What’re my chances in succeeding as an electrical engineering major while working full-time? I just finished my freshman year of prerequisites and am considering moving out of my parents house. Although most everything is paid for, my home life and relationship with my parents are not the best. I have saved up $4k to buy a used car and move into a friend’s house for $300/month. If I do this then I will most likely have to continue working full-time to keep up with expenses while going to college. My second option is to stay home and continue saving for three years until I graduate. I don’t know if I’d be willing to do this. Recent family issues have made me fall into a low point in my life and my parents are extremely strict towards everything I do and who I interact with. I don’t know if I could live in an environment like this for three years. I’ve seen how much of a toll majoring in engineering has had on my older peers and I just don’t want to jeopardize my future by moving out during my studies.
Do your parents allow you to go to school and study? What more do you need to succeed as an engineering major? It seems like you left out some important parts of your story.
Can you stay home for another year. Try to get a summer internship (this summer and next) and save up so you can live on your own in your junior year. Your focus should be to complete your engineering degree that will open up a lot of good paying job opportunities for you.
If not already getting them, how about student loans? They can help pay for rent, and could be the different between working part time and full time. It’s going to be a LOT easier if you only have to work 20 hours a week, vs 40.
If you earn your BS in EE, a few thousand dollars in loans will not be a problem.
Another possible option is a co-op, where you rotate between working full time one semester, and going to school, full time, the next. It’s a bit easier to find a co-op as a sophomore, than a summer internship (many of which, but not all, are limited to juniors).
Note that for every hour of classroom time you are expected to read/do HW/Study for 2-3 additional hours. So if you have 15 credits, you should be spending 45-60 hours doing college work.
This is, of course, incompatible with a full time job.
What to do?
- Treat living at home as a “job”…that is, the price you have to pay to get a college education.
- Are you commuting from home? Can you take out loans to cover room and board? Will your parents still pay your tuition?
- DO you have other relatives you could live with?
- Could you work and do part time Community college for the next couple of years?
- Can you get need based financial aid?
- Can you work and then when you are 25 you are considered independent for financial aid?
- Can you join the military and get GI bill aid?
Or can you talk to your parents about the fact that their over control is making you want to move out where they will have no control over you…so can you all come up with something reasonable so you can finish college?
You don’t have to do that many hours. In some classes you will and in many you won’t. My son was able to work 12-20 hours per week at a campus job, be involved with clubs, and graduate with a 3.76 from a program with such grade deflation that they graduate a 4.0 in ANY discipline of engineering roughly once a decade. It’s all about organization and efficiency.