Last time, I talked a bit about the different fields of study for prospective engineers and gave brief examples of how a field of study can have a specialty within it. Speaking for myself, I studied civil engineering and focused on structural engineering so I'll be going into that field more deeply. But let's continue with the next blog which is about an engineer's education.
LOOKING AT MY STEEMIT PAGE OVER NYC
PICKING A SCHOOL
A career in engineering is unlike most other majors where your choice of school is a major deciding factor of where you might end up getting hired. There is something to be said about employees who only hire from certain schools, but by the same account there is also something to be said about the caliber of students that come out of said schools, which is the better students tend to go to better schools. The reality is that for engineers, you're likely ahead of the curve in terms of being a student of engineering already, just like you would if you were serious about being a doctor or lawyer.
Before you pick your university, the one key item that you really want to care about is if the school is an ABET accredited school. ABET stands for "Accredited Board of Engineering and Technology, which is an organization that vets the degree curriculum. In the event that you want to apply for your professional engineering license (which in many fields is not very useful), you'll have an easier time meeting the requirements for the state examination. You'll also know that you're not getting cheated on in terms of your curriculum.
Case in point, a non ABET accredited school may falsely adjust their curriculum to make it easier to graduate in order to prop up the schools statistics. It's rare, but it has happened.
DECIDING ON BACHELORS OF ENGINEERING, SCIENCE, OR TECHNOLOGY
The last thing involved with choosing where to go to school is to determine which degree fits your goals. The 3 most common, listed in order are
Bachelors of Science
Bachelors of Technology
Engineering Technology
All 3 are different, with the bachelor's of engineering (B.of.E) being the most difficult curriculum since the ABET accreditation for B.of.E is the most stringent. You'll end up taking a lot of extra engineering courses that you have no say in, and its likely that they have little bearing on your specific focus. There's also a stronger emphasis on certain core topics such as physics and mathematics.
Bachelor's of science (B.of.Sci) is by far the most common degree but it isn't all to different from B.of.E. I found that there is generally just more choices in classes that you want to take, and most of them are more relevant to real world experience.
An Engineering technology degree is a completely different degree and should really be removed from this list, but I decided to put it on here because I had a friend who didn't know what he wanted to go to school for and ended up half way into this degree before he realized its not an engineering degree. It sounds dumb, but people go to school for no reason all the time, so I wouldn't dismiss this from actually happening to someone. This degree is really designed for people who aren't seeking to be design engineers, rather they are looking to perform some technical work within the field.
HOW WILL THIS AFFECT YOUR CAREER?
At the end of the day, choosing to earn your degree in either B.of.E or B.of.Sci will not really limit where you work. They will both get you to the same place in the US.
I'm currently going through the process of registering for my Professional Engineering examination this April AND New York state has a chart that lists the eligibility requirements which I've screen shot below. You'll notice that ABET accreditation really helps out. The technology degree also gives you a 2 year disadvantage towards the professional engineering exam, even if you complete 4 years of study. And just to help to clarify this table in case you are confused. NYS requires 12 years worth of credits to take the PE exam. You earn 8 years of credit if you graduated from an ABET accredited school with an Bachelors degree.
For all intents and purposes a bachelor of science is the one to go for. Unless you had a BofE available, it makes very little difference.
Outside of that, you'll want to do the same sort of research for the quality of the professors, student body and extra benefits for attending that school that you would do for any other major.
HOW MUCH WORK
Engineering schools, ABET or not, can be both brutally difficult and mildly difficult depending on which school you went to and what their objective is. Some schools are simply easier than others, this becomes more and more evident as cost climbs.
Regardles of which school you go to, a common theme in engineering that is unlike other majors is that you aren't really expected to remember information for exam since the knowledge is required to understand the physics behind engineering concepts. If you don't know the information, its nearly impossible to reasonably draw your conclusions anyway. For this reason, you'll never really find questions that are purely concept based. Most other majors require a massive amount of information to remember that you need to spit back out to show that you have that body of knowledge, but not necessarily the problem solving aspect of having to memorize all that information.
It's this reason why engineering degrees tend to be more difficult than most students expect. So be prepared to spend as much time as needed to understand your field of study, any bit less puts you at a disadvantage. Think of every class as a physics class, but every exam question is problem solving.
PICKING YOUR FOCUS
One of the last things I want to touch on is the schools ability to help you get an internship. This is intensely important, especially
around year 3. Take any internship with literally any company you can. Even if the task is to make copies all day. Look at the job as a means of extracting information from your employer. Follow whoever is willing to show you any sign of attention and leech on (just don't be a total dick about it). You will be seen as a go getter and eventually someone will catch you and take you under their wing.
Always intern in year 3. Always.
GRADUATING
Walk down that isle proudly because you just completed one of the more difficult majors in higher education that doesn't involve post bachelor's degree. Trust me, a masters degree is actually easier.
You'll notice that I fast forward through some information because I want to get to the fun stuff about being a civil engineer.
Today, I was on another scaffold doing more concrete repair inspections, so heres one right next to the Empire State Building, which is where the above photo was taken. Heres another shot of some reinforcement steel that I was looking at.
LOOKING TOWARDS DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN. AN OIL FED BOILER STARTS UP, CAUSING A STACK OF BLACK SMOKE