<p>I am heading to a college next fall and was wondering if there is anything that I can do during winter break and summer break that will help me in college, especially engineering classes. I just want to make this free time productive before going to college. My dad wants me to take a computer language course at a local community college, but I doubt it will help me since I will major in ME.
Indeed, I am interested in mechanical, aerospace, industrial, and biomedical engineering.</p>
<p>Since you’ll be doing ME, the best things you can do to prepare would be to get a solid understanding in Physics 1 (COLLEGE level, NOT high school - big difference) and/or Statics topics. These are both related to each other and a good basis of Mech. Eng. Another good option is AutoCAD, which will be a big part of your major. A programming language is good and you will need it for any engineering school, so it could help as well although it isn’t directly relevant.</p>
<p>I’d say leave the science courses for whenever you start them in college. Whatever you learn on your own will pale in comparison to the pace and material that’ll be covered when you start college. Unless you’re taking AP courses, then study hard. </p>
<p>Definitely go through CAD tutorials and learn the ins-and-outs. I’d recommend SolidWorks, it seems to be quite popular (at least here at UMich).</p>
<p>If you have a choice between AP Physics B and AP Physics C, C will better prepare you for engineering. AP Physics B is algebra-based and tries to cover a little bit of everything. AP Physics C is calculus-based and is focused on mechanics or E/M. B is basically ramped-up high school physics.</p>
<p>Don’t worry too much about this, in my opinion. You won’t have many “breaks” left. Use them wisely. Relax, enjoy being of an age where you don’t have a whole heck of a lot of responsibilities to worry about. Some programming is okay and you can mess around with that in your free time if you wish. It will help out even in ME, though how much will depend on what area if the major you end up focusing on. Still, I’d suggest not taking that too seriously. Seriously, just enjoy yourself. Your college has all sorts of courses planned for a reason: they don’t expect that you have already taken them.</p>
<p>boneh3ad has the best advice. Enjoy your breaks while they last. Whatever little studying you get done during this time probably won’t have much of an influence nine months from now, so just take it easy and enjoy one of the last breaks from high school you’ll have with your current set of friends.</p>
<p>While breaks are important, it would be quite foolish to waste the entire 3 month period of summer break. You don’t need 3 months to relax; eventually that time becomes wasted.
But I wouldn’t take any classes because summer classes are far from fun. You spend quite a bit of money on them (no scholarships), and you pretty much have to work every day for a few hours, all for a class that would be relatively trivial if taken over the course of a semester.
Brush up on calculus (or anything before calculus if you’re not a big fan of math), on physics, and read the first few chapters of your textbook so that you have a relatively easy time for at least a week or two. But learn to teach yourself from a textbook. That’s just about the most useful skill you can learn over the summer.
This kind of task is extremely easy if you have a summer that’s free. An hour or two a day for 2-4 weeks is not at all difficult to spare on a summer schedule. That’s pretty much all you have to do and it will help you any more than any summer class. If you want to do it, learn a programming language in your spare time. You don’t need a class for this, just pick one of C++/Java/Python and get started (if you don’t know much about programming at all, I suggest you start with [this](<a href=“http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/]this[/url]”>Learn Python the Hard Way)</a>).</p>
<p>A decent regular high school physics course (e.g. PSSC book/curriculum, if they still use that) should be sufficient physics preparation for college physics that engineering majors take. Of course, the college physics courses also use calculus, so you need to be ready to take calculus in your first semester (meaning that you should have completed at least precalculus and trigonometry in high school; if you score a 5 on the AP calculus test, you may be able to start in a more advanced math course, though you should review the college’s final exams in the courses that you consider skipping before making your decision on that).</p>
<p>Some of your majors also require college chemistry, for which high school chemistry is often specified as a prerequisite.</p>
<p>thank you for the suggestions for this future engineer! Actually, I have scored 5 on Physics C: Mechanics and Calc BC and am taking Calculus II and III in my high school. I just wanted to do something practical that would help me adapt easily to college education. So, would learning a computer language help me or be a waste of time as I am not majoring in computer science or electrical engineering? What are some skills/knowledge that engineering professors expect their students to already know other than their subjects?</p>
<p>Study up on formal lab reports and get really good at writing up labs in an official lab format. Many high schools do a poor job of preparing students for the expectations of college level lab courses, and this will be a chance to separate yourself from your peers.</p>
<p>Learn at least one OOP language (I would suggest C, more basic than C++). You will be required to take programming, and the freshman level classes will be much easier if you have already gotten some exposure. </p>
<p>Get in shape over the summer. Engineering school requires stamina.</p>
<p>At most schools, the expectations for incoming engineering freshmen are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ready to take calculus or a more advanced math course. A very small number of schools expect students to have had calculus in high school.</li>
<li>Had high school physics and chemistry at the minimum.</li>
<li>Reading and writing skills.</li>
<li>Good study habits. I.e. don’t try to cram everything in the last week.</li>
</ul>
<p>Desirable but typically not required would be knowledge of computing. You can self-study the two courses linked in #10. If you know what university you will be attending, you can also check what the computing for engineering course teaches and self-study relevant topics for it.</p>
<p>I would say that Math should be a huge priority. I have seen that many people that start fresh in engineering are not prepared for the Math that they will be taking. Remember that engineers communicate “mostly” in Math. </p>
<p>Believe it or not, it is the Algebra that many students get tripped up on when dealing with multi-page problems. Getting your algebra on a superior level would not be a bad thing to focus on.</p>
<p>Get a head start on computer programming skills (MatLab, C++) and software (AutoCad). Read up on some physics (fluids can be quite difficult). Do math problems regularly so your techniques don’t get rusty. Other than that, chill and get some rest, you may not get much once you start engineering!</p>
<p>Study a week ahead in your math and science classes now, do problems that you may not have to do, try to learn without the aid of an instructor. Then when school starts up again try to maintain the one-week buffer. </p>
<p>Learning how to maintain this edge will be of great value to you in college, because much less a course is “taught”, and things move at a much more rapid pace. As you learn how to teach yourself, in college you’ll be able to come to class prepared to learn the finer points during lecture and you’ll be able to work problems when they are assigned so that you can get to the office hours with questions to ultimately attain a much deeper understanding of the material that the typical student. </p>
<p>This timing is delicate because too many people don’t do it and get behind. Once you are behind, the train has left the station and isn’t going to slow down to wait for you.</p>
<p>My small input is, unless you are planning to be a Chem engineering, you might want to take AP Chem and take the AP exam in order to bypass if the school you go to only requires 1 sem of Chem for engineering.</p>
<p>I suggest you AP out of chem and calc if and only if you can recall the stuff you learned pretty well (well enough to ace a final with 2 weeks of studying). While there is some merit in retaking those classes, the first year fundamentals are really nasty classes I’d never want to take twice if I didn’t have to. Just make sure you won’t regret not retaking them.</p>
<p>My son just finished Chem 1 since he did not take it in HS. He repeated Calc 2 though as his advisor said it was really the base of a lot of the classes he would need. He felt it was worthwhile because while he knew the math, he found the problem sets they gave him were harder than the ones he learned in HS.</p>