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Markov Chain Chomp posted:Don't you mean "mechanical engineers" here, not just "engineers"? It's a pretty huge field and I don't see what car repair has to do with semiconductor design. And no, working on your car has nothing to do with engineering at all. You don't need to be an engineer to change an alternator! But as BeefofAges pointed out, engineers just seem to gravitate towards tinkering- towards fixing broken toys and taking apart broken coffee pots and hard drives to see how they work, etc. I doubt they'd ask you about car repair this if you're interviewing for a semiconductor job, unless your duties included fab lab automation or similar, in which case it would be highly relevant. Though they might ask you if you built your own PC! (My thesis was in MEMS, btw, so I understand where you're coming from.) grover fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Aug 16, 2010 |
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Aug 16, 2010 10:44
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I'm a mechanical engineer and love working with my hands, but cars are the one thing that hold absolutely no interest for me. I'll change brakes (and I guess I'll learn how to change the oil now that I'm in a house that I can do that), but all the tinkering and modification stuff that most car guys do holds no interest for me. Probably because I'm so drat tall that I can't fit in any car worth tinkering with. The bottom line is that there are many things you can emphasize to look good to a potential employer. Think about what aspects of your life you can emphasize, ask a third party to verify that it's a good idea, and then think about the best way to present that information to the employer. Generally anything professional will go in a resume, and personal stuff can be mentioned in the interview.OctaviusBeaver posted:I wouldn't sell it too short though. I know people who have been hired over similarly qualified people because they worked on their own cars. Granted that was for an internship, but anything you can use to differentiate yourself and show some sort of mechanical aptitude is definitely a plus. Absolutely. I would mention it during the interview, but on a professional level seeing things like "interests" on a resume is a red flag that the applicant has nothing else to talk about. If you have a skills section then putting something like "machine shop experience" would be a good thing. On a personal level I worked in a machine shop for 3 years while I was in college. The experience was invaluable, not only because it taught me skills but it also taught me how to think and build things. Machinists love it when they can mention a problem with a drawing and I can immediately see what they're talking about.
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Aug 16, 2010 13:47
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:I would mention it during the interview, but on a professional level seeing things like "interests" on a resume is a red flag that the applicant has nothing else to talk about. Where did you get this from? I've heard both this and the exact opposite with CV advice. For example playing team sports shows that others can stand you to at least a minimal degree. Of course it's obvious that if your interests are TV and listening to the top 40, then there's no point in them being there.
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Aug 16, 2010 15:13
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2010 15:43
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GestureSignalThreat posted:Where did you get this from? I've heard both this and the exact opposite with CV advice. For example playing team sports shows that others can stand you to at least a minimal degree. I heard it from my professional development department at the University of Maryland when I was there about five years ago. As I understand it a resume should be a concise description of why they should pay attention to you. When people look over resumes it's usually out of a massive pile of applicants. Your goal is to present the best information about you as quickly as possible. That means front-loading everything, including putting your best prior work experience (not necessarily your most recent) up front. The person reading your resume may very well have hundreds of others to read, and that means at best they'll skim over it. Resumes aren't for showing you're a well-rounded person who should be hired. That's what the interview is for. Resumes are for getting your foot in the door. Now consider everything on your resume in that context. For starters your resume should be no more than one page, because they probably won't read that second page or it will just get lost. Next you should cut out anything that is either obvious or unnecessary to the task of getting noticed. Objectives, for example, are irrelevant. Your objective is to get a job. Same thing with interests and hobbies. While working on cars and having a machine shop in your garage is nice, they probably won't read it. Instead I would focus on front-loading your resume so that the first blurb in each section is the most relevant for your job. My resume from a few years ago had four parts. My name and contact info, my college education, my work/research experience, and my honors/organizations/activities. The only reason the last part is there is because I'm an Eagle Scout and I got a full scholarship. Reviewing it now I would probably add a skills section to cover my experience with CAD, geometric dimensioning/tolerance, machining, and a few other things now that I've been doing them for years. There's also a few other things you need to consider beyond content. Documents with lots of white space are easier to read, so don't cram everything together. Make sure your document is black and white. Do not include anything that could be degraded when it's printed, copied, faxed, and then copied again. Even if your submitting a PDF be sure to keep that in mind. PAY ATTENTION to any submission guidelines. And don't forget to tweak your resume for each application; understand what each company does and alter things (like what you emphasize in your prior experience blurbs) to suit that need.
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Aug 16, 2010 16:08
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Is it considered very necessary to take calculus in high school if one aspires to go into engineering?
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Aug 17, 2010 18:56
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Stinkyhead posted:Is it considered very necessary to take calculus in high school if one aspires to go into engineering? I didn't and it really hasn't affected me. If you're a borderline in or out case for admissions obviously taking calculus is a huge plus, but once you're in chances are you'll just take the intro calc classes again anyway (and even if you don't have to you probably should).
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Aug 17, 2010 19:21
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 17, 2010 20:19
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I started with Calc 1 in college and didn't have a problem getting my degree.
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Aug 17, 2010 20:23
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Stinkyhead posted:Is it considered very necessary to take calculus in high school if one aspires to go into engineering? I only got to pre-calc in high school (at least in part because the pre-calc teacher was smokin' hot & the AP Calc teacher was a bitch), took a year off, went to a community college & jumped right into Calc 1. Most of the kids in my class were the same way, we just didn't have the time or motivation to advance the next step in high school (and most of the ones who did get into Calc in high school would either fail the challenge exam at the collegiate level or get talked into re-taking the course "as a refresher"/"extra prep for Calc II & so on down the line" anyway).
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Aug 17, 2010 20:27
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Ok I posted in this thread before and forgot about it. So let me restate my question and give some background. Currently, my major is Energy Engineering. To know what that exactly means, here's a link to my school's description of the major. http://bulletins.psu.edu/bulletins/bluebook/college_campus_details.cfm?id=24&program=eneng.htm When people ask what it is, I usually say an example of it is designing windmill systems. Now, the only reason I'm in this major is because I couldn't get into my first top 2 choices, which were Civil and Architectural. So this was one of the only options left in engineering that I could take, mainly due to my GPA. So does anyone have any idea about this? Or am I an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. I mean energy is good, amirite?
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Aug 17, 2010 21:20
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The curriculum at my school assumed that engineers would have taken Calc 1 in high school, but it wasn't a problem if people needed to catch up. This will probably depend on what school you're going to and what kind of engineering you're majoring in, since MechEs need to get up to differential equations and some others don't. If you have the opportunity I'd still recommend taking calc in high school. At the very least you'll have an easy A math class your first semester.
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Aug 17, 2010 21:22
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Mr Crumbbley posted:Ok I posted in this thread before and forgot about it. So let me restate my question and give some background. I think the real question is do you feel you're acquiring "the desire for lifelong learning to maintain technical competence and keep abreast of new developments in the field?" How much does this overlap with the other majors? Energy systems are typically incredibly complex systems that require multiple fields of expertise. Mechanical, electrical, and civil engineers all work together to develop a windmill. At first glance I would worry that this major would limit your job opportunities. A mechanical, civil, or electrical engineer would most likely be able to compete for the kind of jobs you'll be competing for, and also be able to function outside the energy environment. You should really ask yourself what it is you're learning, and whether or not that's something you want to spend the rest of your life doing. Knowing just what I've read, I would consider working my rear end off to boost my GPA and see if I couldn't transfer to civil engineering.
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Aug 17, 2010 21:36
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 17, 2010 22:20
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Thoguh posted:I actually agree with both positions here. It is true that you should only include "Other activities" or something like that if you don't have anything better to fill up your resume. This means that for your "first job out of school" resume you probably will have to include a section like this and employers expect it. Once you have a job or two under your belt you would replace that section with actual job experience. Unless the interests include things like making home made High quality preamps or something which demonstrates keep interest in the technical. Things which reflect ongoing volunteer experience are good too because it shows work ethic. Otherwise yeah phase them out as you need resume space.
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Aug 18, 2010 01:54
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Any there any power engineers reading the thread? I'm only in my first year of an EE degree but somehow I managed to get a scholarship from a power industry group which gets me a bit of cash and work experience which is really cool. The only thing is that I haven't really done anything at all related to power at Uni so, apart from what I've learnt from wikipedia, I don't have much of an idea what it's about. From what I've been told though, it's a field where it's relatively easy to get work internationally which really excites me.. is there any truth to this? I'm doing a basic control systems course this semester (at least I think that's what it is - it deals with logic gates and stuff) which I'm finding really interesting. I'd imagine that there'd at least be a bit of this in the power industry? So yeah, if there's anyone that knows about power engineering then I'd be really interested in finding out more!
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Aug 18, 2010 06:23
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Logic gates? That's might be getting rarer. A lot of power engineering is moving towards microprocessors. I know siemens' new inverter TR sets use a PIC for example. I guess I'm in power engineering. The only courses that came in useful were the power electronics ones (switches, power converters, 3 phase power) and embedded programming, since we use microprocessors too. It's probably easy to get work internationally since everybody in this industry is old as gently caress. I went to a big trade show last month and the average age was probably 40. Some people looked 70+ but they can't retire because there's no fresh blood coming in.
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Aug 18, 2010 06:51
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Zo posted:Logic gates? That's might be getting rarer. A lot of power engineering is moving towards microprocessors. I know siemens' new inverter TR sets use a PIC for example. Ah, cool! I don't really know what I'm talking about with logic gates but I think I'd enjoy embedded programming and stuff with microprocessors. Can I ask what sort of engineering related stuff you do in a typical week? I'm guessing there's probably a whole lot more maintenance than designing? If that's true what exactly does the maintenance involve? Zo posted:It's probably easy to get work internationally since everybody in this industry is old as gently caress. I went to a big trade show last month and the average age was probably 40. Some people looked 70+ but they can't retire because there's no fresh blood coming in. Yeah, I think that's one of the primary reasons that this industry scholarship was started. I hadn't even heard of power engineering before applying for it so I guess there isn't that much of an awareness.. maybe I'm just oblivious though.
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Aug 18, 2010 07:08
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Looking for a little advice on the possibility of heading back to school for an engineering degree. Currently have a few years of business and aviation related classes, some basic general education at acommunity college, adn 1 year of both Mechanical and Chemical classes at the sophmore/junior level. Not to delve into life story, but started out as a chemistry student, then to general, then to mechanical where I realized I had no desire to do so. Thought back to chemistry, and went Chemical. Was doing good, and then hit on the idea of being a pilot, a life long dream. 3 years wasted and nothing to show for it after the economic downturn but a big chunk of debt and a pilots license. On to my question. I've gotten serious now, with a wife, and desire to do more than menial jobs and dead end jobs, so decided to get serious and head back to school. I am getting back to the local community college and getting a transfer degree in Engineering/sciences. I was thinking of taking that to the University of Washington, and doing their Industrial Eng. program, with a 1 year MBA add-on. It's designed to get you into middle management, or doing project management. I would love to project managmeent, but with an environemntal twist, along the lines of wildlife management, or fisheries, or resource management. Is this even possible? Or should I be looking at an Environmental engineering degree, with a minor in wildlife/forest/fisheries/resource management? I ultimately would love to get into the consulting business, and work with wildlife/forest/resource protection and management. TL;DR Would an Industrial engineering degree with MBA add on and Wildlife/resources minor get me to where I can consult on the Resources or forestry management, or should I be looking at Civil/Environmental engineering? I'm hesitant to get directly into the Wildlife/resources managment program, as this seems to be pegged to research/forest ranger types of roles. Am I way off base, or?
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Aug 18, 2010 11:37
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Flyboy925 posted:TL;DR Would an Industrial engineering degree with MBA add on and Wildlife/resources minor get me to where I can consult on the Resources or forestry management, or should I be looking at Civil/Environmental engineering? I'm hesitant to get directly into the Wildlife/resources managment program, as this seems to be pegged to research/forest ranger types of roles. Am I way off base, or? The industrial engineering / MBA / environmental minor would probably be appropriate for what you want to do. As I understand it industrial engineering is about integrating systems (be they people, mechanical, or whatever) to make sure they interface properly. I'm sure you would be able to find a useful way of combining people/technical systems with the environment (which is also a complex system). Depending on where you want to do you might benefit from a graduate engineering program and a thesis that combines environmental and human systems. A lot of companies will offer MBAs on their own, and you won't be getting into middle management straight out of college anyway. One thing that's worth doing is looking at what companies or organizations you would want to work for, and calling up their human resources departments to see what kind of education they want. I don't think civil or environmental engineering is what you're looking for, as those are technical programs designed for specific fields. If your goal is management then you should focus on the interaction of systems, which is what industrial engineering will do.
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Aug 18, 2010 12:38
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Beasticly posted:Ah, cool! I don't really know what I'm talking about with logic gates but I think I'd enjoy embedded programming and stuff with microprocessors. Can I ask what sort of engineering related stuff you do in a typical week? I'm guessing there's probably a whole lot more maintenance than designing? If that's true what exactly does the maintenance involve? No maintenance, I'm in R&D so designing from the grounds up big power inverters. I don't foresee myself doing any maintenance - only on the first few units if there are any major problems. You design these things so that local technicians can troubleshoot them, and modular enough that you can just ship them a new control board or something instead of flying down to Brazil yourself.
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Aug 18, 2010 13:49
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Groda posted:This is a popular degree program here in Sweden, and there are tons of jobs right now for someone with a degree like this. I took both my degrees in energy engineering, and none of my classmates are having trouble with finding work or doctorate placements. This is very relieving to see. I kinda panicked when going through the thread and only seeing negative comments about it. Could you tell me a little about it? Like what exactly does the major entail, how is the course work? What kind of jobs are available to someone with this degree? plustwobonus posted:Thank you, your post is also encouraging to me. I've just been real worried lately about what I'll be doing since I can't get into my preferred major. Energy seems like it could be interesting, it's just I don't know much about it, and there isn't really any good information on it either.
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Aug 18, 2010 18:15
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:The industrial engineering / MBA / environmental minor would probably be appropriate for what you want to do. As I understand it industrial engineering is about integrating systems (be they people, mechanical, or whatever) to make sure they interface properly. I'm sure you would be able to find a useful way of combining people/technical systems with the environment (which is also a complex system). Depending on where you want to do you might benefit from a graduate engineering program and a thesis that combines environmental and human systems. A lot of companies will offer MBAs on their own, and you won't be getting into middle management straight out of college anyway. One thing that's worth doing is looking at what companies or organizations you would want to work for, and calling up their human resources departments to see what kind of education they want. This is pretty much what I was thinking. Civil/Environmental seemed to be more of processing plants and delivery systems than what I was looking for. What I really want to do is in one of those weird areas that I think has multiple ways of getting there. I do think industrial engineering with teh enviro minor will be the best way to get there, as if I can't find enviro work right away, i still have all of industrial engineering. I realize the MBA isn't a middle management straight out of school, but it is in there as a way to get there quicker. Thank you for the idea of talking to companies doing what I want to do. As simple as that is, I never thought of it. Thats also a great way of looking at Industrial ENgineering, that I can use to explain to family and friends, the interaction, and integration of systems.
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Aug 18, 2010 21:15
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Mr Crumbbley posted:This is very relieving to see. I kinda panicked when going through the thread and only seeing negative comments about it. Well, here, the program mainly dealt with mechanical and process engineering at thermal power plants (hardly any electrical topics). Courses in thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, heat/mass transfer etc to start with, but continuing with a whole bunch of pretty energy-specific courses: plant optimization, district heating, steam engineering, combustion/flue gas engineering etc. They also had some token courses in wind power and fuel cells. I'll level with you, this degree was primarily for training people to work as engineers on-site. We didn't send many people to go work at the suppliers designing turbines/boilers/generators for obscene amounts of money. However, those on-site jobs my classmates got have a lot of room for advancement within the plants--especially since most of your coworkers only have high school diplomas. This applies to the small coal plant I worked at in the US, too. YMMV I started a master's program afterwards in nuclear energy engineering, and now work in the industry doing design/analysis. That program was even more specific, as you can imagine.
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Aug 18, 2010 21:49
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 18, 2010 22:44
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Thoguh posted:Do not get your MBA without any experience. You'll overqualify yourself entry level jobs, but be to inexperienced for more senior ones. Get a job and let your company pay for you to get your MBA part time. How many companies do this these days?
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Aug 18, 2010 23:01
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RealKyleH posted:How many companies do this these days? I was under the impression it was fairly common. At the very least you can get your MBA on your own sometime in the future.
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Aug 18, 2010 23:32
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My school offers the MBA as a 1 year program, and is the reason I was looking to do it, but I might just take that extra year and get a dual major in IE, and then one of the environmental sciences. I could always get the MBA after a few years, if I find I even need it. I should really talk to my unt, as she's pretty high up in the chain for the USFS, for the entire Southwest USA. I think she might have an idea of how to get where I want to be. MidasAg fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 19, 2010 |
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Aug 19, 2010 00:09
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Beasticly posted:Any there any power engineers reading the thread?
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Aug 19, 2010 01:31
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Beasticly posted:Any there any power engineers reading the thread?
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Aug 19, 2010 01:42
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Zo posted:No maintenance, I'm in R&D so designing from the grounds up big power inverters. ANIME AKBAR posted:I'm a EE whose doing research for medical applications right now, but I have a fair amount of experience in power systems. Yes, power engineering is almost entirely a control application (That is unless you're only talking about the hardware involved, in which case it's only maybe 50% control). This applies to any scale application, from low power AC-DC converters to the entire grid. If you're interested in working on a system level, then you need to have a very good grounding in math and control theory. There's of course tons of work for software, embedded systems, and electrical design, in which case it's not too critical, but overall power engineering at its core is just math. grover posted:There are a many more areas about power engineering than most people thing. One area is controls, which a few people have touched on- PLCs taking data inputs, monitoring networks, opening and closing motor-breakers, etc. Another big area is protection- calculating fault currents, designing relaying to protect systems from all sorts of different power failures (under/overvoltage, under/overfrequency, phase rotation, loss of phase, ground fault, etc), arc flash potential, and fault coordination (so that a fault on one small branch circuit doesn't trip the main breaker). Power quality is yet another field- investigating the sources of transients, harmonics, EMI, voltage drop, or just plain old gremlins... and designing the system to mitigate them. There's also grounding and bonding, lightning protection, and all sorts of other niches that power engineers deal with. Utility high-voltage distribution is different than light industrial is different than critical UPS/generator is different than residential. Thank you all heaps, my EE knowledge isn't really good enough to know what most of that stuff is but the variation seems like it'd suit me really well. Looking forward to doing some real vacation work! 
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Aug 19, 2010 10:32
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Beasticly posted:Thank you all heaps, my EE knowledge isn't really good enough to know what most of that stuff is but the variation seems like it'd suit me really well. Looking forward to doing some real vacation work!
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Aug 19, 2010 10:35
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grover posted:They don't really teach much, if any, power engineering in college. A lot of it is just OJT and work experience. They usually don't in undergrad but if you're a grad student or working in the power industry they offer a lot of short courses to fill in the gaps as well as the traditional research projects. I think I know the program you're on Beasticly and its a good one. Try and figure out which part of the industry you want to work in so you can get vac work there before you graduate.
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Aug 19, 2010 12:01
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 19, 2010 14:43
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I have a question, I can't decide if I would rather go into medicine or Engineering. Math kicked my rear end at first, but someone told me that the classes get somewhat easier the higher you go because they aren't "weed out" courses anymore, also, which one is better for job opportunities?
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Aug 19, 2010 20:27
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Uh doctors indisputably make way more than engineers but you'll only be making that money after like 12 years of school and residency, while you can get decent engineering jobs straight out of undergrad (50-80k to start). But if math "kicked your rear end" your grades are probably too poo poo to go into medicine anyways.
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Aug 19, 2010 20:35
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Zo posted:Uh doctors indisputably make way more than engineers but you'll only be making that money after like 12 years of school and residency, while you can get decent engineering jobs straight out of undergrad (50-80k to start). Nah, it's fine, I dropped the classes before the drop period and retook them over the summer, so I'm fine.
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Aug 19, 2010 20:38
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Zo posted:But if math "kicked your rear end" your grades are probably too poo poo to go into medicine anyways. What minimal GPA would you recommend for those serious about applying to medical school?
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Aug 19, 2010 20:49
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Pfirti86 posted:What minimal GPA would you recommend for those serious about applying to medical school? This is the thread you're looking for: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3257277 3.5+ is what they say.
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Aug 19, 2010 20:53
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Go Hokies! I'm a Ocean/Aerospace Engineering student at Virginia Tech and I want to hear from anyone who might be in a naval architecture or marine engineering position. (I was bad at math all through high school and barely passed freshmen calculus. Then I got good teachers in the engineering department. You can get through engineering classes while not being great at math, but you have to really want it.)
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Aug 19, 2010 22:08
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