<p>I just recently got admitted to UT-Austin for Petroleum Engineering as a transfer student. It is the first acceptance I have ever received from a college and the only one I could have wanted. Currently I have finished DE, all the basic calc., linear algebra, gen. chem., and physics. I will start Fall 2014 and will have the whole summer to prepare for some of the hardest semesters of my life. Is there anything I could teach myself this coming summer that would greatly benefit me? So far I am considering buying some partial DEs, complex analysis books and doing problems out of there. Also, what are your thoughts on the various programming languages? Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Well, you will never see complex analysis in PetE. I’m not too familiar with the UT curriculum, but I think the three most important (non petroleum specific) courses are:</p>
<p>Engineering Economics
Statistics
Programming</p>
<p>As far as the various programming languages… the language used far and away more than any other is VBA. But I hate VBA and I try to use C++ and Python when I can.</p>
<p><a href=“UT Cockrell School of Engineering”>UT Cockrell School of Engineering; is the suggested course plan.</p>
<p>It is not obvious if any “computing for engineers” material is included in any courses. “Computing for engineers” often uses MATLAB (there is a free clone called GNU Octave), which may be used in more advanced engineering courses. You may want to find out if the latter use MATLAB, and try to self-study it if you do not already know it.</p>
<p>If you have not studied programming before, avoid C/C++ and VBA, as the former exposes you to unnecessary complexity and the latter makes for terrible programming. I recommend Python: a reasonable list of books is provided at <a href=“IntroductoryBooks - Python Wiki”>https://wiki.python.org/moin/IntroductoryBooks</a>, many of which are legally free online. Complex analysis will make you somewhat better at integration (e.g., sinusoidals can be much easier to integrate if you convert them to their exponential form), but as said, it is likely not an efficient use of time. Looking at the suggested course plan, you could read up on thermodynamics. Warning: an introductory PDE book could very well be a mathematician’s PDE book and thus generally useless to you. Engineering statistics should be relatively easy to learn and I believe that statistics is a useful subject even if you didn’t have a required geostatistics course.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I have that printed already. I guess M 427K is the first of 2 partial DE courses. Also, my CC might offer some intro courses to MATLAB over the summer. I will definitely consider it.</p>
<p>@noleguy33 Python will have been my first choice. How much overlap is there between Python, C++, and VBA? Are these also used in industry and not just academia?</p>
<p>The overlap between those languages is that a lot of programming is essentially the same, the syntax is just different. The type of programming you will do with petroleum engineering isn’t going to be very complex. Python is a great language, but integrating it with Excel can be a bit tricky. The huge advantage with VBA is that it is easy to share with other people. Just about every engineer knows what a macro is. That is probably the only advantage VBA has. As vanimelde said, it really is a terrible language, but Excel is the overwhelming choice for most companies.</p>
<p>I looked over the schedule and M 427K is just an ODE class. I’ve never seen an undergraduate PE curriculum with PDEs (though they do come up). Also, PGE 310 looks like a numerical methods class in MATLAB. MATLAB is a great piece of software, I just don’t think you will ever use it in industry (maybe in a research position for a major? I’m not sure).</p>
<p>BTW Jedi, I just noticed your avatar. I love it!</p>
<p>@noleguy33 Tyson is partially the reason I decided to go to college. He makes science so appealing. I think I might just become fluent in Python since the only experience I have with programming is in Cprogramming which didnt even touch on objects.</p>
<p>They are all object-oriented? That’s just about the only nontrivial overlap…</p>
<p>I cannot tell you if particular languages are used in the petroleum engineering industry. However, assuming that you are using Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, you are running C/C++ programs right now.</p>
<p>VB(A) example: Windows Defender.</p>
<p>Python example: Bittorrent.</p>
<p>noleguy33 is right about the integration with Excel: the solution is clearly to re-implement Excel in assembly with convenient interfaces for Python. Alternatively, prove that you are a “real programmer” and switch to Arch Linux, thus sidestepping the possibility of using Excel. On a more serious note, there are some methods for using Excel with Python discussed at</p>
<p><a href=“Using Python to Automate Creation/Manipulation of Excel Spreadsheets - Stack Overflow”>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1140311/using-python-to-automate-creation-manipulation-of-excel-spreadsheets</a></p>
<p>How does one do transport phenomena without PDEs? Methods of similarity solutions, separation of variables, sinusoidal response all come up momentum transport (PGE 322K? Might be a highly simplified momentum, energy, mass course that doesn’t use PDEs).</p>
<p>You can also get a student version of DataNitro if you email the company. DataNitro is a pretty seemless integration between Python and Excel. I’ve used it a bit and it is really nice, but I can’t share the programs with anyone that doesn’t have DataNitro. I use it more for my own personal projects.</p>
<p>Python is awesome at data science applications. If you are interested in getting involved in a hot field for petroleum engineering, look into machine learning/data science applications. There is a guy at WVU that is basically the pioneer for that type of research: <a href=“http://shahab.pe.wvu.edu/”>http://shahab.pe.wvu.edu/</a> If you look at his publications, I went to two of his (more accurately his grad students’) presentations this week. The paper on top-down modeling is extremely innovative.</p>
<p>I could be wrong (I’m wrong all the time), but I think this data science approach to petroleum engineering problems is going to become more and more popular. Here is the SPE president addressing “Big Data” (another name for data science) in the JPT just a few months ago: <a href=“JPT Homepage”>JPT Homepage;
<p>@vanimelde You’ll find that many transport phenomena classes at the undergraduate level work in enough PDE concepts to get you through the class but you won’t likely get a full treatment of PDEs unless you go to graduate school or take it as an elective. Of course, I clearly support doing so and I wish I had done that as an undergrad. Oh well.</p>
<p>Seems like I have more than enough to do this summer now.</p>
<p>Here is what I would do if I were you. Get a job. Save some money. Go out and have some fun. </p>
<p>@geo1113 Some sound advice indeed</p>