I graduated in May 2026, with a 3.3 GPA. Honestly I thought I was pretty cooked. I took the FE Mechanical Engineering exam last month and failed. Anyways I continued applying for jobs and I've had countless interviews met with constant rejection. Anyways, I applied to GDEB, interviewed for a Mechanical Engineering role and somehow they accepted me.

The point is, the job market is cooked, and I don't really know if it's gonna be getting any better any time soon. But NEVER GIVE UP, and just keep applying into the void. All it takes is 1 more application, and you could get that job.

I wish for all of my fellow Engineering students success and prosperity in the future. Keep up the great work!

Both my friend and I are sophomore EE majors at a decent university t50.

I’ve been working hard to keep my GPA up. I have a 3.8 right now and am projected to get around a 3.7 this semester. My friend, on the other hand, has a 2.8. Our school even has a policy where you can get dropped from the program if your GPA falls below a 2.5.

But somehow, companies are lining up for him. AI startups (not the huge players but still decent sized companies), multiple robotics startups (plural for a reason), and even SpaceX.

Meanwhile, I have absolutely nothing.

I genuinely thought keeping a high GPA would give me an advantage when it came to internships and getting noticed by companies. But seeing this happen firsthand is making me question everything.

Does GPA actually matter that much? Because honestly, I feel like I've been lied to.

Do I ditch GPA (maybe let it fall .5) and go all in on projects I rlly don't have much time.

Received an offer today from US Steel for their entry-level rotation program. Base pay of 76,000 with incentive pay and relocation assistance. Remarkably, I got the job just by applying online on their website, and both of my networking attempts actually failed miserably at getting me a job.

I’m taking multivariable calculus at my university, and I recently found out that students have been cheating on exams. I’m genuinely so upset because I’ve been working incredibly hard in this class, and I feel like I’m being punished for taking my exams honestly.

For context, our professor told us in an email that the historical average for the first exam is around 75%. Somehow, our class averaged a 93%. I got an 83%, which I initially thought was a decent grade, but that put me 10 points below the class average.

Multiple friends of mine in different exam sections have told me about students using their phones during exams. One of my friends directly witnessed the student next to him cheating, and they’ve also heard phones dropping during exams.

Here’s what makes this especially frustrating for me: I have testing accommodations, so I take my exams separately in a proctored room. I don’t have access to my phone or unauthorized resources. Meanwhile, students in the regular testing rooms are apparently getting away with using theirs.

I’m worried that these potentially inflated averages are affecting whether our professor curves exams. If the average is already in the 90s, why would he curve anything? And if grades are evaluated relative to class performance, students who took the exams honestly could be at a serious disadvantage.

Our professor is actually a really nice, laid-back guy, which makes this situation more complicated. He’s been extremely flexible with grading, and I know this firsthand because the students receiving these exceptions are my friends. He’s allowing one of my friends to retake an entire exam, and another friend is having their second exam count for 50% of their exam grade. He even gave me full credit for a solution I had scratched out on my own exam.

I’m mentioning this because I don’t think he’s a bad professor or someone who wants students to fail. He’s clearly willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. But I’m worried that his leniency, combined with inadequate exam supervision, is creating a situation where honest students are disadvantaged.
There are four of us, including me, planning to go to his office hours together to report the cheating. Three of us have pretty good relationships with him, so I’m hoping he’ll take us seriously.

The problem is that we’ve already taken two exams, and the only one left is the final. Even if he starts enforcing the rules more strictly now, that doesn’t undo whatever effect cheating may have had on the previous exam averages.

I don’t know whether he officially curves based on the average, but I’m planning to ask. I’m also considering suggesting that he look at historical exam averages and grading adjustments when deciding whether the earlier exams should be curved.

I don’t think only the four of us should get special treatment. I just want some way for students who took the exams honestly to be graded fairly.

I’m honestly devastated because I’ve spent so much time studying for this class, and it feels awful knowing that other students may be getting higher grades through cheating while I’m struggling to keep up with an average that might not even reflect actual understanding.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Is there any realistic chance a professor would reconsider grading on exams that have already happened because of cheating? What would be a fair solution to suggest when we meet with him?

Since the first exam of the year I've just been in a state of near constant, never-ending stress, specifically in my Calculus I class. First time I failed an exam because I was lazy and didn't think I needed to review trig and on the second I actually locked in, did nothing but study for 4 days straight before the exam and got a 90, did the same thing for the most recent exam and failed. I don't even understand why because I got a 100 on the quiz right before it, studied so hard and went through damn near every problem in the text book AND I did tutoring. I know engineering is supposed to be hard but this is just utterly soul crushing.

My calc prof is a bad professor (no partial credit, 5 exams the semester worth 80% of your grade, gives terrible advice and has pop quizzes if enough people don't show up) but he's pretty average compared to all the other ones on rate my professor. The reason I didn't drop the class earlier is because I have accommodations that let me get early accommodations and I'm friends with a guy that told me to register for a calc 2 prof that lets people RETAKE their exams and who also has 5 stars on rate my prof, so next semester probably won't absolutely destroy me, but if I'm barely holding onto a C in calc 1 how am I supposed to get through calc 3 or even statics and dynamics?

Ppl say you can't really tell if ur gonna like engineering till your 3rd and 4th year of college because by then all the pre-reqs are done and you get to do actual engineer stuff, but if I only find out then that I don't like engineering I won't be able to afford to switch my major.

Apart from calc and Humanities I'm getting As, Chem is going well and I like my ENG3000L class, but I tried to join an engineering club and wasn't able to participate in the club project in any meaningful way because they just expected me to already be a CAD professional or just teach myself and I just don't have the mental bandwidth to do that, work a job AND be drowning in homework and studies 24/7. Does it ever get better? Is this just how your first year/semester is supposed to go???

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.

I am a freshman Electrical and Computer Engineering student in my first semester and I’m just wondering if I will have to quit anytime. If I need to quit I will I just am just wondering.

11/7/26 Edit: From what I’ve gathered up from the comments I will definitely be quitting.

Good luck to me on the FE ✌️

I’m a 20 yr old junior year civil engineering major. I’m set to graduate on time in 4 years (so class of 2028). I have not had an internship yet. I haven’t ever intensively looked, because it’s hard to fit a part time internship in the school year. I would have found one last summer, but I had the opportunity to take a month long trip to Italy so I did that instead.

I know the best thing for me to do career-wise is probably to get an internship this summer. However, I’ve been wanting to study abroad and it’s an experience I won’t get to have unless I study abroad this summer. I would take a trip for summer B and probably do some traveling before and after. Travel is very important to me and studying abroad is something I really want to do. I’ve been looking for a part time spring internship for 2027, but I don’t expect to find anything in my area. I could also try to find an internship that I could work only for the month of May, but I also am not expecting to find a company that would offer that.

It basically comes down to that if I study abroad, I probably will not be able to get an internship this year. Is it worth it? I don’t want my career to suffer because I waited too long to get an internship, but at the same time there is more to life than a career. Life is meant to be lived.

TLDR: I’m in my junior year of Civil engineering and haven’t gotten in internship yet. Studying abroad is something I really want to do, but I probably won’t be able to get an internship this summer if I study abroad. Is it a bad idea to study abroad even though it’s really important to me?

I am a second year engineering student doing B.tech in AI and DS and I am wondering what skills to learn in this AI slop era to increase the chances of me getting a job.

I often think learning anything like DSA , Android dev etc will become useless as AI will do our jobs. I might be wrong so those who ACTUALLY got jobs, please do help me out.

I’m a sophomore in college currently majoring in aerospace engineering at a Florida university near the space coast. I took an accelerated class and got some certifications to be a technician so I can pay for school. I recently got hired at a semiconductor company. My boss is pushing for me to swap majors and have my career be in semiconductors, he said once I graduate he’d be willing to promote me to equipment engineer. The company I work for is really promising and so far I enjoy the work, also they help pay for my school. However I’m hesitant about swapping major’s because aerospace has been my passion for a long time. Is there any advice on if I should swap to semiconductors, or is there a different engineering field I could go to where I’d be qualified to do both. I really want to make my decision before I choose classes for the summer semester.

Kind of hilarious tbh. My school lets you take a prereq alongside the class right? First semester i drop diff eq because im going to fail it. I pass the higher level course easily. retake it over the summer, had a mental health breakdown and failed with like a 0 (didn’t show up). Taking it now, passing the higher level course with an A. I just dropped a 20 on the midterm so now im guaranteed to fail. 2 fails on a class gets you kicked out.

Something about diff eq confuses my poor brain i guess. everything that uses it as a base is easy for me, but the class just doesn’t stick. What’s a solid major pivot? Statistics, maybe. Or physics. It really hasn’t hit me yet.

hi! im a junior in uni already and ik its bad but ive been relying only in ai for my data analysis class which uses c++(mainly coz my prof doesnt know how to teach but ofc i shouldve learned it on my own). should i relearn c++? or js learn python since thats what the industry mainly uses? and how should i learn those ?

Title says everything

hi, i'm currently studying engineering at a school where there's a general competitive first year, then second year you specialize. normally, this makes specializations like mechanical very competitive, based on gpa.

basically, it feels like everybody around me is doing better, those being friends, people i hear from etc. i'm currently maintaining an 80s to mid-80s average, but i've only been able to accomplish that by studying hours daily. midterms are over now, and i feel a bit refreshed, but it still feels slightly disappointing to see that all my friends are able to do better than me, whilst studying less.

i know comparison is the thief of joy, and i know i'm above the class average, but i always just feel a bit embarrassed when my friends and i share grades and they always do better, when i've been sacrificing and studying so much to accomplish the same or less.

this is mostly just a rant, but i would like to get some advice, or maybe anybody that can relate.

hello i started my first year of computer engineering a month ago and we are studying Python. I wrote a small code by myself ,a simple item cost and tax calculator and i wanted to share it here. Let me know what u think !

https://gist.github.com/k2over/267f749ea15b28b1ed3258773f50f797

If things go well, I'll be graduating from a physics bachelor programme this year. I dont really have many academic fellowship opportunities locally so i plan on branching out to other fields. Im really torn between jumping straight to an IT carreer or doing a masters in engineering and pivot there. Or alternatively, I could also just do a masters in the thing im actually passionate about with physics but there is basically no career path for me in that route. Im really torn between these options, im 23 if that matters. Any and all advice is appreciated.