I am not doing well in Engineering and I don't know why. Advice please?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

I am an African American. I am now in my 2nd year at a university studying Mechanical Engineering. I have at least 3 more semesters to go and let me tell you Engineering is not a walk in the park at all. I found myself retaking Calculus 3. I got a D in Statics but I am still pushing forward. Why am I doing poorly in my classes? It is because of my genetics, my study habits or my lack of interest in engineering? I have researched so much to find out why is this? I have a friend that should be in the same level as me but she keeps failing Calculus 1. She barely passed Physics 1. She is a white student. It’s not because of our genetics, our study habits or our lack of interest in engineering. It’s the fact that the American System has failed us. But many say oh don’t blame the system it’s you! Your always looking for something to blame except yourself. I am suffering academically bad at my university. I want to be an engineer but I don’t know why I keep failing my classes. I want to be a top student but I don’t know what’s going on. Yes I go to a tough univeirtsy but I know many people, specifically foreigners that graduated with 3.5 and higher. I want to be like them but I dont know how. Yes the American System has failed me and I have to find a way to get over the hoops of what the American System has done to me and try to survive in engineering school. Right now I am taking

Calculus 3 C
Physics 2 D
Matlab D

To many non American students these classes are a walk in the park but how? Am I not studying the material correctly? I just want to know what is the secret to passing such difficult classes?

2

When it comes to classes I think of it as a game. The first time around you play the game you fail a couple of times because your new to the game and you don’t know what to expect. But with practice you get better and better and find yourself achieving high scores! But the classes that I have mentioned above is very difficult and I am having a hard time practicing the material it’s just not making since. I wish I can say it makes since and that I am mastering all of the concepts and I am ready for the next level but I will be lieing to myself. I think it’s a way to sstudy the material but I am having a hard time trying to find my study habits. Many people are privileged and can afford to have a tutor for these classes maybe that’s how they are passing. I just need advice. I can read from a book because I don’t understand the language of a Physcist, Computer Scientist or Mathmatecian. These are languages and I am having a hard time understanding it. What can I do? I just want to do great.

3

What feedback are you getting from your professors or your tutor? I’m assuming you are going for extra help.

4

For starters, please edit out the genetics comment because that is false and disturbing. I have a child that is in his second year of engineering and I agree that the curriculum is challenging, but if you are attending all the classes, studying and going to the help centers, perhaps engineering isn’t the best fit for you. A fair amount of college students change their major and it is nothing to be ashamed about.

5

This is the strategy taken by my Chem E daughter. Know your syllabus, read material to be covered in class before you go to class and take notes, go to ALL classes and take notes, combine notes. At this point you know what you don’t know. Go to any and all study sessions in courses you are struggling in and finally talk to professors. She also would talk to students who have taken the courses before her from the same professor and ask how they test. She found that there was often a pattern to how they tested, their methodology and the types of questions asked. She found out quickly that getting behind was a recipe for disaster and even more stress than engineering students usually have. She thinks that for engineering students the best way to not get behind is to try and get ahead of the course. She is now in the top 10% of her class. Finally, find a mentor who might be able to guide you in the process. I wish you luck. It’s not easy.

6

While it may feel tempting to blame the “American System” for your present difficulties, it’s not a productive road to choose. You will burn a lot of valuable time and energy there without gaining an inch on your journey. Leave it, along with every other consideration that doesn’t directly apply to your individual willingness and ability.

7

It’s hard material. Plenty of students of all kinds of backgrounds switch to other majors. It may be that your high school education didn’t prepare you well for college-level math and science, in which case you would have to work/study very hard to make up for that, but there’s also no shame in switching out if you decide that it isn’t for you. (The other student you mention, for instance, might consider it – the classes only get harder after Calc 1.)

It might be easier to advise you if you know why those low grades happened. Behind in the material? Test anxiety? Too much partying and not enough studying? Studying the wrong things? Just looking over the info without doing practice problems?

8

This was a huge rant. I wish I could delete it but I can’t. But when I talked about genetics I was referring to the research I have found. I’m not saying it’s true. But I do too want to delete this post.

9

This is research and research is out there I was just pointing out the problems that people ail to tell us. It’s just like a game when you get in the competition you have to train yourself so you can be ready to fight and achieve your goals. Some of your strengths maybe weaker than others but that’s okay anybody can train their mind and achieve many goals and overcome many obstacles.

10

Also like a psychology perspective they told us all of this in my class. The reasons why there are not many African Americans and Hispanics on the STEM field. Comparing whites, Chinese and Asians to us. I am mad at what research is telling me as well. I wish I can change the American System and how there are public, college prep and vocational schools all teaching different curriculum and not the same stuff. But I didn’t make this world so it’s not my choice we all just have to live with it and over the obstacle which is the American System failing me.

11

Failing us

12

I am studying Calculus 3 right now and I seem to keep forgetting which rule applies to a certain function when intergrating, taking the derivative. I am going to try flashcards.

13

My kid is a Physics TA. She says the number of students who come to office hours or the TA tutoring sessions for help is really small compared to the number of students struggling in the class. No matter how many times the TAs suggest it (verbally, written on assignments, etc). And some that do come seem so embarrassed by their struggles that they don’t stick around to really get much benefit.

She told me a story yesterday of a young woman she explained a problem to. The student said she understood the explanation. Then D showed her a similar problem and suggested the student work it while they sat together to make sure the student understood it and D would provide more explanation if needed. The student threw up her hands and left. So just going to the sessions isn’t enough.

I agree with the suggestion above about reading the material before the lecture. And while they are old fashioned, flash cards with “bites” of info – concepts, equations, tricky twists you find while doing problem sets – all with your own words/notes, and then memorizing the little buggers cold can really help.

STEM is hard. My TA kid was complaining yesterday about a problem set she had to do for one of her classes. She has not always had great grades, but she still graduated from her undergrad program and was able to move on inher field.

Oh – and some of those foreign students are repeating the material, I bet. My kid’s graduate program is full of foreign students who are essentially repeating g their master’s level work. Also, they may have gone to STEM focused high schools.

14

This isn’t something that lends itself to a few sentences. None the less, here goes.

You have several unrelated questions/statements that seem to all coalesce into one result, your difficulty in engineering.

Black and Hispanic students do indeed represent a much lower proportion of STEM students and careers than population percentages suggest. It’s true statement, but why? If you haven’t taken statistics yet, correlation does not equal causation is a mantra that will be pounded into your head.

What is the underlying cause if it isn’t as simple as blaming race? This is a very complex topic, but in a nutshell, it’s socioeconomic.

Familial academic success is self perpetuating. Kids of high achieving parents are more likely to be high achievers because they are typically given more nurturing and enrichment. A child that doesn’t have parents help them with their homework, or read to them/with them, or give them music lessons, the list goes on and on, can still absolutely be a high achiever. The odds are just longer. More falls directly on the child and an institutional support structure that has less vested attachment to success than interested and engaged parents.

Opportunities are also stacked against Blacks and Hispanics succeeding academically due to the way we fund schools. Public schools are underwritten by property taxes. In most towns, kids from poor families go to underfunded schools. They have less equipment, bigger classes, and deal with a broader cross section of student motivation. There are a few cities that bus students based on a lottery. They have more uniform performance across race and economic backgrounds.

What is clear is that the color of a persons skin as a single variable has little to do with a person’s potential to achieve.

All that said, even if 100% of it is germane to you, it has no further relevance. You can’t undo the past.

What to do going forward is a two part problem. Students fail in engineering, in any cumulative discipline for that matter, for two reasons. They fail to develop a solid foundation to build upon and/or they don’t study effectively.

The former can only be sussed out through careful review. I’d suggest looking up tests for classes as far back as pre-calc and physics I and challenging yourself to see if you have any knowledge gaps. If so, fill them by doing something like Kahn. It’s a tedious process, but there’s no substitute. If you don’t have the building blocks, no amount of concentrated effort on new material can counteract that.

You also need to study in an efficient, organized, concentrated way. No one I’ve come across summarizes those skills better that Cal Newport did after surveying the Ivy League Phi Beta Kappa inductees. Look up his blog and books, specifically the one with A Student in the title.

Lastly, and this is important, engineering isn’t easy for anyone. There’s a reason it’s jokingly referred to as pre-business.

Good luck.

15

“engineering isn’t easy for anyone.”

I think that this is probably the most important part of this entire thread. I remember in a first year engineering course at MIT a lot of students complaining that the problem sets were too difficult. These were not average students (they had gotten into MIT). While I went in a different direction (Math), I am pretty sure that the engineering problems didn’t get any easier in upper year courses. There are plenty of students of any skin color or any background who are going to find engineering very difficult.

Another thing with math which I think also applies to engineering: What you are learning now depends upon what you learned last week and last month and last year. Thus if you start to fall behind it is just going to get tougher.

When I was a graduate student at a highly ranked university pretty much all I did was study. Saturday I slept in until 10am and then studied straight through until dinner. Sunday same thing except that I didn’t stop working until bedtime. During the week between classes I studied. That is what a math or engineering student at a top school does.

Another thing that I wonder about is the desire for many students in the US to got to the highest ranked school that they can get into. Higher ranked schools don’t have any magic way to impart information into students brains: They just require more work and expect students to pick stuff up more quickly. Personally I wouldn’t want to attend any university to study engineering or math unless I was in the top 2/3, preferably top 1/2 of the incoming students in terms of GPA and SAT scores. I do understand that working extra hard and getting tutors or extra help from the TAs and professors can help other students keep up. However, when the top students are either working or sleeping literally at all times 24/7 it is hard for the average student to outwork the top students.

I have seen some students get through tough courses by taking less than 5 courses / 15 credits at a time, and either making up the difference with summer school or with an extra year of university. Taking 4 classes at a time is a huge relief compared to taking 5 at a time. This might be the way to go if you are getting C’s and D’s because any course next semester that depends upon a course that you are currently getting a C in is just going to be that much more difficult. I do understand that this solution will have a financial impact.

16

Don’t try flash cards. Your problem is that you are memorizing rules and not going carefully through the derivations to internalize what’s really going on. This does not build insight. Test questions are hard as they should be. They require insight as they should.

Go through the derivations for each formula. Draw trapezoids under your function and use that to derive the integral formulas so that you understand them. Then you will be in a better position to handle more complicated problems.

Google the area of a trapezoid if you don’t know how to compute it?

17

I too found engineering to be too hard and because of that did not feel like a good fit.

You too might be in this bunch. Not everyone is suited to the rigors of the discipline. If you are pulling those grades, then I suggest you begin thinking about another area. No shame in making a change. You will excel in areas you are suited for. Pushing the engineering thing might be too much like a square peg in a round hole. You owe it to yourself to pick a major that you will do well in and will ultimately make you happy.

Good luck .

18

The problem with college classes is that they often move too fast to make this a feasible solution. On a test you just need to know the rule, not spend time deriving it.

19

I’m sorry you are struggling. The American education system is very unfair and uneven. There are some really great schools and some really terrible schools around the country.

Spots for international students are limited in many universities, so you may be comparing the best of the foreign country with a representative sample of the American system (particularly if you are at a state university – Ivies are both the best the USA and the best of the world).

Whatever happened in the past is past – you cannot change your high school education. The challenge now is to figure out how to catch up. This is possible - young adults are capable of learning a ton of material quickly, but you will have to work hard at it.

Engineering schools are tough, and sadly there are schools which are proud of their “sink or swim” environment. However, there is at least some level of help available at every college - but you have to keep seeking it out. Go to office hours, TA hours, study groups, engineering club, whatever is available to you.

20

Memorizing a formula is only going to help you if you are tested on knowing the formula. Most tests at rigorous schools are testing on the concepts. Many classes allow you to bring in all kinds of notes knowing that they will be of little help without a strong understanding of the underlying concepts.