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As soon as you can. It helps if you've actually had a class with the professor and don't wait til the last minute to ask. At the very worst he'll say no, so you really don't have anything to lose by looking.
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Oct 29, 2011 03:15
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If your work is related to your career goal I would stick with that over probably-unpaid undergrad research, unless you are planning to go to grad school. The reason research is typically recommended for undergrads is that so many of them otherwise have no experience at all outside of the classroom.
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Oct 29, 2011 04:26
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Hold on to your colorful Bic #2 pencils guys, they may be going away:NCEES PE post-exam Survey posted:NCEES is transitioning the FE and FS exams to a computer-based format (CBT).
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Nov 3, 2011 21:58
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This is not 100% related to engineering, but I have been trying to find a real career for myself and maybe some civil types will have knowledge of the construction field. I have a public policy degree, focusing in land management, from Michigan and I score very well on standardized tests. I have been looking at Masters programs in Construction Management at schools like Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Clemson, and Auburn. I have talked to advisers at these schools and they say that despite my lack of direct academic or professional experience in construction, I can still get into these programs (despite some of their websites saying otherwise). My question is, how much would my lack of experience in construction hinder my ability to enter the field after completing a Master's program? Is it a good field to get in to in the first place? The schools report excellent placement rates, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports pretty drat good compensation (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos005.htm), but I know these numbers can be deceiving. Are there any construction managers in this thread that can dispense some advice to a recent college graduate wallowing in underemployment?
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Nov 3, 2011 22:44
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Buckhead posted:Are there any construction managers in this thread that can dispense some advice to a recent college graduate wallowing in underemployment? Anecdote-I have a friend who was a complete dipshit and barely hacked statics. As a graduate of VT's Construction Management program he landed a fairly good job. I don't know about his summer work experience, so I have to assume he had none. He was utterly worthless, so I'd say odds are good. :/
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Nov 4, 2011 01:14
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Are there any good resources for brushing up on my SolidWorks skills? I've been out of the workforce for awhile (year and a half) now and have gotten a little rusty but I had an interview with a company that went well about a week ago and they want to bring me back for a SolidWorks test on Thursday. HR guy said it should be about an hour and will be making a drawing for one part. Also should I come dressed in a suit for the test as well, or is that only necessary for the interview?
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Nov 8, 2011 00:46
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I was just talking to some friends yesterday and complaining about how expensive SW is for non-students. They suggested I try registering for a class, getting a student copy for $150, and then dropping the class and then you have the program for a year. I'm not sure it's possible at all, but I know for sure you can't register for classes in the middle of November. Sorry for the unhelpful post! But if it happens again in January then maybe you will get lucky. Edit: Or do you have the software and just want to look for things to learn/practice? I suggest youtube, I once learned a couple tricks from it while trying to model some stuff on my own.
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Nov 8, 2011 02:51
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Nah I don't have a copy so I'm stuck to looking up stuff on youtube/wherever. I'm confident that I can pick up all the basic stuff pretty quickly once I open up the software since I've been using it for so long (~ 2 years). I was looking at this site: http://iprototype.in/solidworks to learn some surfacing and kind of get re-familiarized with all the tools and icons. I was wondering if there was anything else like that website I linked out there. Also the computer lab at my alma mater had SolidWorks on all their computers. The only problem is my old login doesn't work and my alma mater is an hour away from where I live. So I'll have to call them and ssee if there's a way I can get on the system so I can get some practice time making drawings.
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Nov 8, 2011 03:49
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Fifth year materials science and engineering major (materials science and materials treatment and use) here. If you have questions about the studies and what to expect, I may be able to give boring answers regarding metals and stuff.
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Nov 8, 2011 12:50
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This article about STEM education was posted on Slashdot a couple days ago and the comments seem to paint a pretty bleak picture of engineering careers in the US, which seems to run counter to the general consensus in this thread. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
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Nov 8, 2011 13:49
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seniorservice posted:Nah I don't have a copy so I'm stuck to looking up stuff on youtube/wherever. I'm confident that I can pick up all the basic stuff pretty quickly once I open up the software since I've been using it for so long (~ 2 years). I was looking at this site: http://iprototype.in/solidworks to learn some surfacing and kind of get re-familiarized with all the tools and icons. I was wondering if there was anything else like that website I linked out there. huhu fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Nov 8, 2011 |
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Nov 8, 2011 14:14
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MourningGlory posted:This article about STEM education was posted on Slashdot a couple days ago and the comments seem to paint a pretty bleak picture of engineering careers in the US, which seems to run counter to the general consensus in this thread. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Comments on websites are dumb, here or elsewhere. Also I dont really see any well rated comments saying that except for a few which are clearly dumb people saying dumb things like THE GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO DESTROY ENGINEERING JOBS. Most of them are discussing why STEM classes are hard or saying that after getting an engineering degree, expect to get a business one as well.
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Nov 8, 2011 15:23
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MourningGlory posted:This article about STEM education was posted on Slashdot a couple days ago and the comments seem to paint a pretty bleak picture of engineering careers in the US, which seems to run counter to the general consensus in this thread. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Think of the kind of person who spends time writing angry comments on slashdot articles. Imagine that person in a job interview
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Nov 8, 2011 15:29
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MourningGlory posted:This article about STEM education was posted on Slashdot a couple days ago and the comments seem to paint a pretty bleak picture of engineering careers in the US, which seems to run counter to the general consensus in this thread. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I understand what the article is getting at, and I appreciate the intent behind the initiatives at Notre Dame and elsewhere, but my experience with things like increased group work and more general engineering classes in Freshman year is that they're very one-off things. Here at Virginia Tech we had two semesters of general engineering before diving into the grind of normal in-major coursework, going over basic design things, engineering ethics, a bit of CAD and programming, and a group project+presentation at the end of each semester. It was definitely interesting stuff and a bit useful, but the problem was that after that it was right into the normal grind. I may be missing some of the more fundamental changes on the program level, but the sense I get is that a lot of it is tacking on the Freshman year things without many changes to the whole program. Still, I'm not sure what could be done to make things easier to slide into. It's the hard truth that engineering is a lot of numbers, technical details, and memorization that a lot of people can't acclimate to. The professors teaching more fundamental courses who say they make things difficult because they're teaching a foundation have a point. There's obviously a few bad apples, professors who really don't understand how to teach or design a course and end up curving up 30 points, but things like that are more a problem with the university system than with how engineering programs are structured.
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Nov 8, 2011 16:10
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I don't even know what the ultimate goal is... to have more people with engineering degrees? There are only so many jobs. It seems to be an extension of the 90s where lawmakers looked and saw jobs that required bachelor's degrees made more than jobs that required a high school diploma. Now, bachelor's degrees are incredibly simple to get with tons and tons of low rate schools and there are still the same number of people getting the "good" jobs and everyone else earning what they would have without the degree except with a ton of student loan debt. They can just force engineering schools to tone down the difficulty or worse schools can make them easier to get to attract sudents, but it'll still be the same number of people with the good jobs while you just have a bunch of unemployed engineers. A good example of this is the law field.
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Nov 8, 2011 16:20
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Lord Gaga posted:Comments on websites are dumb, here or elsewhere. Also I dont really see any well rated comments saying that except for a few which are clearly dumb people saying dumb things like THE GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO DESTROY ENGINEERING JOBS. Most of them are discussing why STEM classes are hard or saying that after getting an engineering degree, expect to get a business one as well. quote:Think of the kind of person who spends time writing angry comments on slashdot articles. Imagine that person in a job interview Yeah, I generally take Slashdot comments with a huge grain of salt. I just wanted some rebuttal and response to the "engineering is a dying career field" comments.
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Nov 8, 2011 16:31
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On the subject of engineering careers being bleak, I think the slashdot comments neglect the fact that everything job-related in the USA is bleak. To use a lovely metaphor (ha), engineering is the reasonably edible part of the poo poo sandwich that is the US labor market. Things may seem to suck for engineers here, but we've got nothing on your average non-tech employee in terms of getting exploited by our employers. We may see more parity in terms of terrible working lives as workforce globalization continues to develop, but for now, engineering (almost across the board, field-wise) is one of the few areas where you have a chance of a decent quality of life without needing the luck of "right place, right time, right connections." Also, gently caress internet comments.
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Nov 8, 2011 16:49
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seniorservice posted:Are there any good resources for brushing up on my SolidWorks skills? I've been out of the workforce for awhile (year and a half) now and have gotten a little rusty but I had an interview with a company that went well about a week ago and they want to bring me back for a SolidWorks test on Thursday. HR guy said it should be about an hour and will be making a drawing for one part. I'd dress up for the test, yes. I just reinstalled solidworks on my computer, it seems to come with a grace period before activation is required, there might be a trial verison available. As for brushing up, the basics will probably come back to you very quickly, learn what the company does and anticipate how it would affect your design. I use sheet metal now, so I had to get familiar with that aspect. If they work within constraints such as weight, learning how to change material properties could be useful as well.
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Nov 8, 2011 17:08
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MourningGlory posted:Yeah, I generally take Slashdot comments with a huge grain of salt. I just wanted some rebuttal and response to the "engineering is a dying career field" comments. 
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Nov 8, 2011 18:06
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I'm an Australian interested in getting a process/chemical job in the US. To give a bit of background, this is what I've been doing out of uni (all with the same company): -1 year on a sulphuric acid plant as the plant chemical engineer. -1 year in a design office doing detailed process design and feasability studies. -1 year as a commissioning engineer for a brownfield expansion. -1 year as a commissioning engineer in Indonesia for the companys biggest project ever - I also double as a hazard study leader and trainer in this role I could get a job pretty easily back at home with my experience and I get told I'm pretty good at whatever they throw me in consistently, but I just want to settle down and work overseas for a little while. I know the economy is pretty bad there at the moment, but do recruiters even look at expats? What are my chances like? Edit: Also, friends in the US basically say that you need a masters to really get anywhere - "bachelors is the new high school diploma" etc. In Australia a bachelors still means something. Will that look bad on my resume? namsdrawkcaBehT fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Nov 9, 2011 |
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Nov 9, 2011 12:22
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namsdrawkcaBehT posted:I'm an Australian interested in getting a process/chemical job in the US. With that experience I wouldn't imagine you'd have too terrible of a time finding a position. People are still hiring engineers, especially experienced chemical engineers, so I'd say start sending out your resume and seeing if you get any bites. As for a masters, it's absolutely not needed for a ChemE job in the states. If you are looking for a process engineering position, a bachelor's will be just fine.
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Nov 9, 2011 14:38
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You'll have trouble working anywhere that requires security clearances, but a chemical engineer can work pretty much anywhere.
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Nov 9, 2011 17:14
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Vomik posted:They can just force engineering schools to tone down the difficulty or worse schools can make them easier to get to attract sudents, but it'll still be the same number of people with the good jobs while you just have a bunch of unemployed engineers. A good example of this is the law field. What the schools will probably do is dumb down and promote the engineering technology degree programs and count those as "engineering" graduates. I don't know if this would affect ABET certifications though.
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Nov 9, 2011 19:47
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SeaBass posted:What the schools will probably do is dumb down and promote the engineering technology degree programs and count those as "engineering" graduates. Yeah a lot of schools are offering "engineering" degrees that aren't the same as 4-year accredited ABET degrees. Personally, I'm all for schools extending the senior design project length and offering labs that foster passion for their field in the students. Give them a place to work on their robots, cars, whatever. I learned so much from just trying out random projects on the Internet, and it coupled perfectly with classroom education. Some of my EE classmates displayed zero enthusiasm for the field, whether in-class or outside of class. They were just zombies that cribbed/copied/suffered their way through the homework. I don't get why'd they do this, they'll just end up hating their jobs when the graduate  I think fostering entrepreneurship is a great idea too. Lots of short programs out there that you can attend 1x-2x a week to learn about just how easy it is to start your own firm.
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Nov 9, 2011 22:40
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movax posted:Some of my EE classmates displayed zero enthusiasm for the field, whether in-class or outside of class. They were just zombies that cribbed/copied/suffered their way through the homework. I don't get why'd they do this, they'll just end up hating their jobs when the graduate As someone who just went through the motions in college this has been my experience. So if anyone starts doing upper division courses and find themselves hating life, don't try and fool yourself into thinking getting in the workforce will be better than academia; just change majors, I wish I did.
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Nov 11, 2011 12:58
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seniorservice posted:As someone who just went through the motions in college this has been my experience. So if anyone starts doing upper division courses and find themselves hating life, don't try and fool yourself into thinking getting in the workforce will be better than academia; just change majors, I wish I did. I think it depends. I'm a mechie and I certainly didn't like many of my courses, especially the really math heavy ones, (Looking at you, control systems) but I universally really, really liked my lab classes, and I am pretty happy with the work I do now.
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Nov 11, 2011 15:23
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2011 19:06
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Thoguh posted:This is kind of what I am trying to get at - all that theory can suck and is a drag. But you can't skip straight to the lab stuff without having that theory to understand what is happening in the lab and why it is important. Engineers have to power through the theory before playing with the fun toys. If someone wants to skip the theory part then they can and should go the lab tech route for a career and be happy and well compensated, but much more limited in their career options. I'll agree with that, but at the same time I don't think frustration with theory is necessarily indicative of a bad engineer. To be fair with that, however, I am not exactly a guy who is temperamentally suited to sitting down and studying, so I might be a bit grumpier with class and lecture work than most people. EDIT: To be clear, I mean frustration here, not inability to comprehend theory. Except for control systems, gently caress that poo poo, for reals. CCKeane fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Nov 11, 2011 |
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Nov 11, 2011 19:32
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2011 20:18
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Isn't this to some degree a problem with the teaching in engineering classes? There are a lot of engineering professors who seem to hate teaching and put in the bare minimum of effort. When you essentially have to teach yourself everything, the theory-based classes seriously suck. I also hated Control Systems. The labs were actually really interesting, but when your professor is barely able to communicate and the book seems to have been written by a robot, it can be really hard to get through classes. I think we could improve engineering education here if schools focused on hiring professors who actually want to teach. T.H.E. Rock fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Nov 11, 2011 |
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Nov 11, 2011 22:21
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Thoguh said most of what I was going to say, and while reading through the post it reminded me of a similar field, medicine. Medicine is hard. Medicine has a high washout rate--how many people do you know had their dreams crushed when they got a B on their first Chem test as a college freshman? Similarly, we will have a shortage of medical staff in the future although a lot of those aforementioned doctor washouts became nurses. Sure they could spice up some things to improve Engineering teaching, but when you get down to it it's hard to do too much in the classroom when you have to learn half of University Physics in 40 50-minute sessions.
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Nov 12, 2011 00:31
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Yeah I'm on board the gently caress control systems bandwagon. Though I did take a aircraft controls class as a double major and that was a lot more tolerable and actually enjoyable at times than the ME control systems class. Also the SolidWorks test I had to take was just draw a threaded screw using pierce and sweep feature so it wasn't too bad. But now they want me to take some online test consisting of numerical and logical reasoning portions (both of which are 45 minutes and require a claculator) and a personality test I can do at my own pace. The website is here http://www.shl.com/us Has anyone done this test before? Any tips? Also is this normal for manufacturing engineer candidates to go through this much testing? It seems in every interview process I have I go through some tests.
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Nov 12, 2011 01:47
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2011 05:05
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I'm in a course on LTI systems now that uses Ogata's book that I'm enjoying. It's been a while since linear algebra, but last semester I took an intro to finite element methods course, which was obviously neverending matrices, so that probably helped. I may not be too deep into the weeds yet (started state-space representation last week, after finishing up frequency-domain and robustness things with Nyquist), but I'm definitely enjoying the subject. It helps to be in a 10 person class with a really eccentric professor. In the core aero curriculum we only loosely touch on things like how systems are structured and basic stability, so it's neat to get a bit more in-depth.
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Nov 12, 2011 05:20
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seniorservice posted:Also the SolidWorks test I had to take was just draw a threaded screw using pierce and sweep feature so it wasn't too bad. But now they want me to take some online test consisting of numerical and logical reasoning portions (both of which are 45 minutes and require a claculator) and a personality test I can do at my own pace. The website is here http://www.shl.com/us Has anyone done this test before? Any tips? Psychometric tests are common as hell for graduate jobs in general, though I'm not sure how it is for experienced positions (not sure where you are career-wise?). It's really, really important you practice. You'll be screened based on your score - i.e. you have to meet a cutoff performance to carry on the interview process - and it will also be one of the multiple factors that are considered when picking candidates. Your performance will improve significantly if you go in knowing what the format will be like and with lots of practice on similar tests. SHL do practice tests of all different types on their website, so complete the relevant ones to begin with, then google for more practice as well. I personally quite like the tests because if you put the work in they are an easy way to distinguish yourself early in the interview process. As for the personality test, it's a bit trickier. Most advice resources say to "just be yourself" but otoh they're probably all under a professional obligation not to tell people to lie  One piece of advice I read was to focus on "being yourself at work" - in other words answer in terms of how you act in the workplace, where you probably regulate your behaviour to be more productive/professional/personable/whatever.
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Nov 12, 2011 21:28
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I'm looking at getting out at the end of spring semester with a CompE master's degree. How early is too early to start sending out applications/resumes for posted positions? If they're looking for someone 'now' I don't want to be applying 6 months in advance, but I don't want to be waiting until the last minute either.
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Nov 12, 2011 22:07
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In general, I would say it's never too early. If the ad makes a big deal out of "must start immediately" then yeah, don't bother. But a lot of organizations take a long-term outlook on recruiting, and it never hurts to get on their radar. And of course, interview practice is good.
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Nov 13, 2011 02:39
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Start applying NOW. I was fortunate enough to have a job offer accepted in October of my senior year, graduated in May. Boy, did that make my senior year so much more enjoyable! Any recruiter worth their salt will have a long term outlook, as brought up above. I wouldn't even bother with a company not interested in discussing employment 6 months in advance with a student. Don't fall into the trap of holding off, it takes a long time for these things to go through the motions, and the earlier you set yourself up the less competition you'll have to deal with. You'd be surprised how many people wait until the last minute to start looking for work.
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Nov 13, 2011 16:22
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Echoing Dead Pressed above. The engineering department at Virginia Tech has their biggest engineering recruiting fair in September. I had a job offer in October as well that I ended up turning down, but it's never really too early.
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Nov 13, 2011 21:40
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Lazy engineer
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