<p>I'm going to be studying engineering as a college freshmen in the fall. In high school, I was really active in clubs and sports, but now that I'm moving to college, I've heard that the workload in engineering can be very time consuming. </p>
<p>There are a lot of clubs and activities that I think I would want to try out, but since I don't think I'm not going to have time for all of them, I'm wondering how time is there to take part in clubs and activities? if your an engineering student now, maybe even list what clubs/sports/activities you're part of?</p>
<p>It varies from person to person. Some will spend every hour they have just trying to keep up. Others will have time for major extracurricular activities. A lot of it comes down to time management more than anything else.</p>
<p>A lot of it also depends on your pace. If you are carrying a heavy courseload (because you are trying to catch up or get ahead) then you may not have time for such things. But if you follow a “normal” engineering courseload you should have some time for fun as well.</p>
<p>FWIW, I did martial arts, a music group, and a part-time job as an undergrad.</p>
<p>Experiences will VARY from individual to individual. I just finished my first semester and I was part of no clubs or social activities. I spent all my free time and weekends at the library and I barely survived.</p>
<p>I am also older, already got partying and chasing girls out of my system, so obviously, it is easy for me to focus and not be distracted by other crap.</p>
<p>Having a girlfriend is totally out of question at this point because I would not be able to focus-I mean, Would you rather be out with your girlfriend on a Sat afternoon having fun or spend your Saturday afternoon at the library studying Calculus?</p>
<p>Sorry but my experience has been that the more socially involved you become- the less focused you are going to be resulting in less time spent studying and doing school work</p>
<p>Obviously, there are a lot of CC’ers who were able to keep a 3.5 GPA in Engineering while having an amazing social life full of excitement but those stories are mostly BS.</p>
<p>It will also vary on your course load. A student who is only taking 12-13 credits will be able to juggle things better than a jam packed schedule of 17-18 credits.</p>
<p>The amount of free time varies tremendously depending on the person, the school, the courseload, and what type of grades you are getting. You can find examples of engineering students who spend little time studying and have lots of free time every day, or others that spend an enormous amount of time on school and still aren’t getting A’s. I’d expect the vast majority of engineering students don’t spend every moment studying and have plenty of time for other activities. </p>
<p>As an example, I took a heavy enough courseload at Stanford to finish a bachelors and masters in EE in slightly less than 4 years (had some transferable credits from HS) and received good enough grades to be accepted to 2 Stanford grad programs before getting my undergrad degree. Nevertheless, I still had time to briefly be on the crew team, in the cycling club, workout 10-20 hours per week, be a research assistant, work several part time jobs (never had more than 2 jobs at the same time), briefly start a company that provided computer help to students, as well as take a lot of electives including electives to finish the pre-med track (decided to do grad work in engineering, rather than medicine after finishing). I often combined the activities, such as having a textbook with me to look at between sets at the gym or while on the cycling machine. I wasn’t really into partying or dating, but I did spend a good amount of time relaxing and doing things like watch some favorite TV shows, a movie with friends, read a book, go to a book signing or special event on campus, spend half a day in SF, etc. During my last year on campus, I also had enough free time during the academic year to apply for full-time jobs and interview at ~a dozen companies that were spread out over 4-5 states.</p>
<p>It was many years ago, but I got better grades when I was involved in activities other than just schoolwork. I played varsity sports. It was at the D3 level. In season, you were pretty busy with daily practices, home and away games (about a 3 hour bus ride was as far as we went). I was also in a fraternity, but at MIT the fraternities were pretty tame as far as the social scene went so it didn’t cut into your personal time much at all.</p>
<p>I found that when I was in season I had to budget my time. You would be swamped otherwise. Out of season, you always thought you had lots of time but it was always not as much as you thought. I felt I was always scrambling to get things done when I was out of season and didn’t have the discipline to tightly budget my time.</p>
<p>So it is possible to do more than just schoolwork. In fact, doing just school work will probably drive you nuts. It would have me.</p>