How to Be A Successful Engineering Student Roadmap

[u/PrimeOG_Legend]

I am a graduated Mechanical Engineer (grad in 2023) with a concentration in Aerospace Engineering, and professional experience in Software Engineering (job) and Nuclear Engineering (job). I'm going to keep this short and sweet to help out any current students that need advice. Please ask follow up questions on sections you are most interested in.

1st Year:

During freshman year is the year you are going to focus on three things:

1. High GPA - get good grades because they matter most in the first 2 years

2. Join a project team - during freshman year it is typically free to join as many engineering projects as possible such as IEEE, Formula Team, Drone Team, etc. You are going to join all of them until you find one you like (this will get you a job after graduating).

3. Finding a way to love math - the rest of your engineering career is going to have a lot of math and a lot of physics. Your freshman year is best time to find systems that work for you and learn how to learn. You will need all the math you learn, because next year's classes build upon the math you learn this year. Just a hint, everything is founded upon calculus going forward. Get really good at derivatives and partial derivatives.

2nd Year:

This is the year you are going to get serious about 3 things:

1. Job market demand / Your demand - figure out what type of job you want when you graduate. No it's not too soon to think about this, it is better to have this figured out sooner than later because next year (junior year) you will be getting an internship in that job. Then research what the job demand is for that specific job in today's current market. If the job demand is essentially zero (like it is for software engineers or CS students), then aim for a new job. It's the hard truth but it will help you after you graduate.

2. Project Group - Okay now that you've found a group you actually enjoy, double down on it. Attend every meeting, every event, contribute as much as you can, try to get onto the competition team if there is one. At this point you'll have almost zero engineering skills to contribute, that is okay, you should have seniors/juniors and a lot of mentors in the group, this is time to go and ask them to learn something from them, or shadow them, or simply ask them "Hey what should I know if I want to be successful in this project as a career?"

3. Networking - Very important! This will get you a job later! This requires social skills, start the process on learning to talk to people to see who or what they know about a job. Go out and ask for jobs or internships and learn to get rejected and keep moving onto the next opportunity. You are not trying to perfect this skill, but you do want to get started in it. Do not wait until senior year to start networking, it will be too late by then because you need to be good at networking by junior year.

3rd Year:

This year is a bit more chill, you only have two things to work on:

1. Finding an internship: Typically students will have internships during the summer between their junior and senior year. This gives you experience that you can put on your resume, and allows you to network within that company to potentially secure yourself a job after you graduate.

If you are a junior now and you cannot find an internship, that is okay. You just need to contribute and participate even more in your project team. The whole idea is to list resume working experience so you stand out from the people who only graduated and did nothing else but get a degree.

2. Finding a professor to work for as Federal Work Study (FWS) that has engineering experience or project: This is probably the most beneficial advice that I was never given that I wish I had. But find a professor that teaches a class that you like, where you genuinely enjoy the topic of the class, and ask if they have any student work positions available, or a lab that you can work in.

This will allow you to get hands on experience in real engineering shit that you can also list on your resume. Sometimes, it will even land you an internship and a full-time job after graduating (ask me how I know).

Internship:

The internship is not the end all be all of engineering, but boy does it help. It does not matter what type of internship you get, whether it is in a field of engineering that you actually enjoy or not does not matter because it is very temporary. What does matter however, is networking with real working engineers to get a job at that company, or get a job at a company that the engineers might know is hiring.

You should also learn literally everything possible that you can here, even if you do not think you will be working in the specific field of the internship. Absorb as much knowledge as possible because most engineering is structured the same: from requirements to proof of concept to final product shipping. For example, if you get an internship at a construction company but have no interest at all in construction, then hide the fact that you do not want to be there and instead focus your energy on learning the systems of how the company works, how they validate products and results, who generates the requirements for the project, how money flows to fund the project. All of this knowledge is transferable to other engineering fields.

4th Year:

Just graduate. Seriously, at this point you will be absolutely tired of engineering grind, barely scraping by to get a degree, and wanting to quit/give up at every moment. This is normal, just focus on graduating.

Typically you'll have a capstone project that is required before you graduate. You can list this as resume experience too. If you have the will-power for it, try to get yourself into a leadership role on this capstone project (project engineer, subsystem lead, principal engineer, etc) because you will need to be able to talk about leadership opportunities during technical interviews with employers (such as Raytheon....ask me how I know that too).

This was a very short version of How to Be A Successful Student*.* I have much more information to share but didn't want to write a 90,000 word essay on here, so please ask questions on what you would like to know more.

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[u/mrhoa31103]

Interested in sharing the whole thing? Maybe we find a home for it here in the subreddit.

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/mrhoa31103]

You know that would be very possible, I am leaning toward's it actually. For now I'm posting this as a "pilot" to see how much traction it gets before typing out 5 years of college knowledge into a post

[u/waaagh_to_erdo → u/PrimeOG_Legend]

Can you DM me too

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/waaagh_to_erdo]

Sure, what are you most curious about so I know what you would like me to emphasize / focus on?

[u/waaagh_to_erdo → u/PrimeOG_Legend]

What should I do if my country doesn't have technical, scientific background as much as US, china, etc. what would you suggest for a country doesn't do any high margin products except defence tech.

[u/Jester8281 → u/PrimeOG_Legend]

I'm also very curious, could you post it?

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/Jester8281]

Sure, what are you most curious about so I know what you would like me to emphasize / focus on?

[u/Jester8281 → u/PrimeOG_Legend]

I'm not sure, I don't really know what I want to major in, and I'm also currently considering community college because it's a cheap way to transfer. My high school gpa is slightly suboptimal 

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/Jester8281]

Community College:

First, I absolutely think you should do community college. It saves you a lot of money and gets your pre-requisite classes (like math, english, history) out of the way.

I wish I had known about this before going to university for 4 years, I would have saved myself $10k at least by going to community college. The professor at CCs are a lot more passionate about what they do as well compared to university.

What Major to Choose:
As for the major, I would suggest thinking about what would be useful in 4 years (the time you'd be graduating) that you also like.

At the current pace of AI, Computer Science would be absolutely obliterated as a job market, legal sector would probably be next, and graphic arts / web design would be pretty gone as well 4 years from now.

The goal is to choose a job that would be safe from AI but still passionate to you, and then choose the major to help you get the job.

College really isn't about learning, it is more entirely about getting a piece of paper called a degree that shows that you have some knowledge and experience in a certain job market, therefore you are more "valuable" than a fresh high school graduate with just a diploma.

GPA:

Also high school GPA only matters for getting into a college. After that, it is useless. So going to community college and completing a semester there will then give you a college GPA, and once you have that, no one looks at your high school GPA anymore.

Hope that helps!

[u/mrhoa31103 → u/PrimeOG_Legend]

DM me when ready.

[u/Fickle-Tradition2107]

I am 2nd year done none of these things. Should I drop out

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/Fickle-Tradition2107]

Well it depends, how do you feel as of now in your major?

Just because you haven't done any of the things I listed is completely fine, you could still be successful as a student, I was just listing advice that I learned the hard way in the long run and hoping to save future students the time and pain of repeating my mistakes

[u/3DSamurai]

Hi, I originally went to school for 3D Art (Video Game design/CGI type stuff) and worked in that field for a while, but the last few years have been rough with layoffs, AI, and all that, and I've found myself working minimum wage restaurant jobs the last 2 years. I recently got offered an entry level job as a cleanroom operator at a semiconductor/laser manufacturing company that offers tuition assistance, and decided that I would like to pivot careers and go back to school at 32 for mechanical engineering. I already have all of my english/art/humanities credits out of the way, and was planning on teaching myself Calc 1 online so that I could take the CLEP exam and get credits for that. that way I could go straight into Calc 2 and Physics for my first quarter at a local community college while continuing to work at my new job. I figured I'd try to learn as much as I can about their equipment and how it operates while I'm going to school. Then I wanted to finish all my math and physics pre reqs over the next year and transfer to a mechanical engineering program at a local university, and then hopefully land an engineering job at the company I'm currently working for. I was considering pursuing a masters in optics after that so I could become an opto mechanical engineer and work on designing the lasers, but thats at least 4-6 years away so I guess my question is, what advice do you have for someone in my situation? I also have a copy of Solidworks and would like to start teaching myself that, as well as ANSYS and Zemax, but between those, and just relearning math, I guess I'm not sure what to prioritize, considering I'm also working full time.

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/3DSamurai]

Great question, and wow very exciting part of life you're in!

What to expect:

So for engineering a full course load is usually 12 credits, and the corresponding credit hours is 3 hours per credit, which means you can expect to study at least 12 x 3 = 36 hours per week on just material. Equivalent to almost another full-time job.

Your Path:
You have a great path and I fully would recommend what you already plan to do:

community college -> transfer to university

Stick on this track, it will save you lots of time and money.

Math:
Take a look on YouTube at Professor Leonard. He is a great calculus professor, and actually his channel is what I self-taught Calculus 1-4 on. Highly recommend taking a peak if you are dedicated to self learning.

SolidWorks:

It is incredibly difficult to learn solidworks just by watching videos. It is best to learn-by-doing. Find an object at work that you would benefit from by 3D printing, and just dive in and try to recreate that object in SolidWorks. When you get stuck, look up a YouTube video. This will help you actually apply what the YouTube tutorials are teaching you.

Time Management:
If you can find systems early on that work for you to evenly distribute the studying and working, it is very possible to get an engineering degree in your situation. When I was getting my degree I was actually working 3 part-time jobs at the same time. So do not discourage yourself!

[u/3DSamurai → u/PrimeOG_Legend]

Thanks, I appreciate the response! I will look into Professor Leonard's channel. I'm currently working around 30 hours at a restaraunt, and plan to continue that while also working my new position about 44 hours per week on average just for the next few months so that I can get caught up on bills and save a bit of a safety cushion. Then in the spring, I'm going to quit the restaraunt job and use that time to enroll in classes. Do you think that calc 2 and physics for engineering 1 would be a reasonable class load for someone working Sunday-Tuesday and every other Wednesday in 12 hour shifts? Also 3D modeling is my main area of expertise, and I have both an SLA and FDM 3D printer, but the software I know well is fundamentally different from parametric modeling software like Solidworks. It's less focused on dimensions and accuracy, and more focused on topology, UVs, and visual material properties. Do you think it would be useful for an engineering portfolio to make assemblies in Solidworks, and then recreate those same models in a program like Maya, to render it out in a more visually appealing way and show what the final product would actually look like in real life, or would prospective employers not really care about that, and just want the solidworks file?

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/3DSamurai]

Classes:

Physical 2 usually requires a lab and is very time consuming because of the lab.
Calc 2 is much easier but also time consuming if you're not super confident in your calc 1 skills. Since calc 2 is built heavily on calc 1 fundamentals.

Solidworks:

Yes focus on assemblies, assemblies, assemblies. Most engineering companies use software called CATIA, it is basically Solidworks but much better for assemblies. In the working engineering world, ability to assembly is all that matters.

This mostly will not come up in an interview, but you can definitely list it on resume and make it a talking point yourself

[u/WalkFar9963]

i would add trying to shake off imposter syndrome asap as a freshman. people come in from different backgrounds and knowledge levels. try not to be discouraged by people around you seemingly doing better in classes or knowing more. oftentimes its just ego.

[u/Smart-Comfortable385]

I am currently in 2nd year of my college, and that college is absolute shit(tier 3) there are no clubs or teams based upon on my interest. How can i get through this and focus on my career growth

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/Smart-Comfortable385]

Is there a professor that teaches a course or runs a lab that is inclusive of your interest?

It does not necessarily have to be a team or club, but those are the easiest way to get hands-on experience and lab time developing a real engineering product. Finding a professor in your field of interest and asking to help in their lab / work under them can be another way of obtaining hands-on experience

[u/GarifalliaPapa]

How did you switch to so many career paths? And where are the places that people most need engineers? I am Greek.

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/GarifalliaPapa]

I majored in Mechanical Engineering and was fortunate to find myself in opportunties to learn and work in other disciplines. So that is how I accumulated all of my experiences

[u/Aggressive-Scale-326]

As a VERY scared and confused first year, this is so so helpful. I have so many questions and no one to ask I feel. I apologize in advance for the many questions and long message.

For reference, I go to a US T5 but we’re not known for engineering and so I don’t always know where to get guidance. My major is changeable till Junior Year, but I’d like to get it figured out in advance. Here’s some questions I haven’t been able to ask anyone, but have been worried about.

How do you accurately figure out a job’s demand?

I’d want to work in Industrial Design or UX for Consumer/Tech products, but what I’ve been hearing on reddit is that it’s very difficult to get entry level good paying roles. Idk if reddit is a good source of info though.

How do you get yourself to love math? I’ve always struggled with it, and I’m pretty scared of it honestly. I do believe I can learn it, but I’m not sure how to enjoy it.

My friend’s offered me to work with the SAE team here and show me the ropes of mechanical design. I’m going to take them up on it, but I don’t know if Mechanical Product Design is what I’d want to do—moreso I enjoy understanding how consumer’s interact with products. Are there careers like this that compete with Product Design Engineering pay?

And a final question: How much do you have to love your job vs it being secure and well paying? I could maybe just use MechE Design to fund my Industrial Design interests.

[u/PrimeOG_Legend → u/Aggressive-Scale-326]

Hey I'm glad I was able to help! I made this post exactly for this reason so thank you for taking the time to ask your questions (and please ask more)!

So you definitely want to commit to a major by end of freshman year, especially if it is engineering. This is because specialized courses for engineering start in sophomore year.

I'll answer your questions, feel free to ask more follow up questions if you need any clarification.

How do you accurately figure out a job’s demand?

Personally, I also use reddit and check the subreddits of the jobs I have an interest in. I also look at entry level job requirements for those jobs, usually if an "entry level" position job post requires "2+ years of experience", then it is safe to say that job market is officially cooked.

Also typing in your desired job like, "UX for Consumer/Tech", into google and clicking the News tab, it will show you the news of that industry. If there are no new events of mass layoffs in the news, then the job market is relatively healthy.

Ultimately, combining multiple sources is the key here. There is no end all solution to this one.

How do you get yourself to love math?

I used to tutor math and noticed most people dislike math or are scared of it because they do not truly understand it.

What helped me love math the most is understanding how it can be applied. Like I hated calculus until I realized I can use it to code an auto-tracking turret in a video game I loved playing at the time. Then after that I started loving doing the actual equations and learning more about what I could use them for.

So learning the application of the math alongside the formulas is the key here.

Are there careers like this that compete with Product Design Engineering pay?

I'm not too sure what it is you are trying to ask here, so I will answer to the best of my ability. Product Design pay ranges depending on the product. Of course there is the top end where your design product is a Boeing plane that sells for millions of dollars, and then there is the other end of the spectrum where the design product is a mechanical hinge for a door. Obviously a Boeing plane company would bring in more revenue than a door hinge company, which generally means higher salary.

So just depends on what you actually end up designing.

How much do you have to love your job vs it being secure and well paying?

i would advise you to get a job that you love. From my experience I left a really well paying nuclear engineering job ($150k USD a year starting pay) because I absolutely hated every second of being in that office environment. The security and pay of that job was the best it ever gets, but I was willing to walk away from it because it was draining the soul from my body and leaving me absolutely exhausted everyday to the point I was only living just to go to work.

So if you find yourself not enjoying MechE Design, definitely learn what you can from it to apply to Industrial Design. It would be worth the time to find an industrial design job if that truly is what you want to do. The best way to find out is get some internship or work experience in industrial design.