reviews</p>
<p>" 3) Never take an 8am class "</p>
<p>Oh man
my MWF are 8 am chem class (lecture) and Thursday is 8 am Math 3c Discussion (Diff Eq and Lin Alg)</p>
<p>Hi i am an international student and i was wondering if some one could help me figuring which university would be better for mechanical engineering undergraduate from one of these. Wayne state university or Florida International University. Please help me getting into a good university from these.</p>
<p>Don’t worry amby262roy, everyone ends up taking 8am’s at some point out of necessity, but if you can ever avoid them, then definitely do it… unless of course you are one of those creepy morning people.</p>
<p>To set yourself apart, it is good to remember that your employment success at graduation is directly related with how well you can market yourself. During your four years at school, you are really in the design phase of a product that you, and you alone, will have to sell upon graduation. The others on here have given great advice for how to build a quality product. </p>
<p>My advice, on top of what has already been said, is to implement a concurrent design process for yourself while in school. Along with having a quality product to sell, in todays job market you need pretty packaging to garner the salary you deserve at graduation. There are four main points to deliver a solid sales pitch[in order of importance] : a good GPA, Internships/Co-Ops, Communication Skills, and Extracurricular Activities(that involve leadership!).</p>
<p>A good GPA can be obtained by the many points of good advice above.
Internships/Co-Ops are directly related to your motivation and how quickly you learn their importance. Too many students put this off until their junior year, at which time they try to sell a product that is less desirable than their peers who learned early on that experience is a dividing factor in the job market. Even at target schools, good internships are highly competitive. My advice, is to treat obtaining one with the utmost urgency. Look at it as another class, only one that you are going to have to teach yourself with limited guidance. Learning how to write a resume and interview are equally as important as your competence in calculus in the job market, perhaps more important. Get started as early as possible, work as hard at perfecting these skills as you do anything else in school.</p>
<p>Communication skills are vital in todays world. The current trend is to hire well rounded technical people. Technical genius will get you far, but not nearly as far as those same skills with communication skills to complement them. There are many ways to learn them. Frats, fraternities, clubs, and friendships all teach them. Get involved and dont shy away from social situations, learn to communicate with others effectively. Your English classes, speech classes, etc., shouldnt be taken lightly. I have worked with students in engineering who cant be relied upon to uphold their fair share in projects because their writing skills are too poor to turn in. Theyre technically smart kids, but god-awful at communicating what they know. </p>
<p>Extracurricular activities are a great way to add bonuses to your resume. Whether youre involved with the community, sports, clubs, etc., it is always a plus. Your workload is heavy, and if you have a social life, it puts pressure to leave this point out when times get tough. Stick with them and maneuver your way to a leadership position. Smaller organizations offer a better opportunity to make it to the top, but anything is better than nothing. Get involved early and do as many of them as you can. </p>
<p>And remember, throughout your four years you are building the product that you have to sell. Any major deficiency in one of these areas will impact you in the job market. Obviously, if you read this thread you will see that most engineers do, in fact, care about starting salaries. Yet, many brilliant engineering students cant sell themselves, and havent built a marketable product during their time in school. If you do these four things, youll get numerous offers and have more power in choosing your career path. From that point its up to you to deliver the product you sold them.</p>
<p>Thanks boneh3ad, i’ll try to take 10 o clock classes during my winter and spring quarter !!! </p>
<p>and purduefrank : very exact to the point advice … nice thank you</p>
<p>Basically just keep on top of the material you’re studying and stay organized. Don’t be afraid to seek out help if you need it because it will pay off in the long run. I went through undergrad without ever having to pull an all nighter mainly because I never left everything for the last minute. Granted there will be late nights but just keep your eye on the big picture and you’ll be fine. You’re at college to study and ultimately earn a degree in engineering, but also remember to relax once in a while. </p>
<p>And like everyone was saying, try not to take an 8am class, esp. in the dead of winter</p>
<p>The best advice I could ever give somebody is to make good, solid and reliable friends early on in your higher education. Especially in engineering, projects in upper level classes become incredibly long, sometimes not even completable by one single person. Even though these projects are not team projects it is common and almost expected for students to work together on them. </p>
<p>So make a few good friends and get through the program together. You will be much more likely to get through it and you will get alot more out of the program, all while creating a good network.</p>
<p>Member makes another good point about socializing.</p>
<p>In your engineering UG you will be working in teams and it will be with random people. With that said, remain in good spirits and contribute your share of the work. If you are the leader (strive to be), don’t be a ******. </p>
<p>Word travels around and students know who’s a solid lab mate and who isn’t.</p>