If you haven’t received the memo yet, engineering school is incredibly tough.
We’ve all heard about the “Look to your left. Now look to your right. They won’t be here in two years,” speech that you get when you start college and that really is true in engineering school.
So in order to make sure that you’re the guy or girl in the middle and not the one to either side, I’ve compiled this list to give you the keys to surviving engineering school. Good luck!
1. Get Over Yourself
That sounds really harsh, but bear with me for a minute.
If you were admitted into an engineering program, chances are that you were a pretty solid student in high school and things came to you relatively easy. The concepts weren’t necessarily hard to grasp and while you may have had to put some time into it every once and a while, it was more just tedious busy work than actually causing your brain to melt.
Those days are over.
Engineering school will be tougher than anything that you have ever faced in school by orders of magnitude and if you cruised through high school, this can be quite the bruise to your ego.
If you’re like me at all, you can usually work your way through most things on your own and it can be very tough to ask someone else for help. You absolutely have to get over that if you want to survive engineering school. Professors, Teaching Assistants, your fellow students; they’re all resources that you need to utilize the second you don’t understand something.
You cannot afford to get behind in engineering school because it will be an incredible struggle to catch back up. So humble yourself and ask for help, it will be absolutely essential for your survival.
2.This is a Full-Time Job
Engineering school entails a very large time commitment. You will likelyhear at some point in your college career that for every hour you spend in the classroom, expectto spend at least two to three hours outside of the classroom doing school work.
So on a 15hour course load (which is normal for a full time student) that works out to a bare minimum of45 hours and up to 60 hours per week devoted to school.
Granted not every class is equal, butfor most of your engineering classes, this will be absolutely true.
With that in mind, you need todevelop a schedule that allows you to put that kind of time and effort in if you want to see goodresults. You will have a minimum of four hours of homework per night once you hit a fullengineering course load.
Let’s not get started on what your weekends may look like…
3. Find Your Space
Now that you know that engineering school is a full time job, it’s important tofind a space that you work well in.
If you’re subject to distractions, you need to find a quietisolated space. If you need some noise and general chaos around you, that should not bedifficult to find on a campus full of college students.
I needed a quiet, isolated spot to reallyfocus on my homework. I also needed a way to relax and collect my thoughts when a homeworkproblem was getting the best of me.
Using those two must-haves, my space was on the ninthfloor of the library book stacks.
Not too many people went up there, there were a lot ofindividual desks, and my personal spot had a window with an amazing view of downtown. Sowhen I got hung up on that vibrations problem and I was about to tear the book apart, it wasnice to be able to look to my right and see for miles and miles. It gives you perspective.
4. Learn to Operate Without Your Calculator
Engineering school is basically applied mathematics.You will take a real world problem and then try to develop a math equation that you can use tosolve that problem.
The math will also be very complex, so it will be very tempting to alwaysreach for the calculator. In some cases, a calculator is a must.
However, when possible, youshould get comfortable with doing math by hand.
And I don’t mean the easy stuff – I mean thehard stuff; calculus, differential equations, etc.
I say this because I can promise you that onmultiple occasions, you will walk into a room for an exam and your professor will tell you thatcalculators will not be allowed on this exam and if you have been relying on the calculatorcrutch, you’re in big trouble.
5. Do Your Homework
At first, you’re probably thinking, “No duh (or insert whatever catchyphrase is going around right now).” However, let me explain further.
Again operating on theassumption that you have a pretty solid math background if you are going into engineeringschool, you’re probably able to work your way through percentages in your head pretty easily.
When homework counts for 10% of your grade and you have fifty homework assignmentsduring the semester, each homework assignment is worth… 0.2% of your final grade (I know,you didn’t need my help).
The thing about college is that your friends are playing beachvolleyball this afternoon and then having a cook out with burgers and brats and that assignmentthat you need to do this afternoon is really only worth 0.2% of your final grade and that guy/girlthat you like is going to be there.
Stop.
You need to get your homework done because it isn’tabout that 0.2%. You’re right, that is chump change, but it is the fact that you will only see thatsixteen stage compressor, turbine, and heat exchanger problem on that particular homeworkassignment and that it will reappear on your next exam.
If you didn’t make your mistakes on thehomework problem, you’ll be making them on the exam that now is worth a third of your grade.
Besides, that guy/girl that you like wants to date someone with free time, and you don’t havemuch of that.
6. Find a Study Group
If you go back to my first point, finding some peers to work with could be yourkey to passing with flying colors versus barely scraping by, or even worse.
Before I go anyfurther, let me clear the air: cheating is bad, it will get you kicked out of school, and if youmanage to sneak through, you will fail miserably in your career.
When engineers make mistakes,people die.
So don’t cheat.
But do find a group to study with. Some topics that you learn inschool will click with you instantly, others will seem like they are from another world. Chancesare that within your group, some people will grasp certain topics and others in the group willfind another topic easier to understand.
You can then help each other along by explaining topicsin a manner that may be more friendly than a professor who has been teaching the sameMechanics of Materials class for twenty years and really just wants to get back to doing his/herresearch.
7. Make Sure That You Fundamentally Grasp the Concepts in Your Math Class
As I mentionedearlier, engineering is basically applied mathematics. It can be easy to lose focus of that whenyou are sitting in Calculus III, but don’t.
The problem is that you need to learn how to do calculusand differential equations before you move forward in engineering school, but when you areactually in the classes, it can be difficult to see why you would need to know any of this stuff.
That can really kill motivation, but you need to stick with it.
So to help you out, calculus will beused in basically every engineering class and differential equations will be the key to survivingvibrations and controls.
So please, make sure you understand these subjects thoroughly beforeyou start the classes where you will need them.
8. Enjoy Your Electives
I heard a lot of engineering students moaning and groaning about havingto take electives.
I loved electives.
Political Science 201 was a cake walk compared to FluidMechanics and Thermodynamics. Electives also give you the opportunity to branch out andbecome more well rounded. I also took Karate, so I got to break beams physically in addition to solving how to break them on a sheet of paper.
Applied solid mechanics if you will.
9. Get Involved with Student Engineering Organizations
Student engineering organizations are agreat way to take the skills that you learn in the classroom and apply them.
Formula SAE andBaja SAE focus on building race cars and competing in time trial style competitions. There areautonomous aircraft groups (called Aerial Robotics where I went to school), robotics clubs,rocket design clubs, alternative energy race car clubs, and all of the various discipline basedsocieties (ASME, ASCE, IEEE, etc .)
There are literally dozens of opportunities that will allow youto apply what you are learning and to meet your fellow students.
They also put you in front ofthe pack when it is time to graduate and get a job and you have these types of activities on yourresume.
10. Seek Out Internships and Co-ops
This one is last, but one of the most important.
When youleave engineering school, you will likely want to get a job as an engineer.
However, tens ofthousands of engineering students from across the country and from around the world all areentering the job market at the same time as you.
You need to find an internship or co-op toshow potential employers that
- a.) you took the initiative to get an internship or co-op and that
- b.) you now have references that can attest to your abilities.
Many companies also prefer tooffer their entry level positions to graduates who interned or did a co-op at that company. Iwouldn’t necessarily pursue an internship after your freshman year, but you should definitelypursue internships and co-ops by the time you finish your sophom*ore year.
Hopefully this list helps give you some pointers to get through what will be four to five grueling, butultimately very rewarding years.
Check back regularly for more engineering focused posts!
Eric is a Senior Engineer at Tesla Motors. He graduated from North Carolina State University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 and also has a minor in Design Studies. He has over seven years of experience doing product development in the consumer goods and automotive industries.
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