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psydude posted:I remember reading through this thread a year or two ago and seeing a discussion about how everyone shits on civil engineers. Is there a reason for this? A plurality of engineers are in defense, and civil engineers place targets.
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Apr 21, 2011 01:43
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Speaking of undergraduate research, what's the best way to get involved in that? I know I should get to know professors and find out what's going on, but it seems kind of strange to me as a random name in class to come up and ask if they need any help in their research. I would really love to do something and I have some areas in mind, but I'm not sure how to broach the subject. I'm in my first senior year in aerospace without an internship or anything subject related to my name; I feel like if I don't get something on my resume I'm pretty much consigned to the military after graduation. Frinkahedron or Dead Pressed, maybe one of you can comment, I'm a Hokie as well.
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Aug 28, 2011 03:47
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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'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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Doghouse posted:Anyone have any good tips on how to look for jobs in Baltimore/DC area or Chicago from out of town (meaning, we are not living there but are looking to move there)? My SO is in her last semester of mechanical engineering at a good school, with a good gpa, and now in a (second) internship, but is a bit intimidated by looking for a job. There's definitely no lack of opportunities in the area, what with all of the defense things floating around. Anecdotally I know they're looking for MEs at Indian Head (NAVSEA), and with two internships and a decent GPA she probably has a decent shot. I think Carderock (also NAVSEA) has openings as well.
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Feb 23, 2012 06:05
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Are superlatives like what I see at the top of that Summary helpful on a resume? It seems to me like most of it should be taken for granted, almost like putting down "I am awesome" a few times.
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Jun 22, 2012 18:50
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huhu posted:What do Laplace transforms have to do with mechanical control systems? We are spending one the three hour lectures looking at them. Quite a bit. You'll definitely go over this in lecture (and I imagine it's covered in depth in any text you're using), but the basic idea is you take the Laplace transform of the governing (linear time invariant) system equations to get the transfer functions in the frequency domain. With these you can design different control structures to obtain the desired frequency response.
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Sep 8, 2012 02:22
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It never hurts to apply, particularly if someone, headhunter or not, thinks you may be qualified. You can always turn a position down.
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Apr 5, 2013 17:52
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It depends on your field, but in a lot of cases you'll need to broaden your horizons a bit. I'm not sure how things are in electrical, but in aerospace I wasn't able to find any discipline related internships without a 3.0 requirement. Fortunately aerospace crosses a lot with mechanical so that opens a lot of doors (not that I was able to get any internships even with that, but that's another issue). The trick is to either find something which looks halfway related to what you're doing and dive for it, or to bust your tail networking (and to bust your tail networking). Everyone I know with a relatively low GPA who managed to find an internship did it through networking, whether through family, a family friend, or something else. Ask everyone you know, and put yourself out there. Don't be like me and just send in applications. I'm graduating this week, and talking around with others in my class it seems like maybe ~10% of outgoing aerospace grads have jobs lined up, with another 10% having had interviews at all. Several guys I know are heading on to grad school even with no guaranteed funding, just to have something definite lined up. It's going to be a fun time searching for a job. Should I be only focusing on full-time positions, or would a company consider interning someone who's graduated over someone still in school? Like I said, I haven't been able to get any internships and I feel like this puts me well behind most graduates, but whenever I bring up interning with a recruiter I get an odd look and a noncommittal answer "We'll put your resume in our intern pile" etc. I've been applying to both intern and full-time positions since last September and have only heard negatives from both, so I'm not sure if I should focus everything on full-time.
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May 15, 2013 01:38
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It's really incredibly depressing, for the students and the professors both. I was in a class last week, senior level elective aerospace class, ~30 of the smarter people in the class, and the prof asks how many people have something lined up after graduation. Two guys slowly raise their hands. Prof: "Oh. Well. I'm sure you'll all figure out something." This is at Virginia Tech, which make it especially surprising. I'd be interested in what things are like in the other engineering departments. Then there are the couple people interviewing with Lockheed, Pratt & Whitney, etc. Props to them, I suppose.
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May 15, 2013 04:34
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an skeleton posted:So from what I gather, Biomedical is like, the hardest engineering, and yet has the worst job prospects? That really sucks.  The popular choice for "hardest" engineering major is normally aerospace I say this while holding an aerospace degree so I'm not biased at allIn a lot of places, biomedical is a brand new program - I know the one at Virginia Tech just started up in 2000. You'll hear professors crow about it being such an expanding field but, practically, you want an undergraduate degree that gives you as much flexibility as possible. If you're set on the biomedical field/bioimaging or whatever, that's great, but know that it may be better for your actual career prospects to get a bachelors in mechanical and then go to grad school for biomedical - especially since most engineers now will likely get an ME or an MS anyway. It seems like most of the jobs marked as entry level for biomedical you could do just as well with a mechanical degree with some emphasis on statistical coursework.
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Jun 8, 2013 17:02
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grover posted:The hardest part about aero is finding a job. it's true 
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Jun 8, 2013 17:44
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Fucknag posted:I'd have to say the main thing that appeals to me is rocket engine design. You'll probably want to go mechanical, if only because you'll get more exposure to the thermodynamics and heat transfer material which you'll need for engine design. Depending on your school, you may be able to get as much classroom exposure with propulsion as the Aero people; my aero propulsion class was crosslisted as a mechanical elective. If you get the grades, you'll have as much a chance for an internship at GE, Pratt & Whitney, ATK, etc. as any Aero.
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Jun 11, 2013 03:26
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Olothreutes posted:So both of the department heads in my department are PEs, but honestly I don't know how much it means in either Chemical or Nuclear. The school encourages us to sit for the FE exam, but do you guys think it would be worth it for a nuclear engineer? Whether or not you'll need it down the line, it's incredibly easy when you're in school and you don't lose anything by having it on your resume. I did it as an aero, and did the mech portion for the second half instead of the miscellaneous catch-all. I was a bit wary because I had to teach myself refrigeration and do a lot of thermo review on the spot, but I passed just fine. Also, whatever discipline you are doesn't necessarily slot you in that specific area for the rest of your life, so it could still come in handy at some point even though nuke or chem don't specifically require it.
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Sep 9, 2013 01:07
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AstroWhale posted:I have a general question: How useful is it to learn continuum mechanics and plasticity theory? Should I learn how to deal with tensors and such? Or just take an introduction course for a FEA program? Personal anecdote: I was working with a grad student once who was having some issues with a CFD program, with results massively off scale compared to what he expected. It turned out that he was using the aircraft wing span as the characteristic length for the Reynolds number, instead of the wing chord. This sounds silly because it is, but when all you do all day is look at programs and numbers silly mistakes like this can crop up. The only reason he noticed the error is because he was familiar with the idealized inviscid mechanics and had a sanity check when going through the data.
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Oct 19, 2013 16:45
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Thoguh posted:And we had to do two semesters of composition plus a semester of technical writing. Is that not fairly standard for engineering schools? Most of my colleagues had similar experiences at their university At Virginia Tech, the AeroE program had no required writing courses, technical or otherwise; the only mention of writing on the courselist was for the senior capstone, which said that it satisfied the writing requirement. The excuse is probably that the AeroE program is already at the max allowed number of required credits. I think it was the same with MechE. The only time I ever heard about technical writing classes was from CS and CompE students, maybe EE as well.
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Nov 20, 2013 07:26
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Speaking of silly required classes, while all of the other engineering programs at VT have some sort of engineering econ class, AeroE had to take regular ECON 2005 Microeconomics, which is entirely different from engineering econ and doesn't touch on things that are on the FE exam. I have no idea why, and neither did anyone I asked, including the department dean. It didn't hurt too much, the class was easy enough and the econ on the FE exam is all reading tables, but I'd love to know why at some point someone thought "we should diverge entirely from other engineering programs and toss the AeroE kids into a normal ECON class."
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Nov 20, 2013 22:21
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Hed posted:Did you not have microecon as a GenEd req? I think it's good to have both to be a well-rounded individual but interesting that Aero would be different otherwise. We had the normal bevy of GenEd requirements, which amounted to "pick X amount of credit hours each from these 7 course categories" Econ satisfied some of those requirements, but like Frinkahedron said it wasn't specifically required other than for Aero.
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Nov 22, 2013 04:00
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mitztronic posted:Since GBS is a shithole now, there isn't anywhere else to really talk about this. In case anyone sees i the next 10-15 minutes, the Falcon 9 v1.1 is about to have it's second flight, this time with a comm satellite on board: The Spaceflight thread moved to SAL.  e;fb
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Nov 26, 2013 00:10
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Aardlof posted:What's a good resource for teaching myself calculus/differential equations? I've already taken the classes for these subjects but I don't feel like I really understood them. Right now I'm looking at these Dover Books on Mathematics on Amazon. Paul's Math Notes got me through those courses when I took them, and Khan Academy has a few limited videos on Calc and DiffEQ. You may get some better suggestions in the math questions thread in SAL.
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Dec 28, 2013 16:37
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Xeom posted:So I am 3+ months out of school with nothing to show but four phone interviews and one follow up video interview. Things are looking especially grim with ~30k of debt about to hit in three months. I've been applying every where, and to any position that requires an engineering degree. This includes field engineering positions in the middle of no where. Breaking in as a ChE seems nearly impossible, and I am sure as time goes by that my chances of finding a job are only decreasing. Don't lose hope. 3+ months is nothing, particularly now. Try not to restrict yourself engineering - there are plenty of areas where an engineering degree is highly valued, you'll still get to use what you learned, and you get paid about the same. I graduated last May in AeroE with a sub 3.0 gpa, and after almost a year with only a couple interviews I ended up having to take a QA position at a server company. A few months later, I hear back from a USAJOBs posting that I hardly remembered applying for, and now I'm working as an operations research analyst. No, it's not necessarily *hard engineering*, and it's not aero, but people I work with have engineering degrees, management has engineering degrees, I get to use what I learned, and I can see a career path. Try putting yourself out there for things that look for people with math backgrounds, but that are in applied areas where knowing how things physically (or chemically!) fit together is important. Getting that first job is the important part. If you wind up out of ChemE, you can always try to get back in if (read: when) you go to grad school.
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Aug 15, 2014 02:06
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BumbleChump posted:Mechanical Engineering student here. Try not to freak out too much. I was in your position with my GPA a couple years before I graduated, made it out with a 2.81 in AeroE, and landed a cushy government job. I'm pretty satisfied with how things turned out, but I could've done better so you get to learn from my screwups. Like KetTarma said, it's hard to know how big a thing GPA is by itself. I wouldn't let that be a license to relax, instead as a rule that you should do as much with your time in school as you can. What is it that you want to do when you graduate? Work in a specific sector? Grad school? Whatever it is (and if you don't know, figure it out), you'll probably never again have such ready access to people who have connections where you want them, and who are ostensibly there to help you. You still have plenty of time to cozy up to your professors, be a lab monkey, and otherwise get yourself noticed. The question you're asking here is one you can ask your profs, along with if they need any lab help or know someone who does. If you want to do grad school right after undergrad, now is the time to start networking and putting things together. Don't think that your GPA now shuts you out, even for funding. I made that mistake, and I could have networked better and gone on immediately to grad school. I can't really speak to your direct question since I didn't transfer, but I would put both GPAs.
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Oct 14, 2014 18:46
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spwrozek posted:FWIW I expect my new engineers to jump right in and do design work. I expect them to ask a lot of questions and probably royally mess up but after my review, comments, and coaching I expect they know it. They will have designs out in the field within the first couple months. As a fresh person in an engineer-ish job, I'll throw in that this is the best way to know what the hell it is you're doing. Nobody wants to sit around for months reading mountains of documents until some supervisor decides it's time for you to stop nodding off at your desk. Granted you'll still be going through mountains of documents, but at least there's something to break the monotony. Xeom posted:What sort of advice do you guys have for someone about to start their first engineer job. It sounds like you're entering a big organization, so it's likely whatever process you have to go through, document you have to turn out, presentation you have to give, someone has done it before. Half of your job is going to be to know who has what information. You aren't there to reinvent the wheel.
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Nov 9, 2014 02:29
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if you end up in a place where you can get the signatures and get a P.E. it definitely doesn't hurt, at the very least when you retire you can still pull a salary for a few months a year by stamping off on things
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Dec 1, 2014 02:46
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damnfan posted:So I am a graduating senior in an EE program and have not been able to find a job yet. The head of my department asked me about my job search and when I told him that, he offered to try to get me free tuitions for the masters program. No.
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Apr 18, 2015 12:25
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Party Alarm posted:The Navy came through with a ME job offer for 57k in Indiana. I'd be working in the Electro-optics Division of the Special Warfare and Expeditionary Systems Department. I imagine I'll be spending my day strapping lasers to sharks. Can you negotiate? My experience with the DOD is that your experience and degrees check off a bunch of HR boxes, and the number they spit out is the number you're stuck with. That may depend on the pay system though, I'm GS and if you're in an org that uses pay banding they may have more flexibility.
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May 29, 2015 17:34
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As long as you can hop on the TSP gravy train 
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May 29, 2015 21:10
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A few months doesn't sound huge to me, especially so soon after graduating, but maybe the market for EEs is a bit different. I also wouldn't stress about checking all the boxes on subject level experience - they should expect at least some spin-up period with a fresh graduate. Anything super intense tells me the company isn't really concerned about OJT, which to me is a red flag.
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Nov 6, 2015 14:36
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Isn't the FE pass rate influenced by the number of testers, or is that just a rumor floating around? If it's the case then I'd err towards taking mechanical if you have a reasonably close discipline - I studied aerospace and while in the mech I had to teach myself refrigeration and a few other things I passed just fine.
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Nov 9, 2015 17:12
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notZaar posted:Man is there any way to break into DoD jobs without being commissioned or knowing anybody in the system? USAJobs is horribly awkward and all their job postings are really poorly written. Just keep trying, took me a few hundred or so applications before I got in. Applying at the beginning of the fiscal year/end of calendar year may give you more luck but ymmv Alternately try starting at a contractor like Jacobs or Mantech, a few people I know transitioned to government after that for a few years. Kolodny fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 18:57
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Gray Matter posted:I'm looking at getting out of the military a year from now after 5 years served. I have an Associate of Science degree, so will be putting in ~2 more years of school for a bachelor's on the GI bill once out. Could you link to what you're looking at? I see that U of A has an ECE department with EE and CE options, but not a combined option. My instinct is that a combined option, if it really straddles the fence, gives you the worst of both worlds in the limited time of an undergrad degree, but I'd have to see a curriculum.
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Feb 10, 2016 19:58
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notZaar posted:Don't you have to go through ROTC to get into the military as a commissioned officer? How does that work if you're just going in as av recent graduate? Anyone can go to Navy OCS with at least a bachelor's degree. If you have a masters it doesn't make a lot of since to me to fall back to at least a few years of grunt work unless they're paying off your loans or something. I have a cousin who did the Nuke officer route and eventually got a PhD paid for, but he went in with a bs in aero
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Apr 6, 2016 14:16
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I don’t know your position, but I wouldn’t hesitate before getting feedback from at least your first line supervisor. An organization that doesn’t encourage regular azimuth checks seems a bit defective.
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Apr 1, 2018 00:40
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Maybe obvious question, but - have you tried DoD, or USG in general? Being a vet with a STEM degree should bump you up several notches. Check job series 08xx (all engineering) or 1515 (ORSA).
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Mar 9, 2021 22:34
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I think it comes with any specialty. There is nothing wrong with not having your whole identity be your job or your specialty. People who have hobbyist interests and do job-adjacent things in their spare time can be loud. People for whom their job is just a job probably aren't going to tell the world about it constantly except on a dead comedy forum.
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Apr 16, 2024 15:08
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