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Anyone have any suggested fields or companies that do not look at GPA within civil engineering? I already have a strong offer but with my 1.9 I'm finding myself left out of a lot of options. I'm fortunate enough to have an extremely strong resume however it's really a drain on my future possibilities, particularly at this early stage in my career.
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Oct 22, 2013 06:24
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Traitorous Leopard posted:So, I'm about to take the FE this coming Saturday - any suggestions for ways to study for this thing? I've got a copy of the reference book to look over, but other than that I was just planning on winging it. Like Shear Modulus said work on memorizing where the equations are within the formula book. It will save time. The amount of studying people do for the FE varies. I didn't study much besides a few months before and the night before.
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Oct 22, 2013 11:14
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Wilhelm posted:Anyone have any suggested fields or companies that do not look at GPA within civil engineering? I already have a strong offer but with my 1.9 I'm finding myself left out of a lot of options. I'm fortunate enough to have an extremely strong resume however it's really a drain on my future possibilities, particularly at this early stage in my career. If your wanting to do consulting I'd stick with the small to mid size firms, very rarely do they start snooping around for GPA. It seems like only the Burns & Mac/Black & Veatch type large firms will cut someone for GPA. What area of the US are you looking?
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Oct 22, 2013 13:19
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fishhooked posted:If your wanting to do consulting I'd stick with the small to mid size firms, very rarely do they start snooping around for GPA. It seems like only the Burns & Mac/Black & Veatch type large firms will cut someone for GPA. What area of the US are you looking? Agreed. I had a crappy GPA and got hired by a small consulting firm out of college. I worked for them for a year and then moved on to a bigger company (just didn't work out at that small company). No company will (typically) care about your GPA after your first job; they will only care about your experience.
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Oct 22, 2013 19:36
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Traitorous Leopard posted:So, I'm about to take the FE this coming Saturday - any suggestions for ways to study for this thing? I've got a copy of the reference book to look over, but other than that I was just planning on winging it. I "studied" the night before and was fine, mostly it's just retrieving the appropriate formula from the book they give you. Did fine on all the general engineering questions I hadn't touched in ages (more ME/thermo things)
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Oct 22, 2013 20:35
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Thanks for the responses guys. So it's numerics and mechanics for me! 
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Oct 23, 2013 11:18
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I was wondering if anyone who is familiar with EE and Computer E could help me decide between the two. I was previous thinking of doing Comp E with a technical focus in architecture, but I'd really like to do hardware design and such. Perhaps R&D for a semiconductor design firm. (Intel, AMD, Nvidia), and while I have no interest in the power systems and generation side of EE. It might be the path I need to take for electronics design? I've already completed a minor in Computer science (It was my previous major), and While I was good at programming. I didn't enjoy it very much. and I'm wondering if I did do Comp E with a technical focus in Architecture it might be too broad of area for what I want to do. But Comp E does also have electronics as a technical focus so I could do that as well. I've got to complete 1 year of general engineering before I can choose my specific major anyway. So no big rush.
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Oct 24, 2013 05:54
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Dotcom656 posted:I'd really like to do hardware design and such. Perhaps R&D for a semiconductor design firm. (Intel, AMD, Nvidia), This is electrical engineering. E: Maybe I should qualify that. This was at least at my school. There wasn't even a Computer Engineering major; thinking about your question more it's going to depend on the particularities of how your school decides which topics fall into which category. I can tell you that if you say you want to do circuit design and you have a EE degree, they are going to go "oh, okay, cool" but if you say you have a Computer Engineering degree, they'll probably go "okay, so what did you study?" Just my impression, of course. Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 06:28
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Shear Modulus posted:This is electrical engineering. It's sort of a blurry line and depends on what's offered at your school. I've seen some schools where CompEs are quite good at slinging Verilog/VHDL all day and perhaps eventually moving onto ASIC design...which is where the EE part comes in, semiconductor physics, etc. Really I think choosing the appropriate coursework + the right internship will get you what you want.
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Oct 24, 2013 07:37
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2nding this. The coursework is going to be very similar between the two, and virtually identical for the first two years; you don't have to decide quite yet. You can pick one if you have to declare, but you can change to the other at any time if you want.
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Oct 24, 2013 10:55
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Dotcom656 posted:I was wondering if anyone who is familiar with EE and Computer E could help me decide between the two. I was previous thinking of doing Comp E with a technical focus in architecture, but I'd really like to do hardware design and such. Perhaps R&D for a semiconductor design firm. (Intel, AMD, Nvidia), and while I have no interest in the power systems and generation side of EE. It might be the path I need to take for electronics design? I've already completed a minor in Computer science (It was my previous major), and While I was good at programming. I didn't enjoy it very much. and I'm wondering if I did do Comp E with a technical focus in Architecture it might be too broad of area for what I want to do. But Comp E does also have electronics as a technical focus so I could do that as well. I've got to complete 1 year of general engineering before I can choose my specific major anyway. So no big rush. Hey, I took CS for a little while before switching to EE. I just want to point out that there are a lot more sub categories to EE than Semi and Power. Try to check out all the sub focuses in the major one way or another to see if you really like any of them. I would choose the EE because I found it to be very flexible but I'm probably biased. Also, semiconductor design R&D is definitely a graduate degree job, when they recruited from our school it was always at least a Master requirement and usually a PhD requirement. At the point you'd want to find a school that has good fabrication laboratories or an adviser with good relationships to fabs which do shared wafer output, but that's still very far away for you.
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Oct 24, 2013 13:56
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Dotcom656 posted:I was wondering if anyone who is familiar with EE and Computer E could help me decide between the two. I was previous thinking of doing Comp E with a technical focus in architecture, but I'd really like to do hardware design and such. Perhaps R&D for a semiconductor design firm. (Intel, AMD, Nvidia), and while I have no interest in the power systems and generation side of EE. It might be the path I need to take for electronics design? I've already completed a minor in Computer science (It was my previous major), and While I was good at programming. I didn't enjoy it very much. and I'm wondering if I did do Comp E with a technical focus in Architecture it might be too broad of area for what I want to do. But Comp E does also have electronics as a technical focus so I could do that as well. I've got to complete 1 year of general engineering before I can choose my specific major anyway. So no big rush. At my school you can get either degree taking very similar coursework. You will have more options with EE if you can't get a job at at Intel etc. or decide you want to do something else.
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Oct 25, 2013 02:13
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As someone who has undergrad degrees in both, CompE and EE are going to both get you a semiconductor physics class, analog and digital circuits, and basic electromagnetics. As already mentioned in the thread you may have more VHDL/Verilog with CompE. It really won't make a difference--internships and undergrad research can give you a good start. A buddy of mine built up his network working with the right professors it just kind of snowballed from there. You get to figure out what you like and don't, all good information.
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Oct 25, 2013 02:19
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Thanks for the input everyone. I'm going to focus on getting undergrad research and a good internship to lead me where I want to go. As far as grad school, I might try getting my foot in the door in a company first, and then work towards a coursework path masters.
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Oct 25, 2013 16:46
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I'll be graduating with a BSE in ME this December, so I'm doing the whole job hunt thing, but I'm not having an easy time with it when I try and go location-specific. I'm mostly interested in medical devices or just about anything related to development in the developing world (clean water, power, etc.). Through the career fair and campus visits I've applied to a bunch of companies in those fields (mostly the sorts of huge companies that would be at a campus career fair), but almost all of them are in places I wouldn't really want to live. I'm sure there have to be cool companies in say, San Diego or Washington DC that would hire a new grad ME, but unless they're a big name company or they've visited my college, I probably don't even know they exist. So my question is: what are some good resources or websites for learning about engineering companies in specific cities? There's gotta be something better than Googling "medical devices Boston" or "engineering NGO San Francisco" like I've been doing.
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Oct 25, 2013 20:16
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I appreciate the FE advice fellas. I've got another problem: the company I co-op'd with has offered me a job and they expect to hear back from me on it by the end of October. The issue is that I can't expect to hear from another company about a job until Nov. 1st. There's a handful of reasons why I'd rather work for company B, but the job with company A certainly doesn't seem like a bad one either (the pay is decent and I enjoyed my co-op experience). I would ask for an extension, but I've already gotten one extension from company A (from Sept. 30 to the end of October). Would it be a big no-no to ask for another extension? I feel like that may be asking a bit too much. For what it's worth, company A had an HR goof-up and let me know of the job offer like 3 weeks after they had planned on doing so (someone forgot to send me an email). So I ended up getting the offer maybe a week before they expected to hear from me.
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Oct 25, 2013 23:16
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Traitorous Leopard posted:I appreciate the FE advice fellas. Have you told company B about this and said you'd really prefer to work for them, could they please get back to you sooner?
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Oct 25, 2013 23:36
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Continuing with the FE chat, I'm about to finish up a degree in nuclear engineering. It looks like the FE has transitioned to a computer based system with no reference book, I'm assuming it has an electronic reference now, with seven separate exams for different disciplines. I've looked at a few of them and it seems like a substantial amount of the coursework I do, computer modelling specific to NE with MNCP and the like, neutron diffusion, and reactor control theory to name a few, aren't on any of the tests. They also all seem to cover stuff that we don't because we simply don't have space in the degree. I get three electives in four years between the department requirements and the core university stuff, and even those must be from a rather short list of options (as short as three classes for one of them). Which exam should I take?
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Oct 25, 2013 23:52
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I'm no nuke, and I took the exam back when it was on paper, but unless you slept through physics I and II and your standard engineering coursework, taking the general exam for both sections should be a breeze. Go to 1 or 2 reviews your uni is offering and you should be fine.
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Oct 26, 2013 00:02
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Olothreutes posted:Continuing with the FE chat, I'm about to finish up a degree in nuclear engineering. It looks like the FE has transitioned to a computer based system with no reference book, I'm assuming it has an electronic reference now, with seven separate exams for different disciplines. I've looked at a few of them and it seems like a substantial amount of the coursework I do, computer modelling specific to NE with MNCP and the like, neutron diffusion, and reactor control theory to name a few, aren't on any of the tests. They also all seem to cover stuff that we don't because we simply don't have space in the degree. I get three electives in four years between the department requirements and the core university stuff, and even those must be from a rather short list of options (as short as three classes for one of them). Which exam should I take? I stuck with nuclear stuff, only did a smattering of ME and EE, didn't really work hard at it, didn't study for the FE, took the nuclear version, and passed despite thinking I didn't do very well. Study bending moments a little bit, forces, impacts, economics (one nuclear class I took was about fuel economy, and they covered compounding interest god bless em). Those are the questions I had no clue about. The physics and nuke and ME and other stuff came a lot easier for me, and even if you're stuck in higher-level stuff right now the older stuff should come back okay. I'd say just take nuclear unless you're super-confident about another field. Really you should pass unless you simply didn't pay attention during college. I wasn't a great student (I got Ds in Statics, dynamics, diffEQ, Cs in radiation health physics, and a slew of others) and I made it through. You should do fine. We are unfortunately the red-headed step-child of engineering. Putting Neutron diffusion on the FE would lead to a rash of suicides during the exams, so it tends to be sophomore level coursework that's on it.
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Oct 26, 2013 00:04
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Pander posted:I stuck with nuclear stuff, only did a smattering of ME and EE, didn't really work hard at it, didn't study for the FE, took the nuclear version, and passed despite thinking I didn't do very well. If there was a nuclear portion of the FE, I'd take it in a heartbeat. There isn't. Now it's just Chemical, Civil, Electrical and Computer, Environmental, Industrial, Mechanical, and the wonderful all encompassing "Other" for disciplines not listed.
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Oct 26, 2013 00:07
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Shear Modulus posted:Have you told company B about this and said you'd really prefer to work for them, could they please get back to you sooner? Yeah I mentioned it at the end of my second interview with them and again when I followed up with them today. It was today they told me that HR isn't planning on sending out any word on decisions until November 1st.
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Oct 26, 2013 00:53
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Olothreutes posted:If there was a nuclear portion of the FE, I'd take it in a heartbeat. There isn't. Now it's just Chemical, Civil, Electrical and Computer, Environmental, Industrial, Mechanical, and the wonderful all encompassing "Other" for disciplines not listed. I thought that nuclear went under other? regardless, it's the best option to take.
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Oct 26, 2013 02:15
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Pander posted:I thought that nuclear went under other? regardless, it's the best option to take. "Other" is just a repeat of the morning part of the exam. I took the PE Petroleum exam today and it didn't seem so bad. There were about 650 people taking all of the various PE and SE exams, with about 27 million books between us. I am kicking myself for forgetting to bring a certain textbook that would have helped me on 3-4 of the questions (I brought books that are more widely used and not full of text and calculation mistakes). I was able to finish the morning session about 30 minutes early and the afternoon almost 2 hours early because they had a lot less calculation questions. I don't know how they choose the questions for each session, but the difference was really strange and will probably be looked into in the after review. I would recommend if taking either the FE or PE in Houston, bring your own lunch and keep it in a cooler in the car. They say it is against the rules for Reliant Park, but the "on site concessions" are kind of weak and not able to support the rush of everyone going for a 1 hour lunch break.
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Oct 26, 2013 02:35
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PE over. Exam was interesting. I took the civil structural and it was decently tough. I feel like I killed in in the morning. The afternoon I am so so on. I had to use all 7 of the drat codes I brought. I ended up with 5 questions I really didn't have time to do. Oh well. Hopefully I passed. Now to wait 6-8 weeks....
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Oct 26, 2013 02:43
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Now the hard part: the wait!
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Oct 26, 2013 21:12
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Just got back from the FE - content-wise it wasn't as bad as I expected. I dominated the ChE portion, but the general section was kinda iffy at times. It would have been nice had it not been a drat coon's age since I took Physics/Statics/EE stuff. Sitting in a room and taking a test for ~8 hours was loving miserable, though.
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Oct 26, 2013 23:33
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Just accepted an offer for a paid summer EE internship with a major aerospace company that's about 15 minutes down the road from me. 
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Oct 27, 2013 00:10
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KetTarma posted:Just accepted an offer for a paid summer EE internship with a major aerospace company that's about 15 minutes down the road from me. Goddamn EEs stealing all the aerospace jobs! 
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Oct 27, 2013 00:38
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KetTarma posted:Just accepted an offer for a paid summer EE internship with a major aerospace company that's about 15 minutes down the road from me.
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Oct 27, 2013 00:43
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KetTarma posted:Just accepted an offer for a paid summer EE internship with a major aerospace company that's about 15 minutes down the road from me. You know this is the engineering thread right? Don't really have to preface internship with paid 
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Oct 27, 2013 00:50
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Hollis Brown posted:You know this is the engineering thread right? Don't really have to preface internship with paid I was about to post the same. What kind of engineer takes an unpaid internship?
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Oct 27, 2013 01:10
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edit: gently caress wrong thread. Good luck everyone who took the PE/FE though
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Oct 27, 2013 01:25
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I guess this is as good a place as any to ask this. I've been working for a company as a CNC machinist (programming, setup, operating) for the past 8 years. One of our customers wants our company to have a quality/process engineer. The company owner would like me to possibly take this position in 3-6 months time when all the details are ironed out. She was somewhat vague about the job responsibilities so I was wondering if any of you guys could give me a general idea of what a quality or process engineer does. From the bit I gathered they want me to take new parts from customers, work directly with the customer during prototyping and finalize the manufacturing process before handing it off to the shop. Does that sound about right? I realize different companies will do things differently but again, just general information would be great.
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Oct 27, 2013 02:46
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spwrozek posted:I was about to post the same. What kind of engineer takes an unpaid internship? I was in a meeting as an advisory role and this firm was setting up an Master's student internship deal with a university and they set the payment to be $10 a day. The professor representing the university was delighted, said it wasn't about the money but the relationship and started feeding the company student names. I told them they weren't going to get a good student after the prof left. What the hell happens to profs that turns them into terrible human beings?
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Oct 27, 2013 05:14
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The most important thing I've learned at my co-op: you must decorate your desk with a piece of power cable. The higher the voltage rating of the cable, the higher your authority in the organization.
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Oct 27, 2013 16:29
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At one of my old jobs, it was the same thing, except with dead prototype PCBAs.
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Oct 27, 2013 16:35
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grover posted:woo! Sucks to have to wait that long, though. This semester I'm struggling to keep my GPA from taking a hit. My advisor convinced me to start taking my senior electives next semester so I don't mind holding off on my workload for a bit. I am the guy that accepted an unpaid internship with a govt contractor because working on satellite systems sounded too cool to turn down for a freshman babby EE. Good thing they went through layoffs and I lost the position weeks before it started!
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Oct 27, 2013 19:40
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spwrozek posted:I was about to post the same. What kind of engineer takes an unpaid internship? When I graduated from USC in 2009, the career fair had only one company hiring (Intel), and they were only "hiring" unpaid interns (and only grad students). So, the kind of engineer that doesn't get any other choices? For real though, unpaid internships were a thing for several years and I would imagine there are still a lot around. I only knew one person who had a paid internship during college
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Oct 28, 2013 23:12
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I think that speaks more poorly of the schools career services than anything else.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:26
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