What is Aerospace Engineering like to study?
Hi!
I'm in year 12 and want to apply and study Aerospace Engineering next year at university. I was wondering how anyone studying Aerospace Engineering is finding it and what topics do you have to study, e.g. fluid dynamics? Also if you are able to balance the work load and your social life easily?
I plan on applying to Bristol, Bath, Southampton and so on. Maybe Cambridge, depending on how my AS Levels go. So if anyone studying at these universities, or any university that does Aerospace Engineering, can tell me what it is like at their university, I would be grateful!
I'm in year 12 and want to apply and study Aerospace Engineering next year at university. I was wondering how anyone studying Aerospace Engineering is finding it and what topics do you have to study, e.g. fluid dynamics? Also if you are able to balance the work load and your social life easily?
I plan on applying to Bristol, Bath, Southampton and so on. Maybe Cambridge, depending on how my AS Levels go. So if anyone studying at these universities, or any university that does Aerospace Engineering, can tell me what it is like at their university, I would be grateful!
Original post by Chris_98
Hi!
I'm in year 12 and want to apply and study Aerospace Engineering next year at university. I was wondering how anyone studying Aerospace Engineering is finding it and what topics do you have to study, e.g. fluid dynamics? Also if you are able to balance the work load and your social life easily?
I plan on applying to Bristol, Bath, Southampton and so on. Maybe Cambridge, depending on how my AS Levels go. So if anyone studying at these universities, or any university that does Aerospace Engineering, can tell me what it is like at their university, I would be grateful!
I'm in year 12 and want to apply and study Aerospace Engineering next year at university. I was wondering how anyone studying Aerospace Engineering is finding it and what topics do you have to study, e.g. fluid dynamics? Also if you are able to balance the work load and your social life easily?
I plan on applying to Bristol, Bath, Southampton and so on. Maybe Cambridge, depending on how my AS Levels go. So if anyone studying at these universities, or any university that does Aerospace Engineering, can tell me what it is like at their university, I would be grateful!
Hey!
Glad to hear you're interested in Aerospace, I'm at Glasgow University, though, but I'll share my experiences.
First of all, the Aerospace industry is incredibly interesting and exciting. Many people think it's a very niche degree but there are so many things you can do with it, e.g. electronics, systems, software, aerodynamics, fluids, thermodynamics, finance, and so on. Also, many people think it's a very workload intensive course. Whilst this may be true, it's completely possible to get a good work to social life balance. To get that, you just need to be organised, keep on top of all your work and you should have no issues. I'm currently in my 5th year and have yet to have any problems at all.
Starting off, you'll learn a lot of maths. Linear algebra, differential/integral calculus, a lot of matrices, etc. Only really once you've got a solid maths background will you start learning more applicable theory (of course, there are exceptions). As I've said, you can get classes from many different areas. You'll likely have classes on aerodynamics (aircraft, helicopters, rockets), thermodynamics (heat and mass transfer, combustion, refrigeration), electronics (circuitry), systems (radar, GPS), software/programming (Matlab, C/C#/C++, Abaqus, Solidworks, Star CCM), fluid dynamics (CFD, Navier Stokes Equations) amongst others.
Do plenty of reading up on the degree and all the options it gives you. Some of my friends have gone into aircraft design/configuration, propulsion research, finance, pilot training, spacecraft systems design, to name a few.
Hope this helps!
Scott
Undergraduate Rep
School of Engineering
Original post by Glasgow Uni
Hey!
Glad to hear you're interested in Aerospace, I'm at Glasgow University, though, but I'll share my experiences.
First of all, the Aerospace industry is incredibly interesting and exciting. Many people think it's a very niche degree but there are so many things you can do with it, e.g. electronics, systems, software, aerodynamics, fluids, thermodynamics, finance, and so on. Also, many people think it's a very workload intensive course. Whilst this may be true, it's completely possible to get a good work to social life balance. To get that, you just need to be organised, keep on top of all your work and you should have no issues. I'm currently in my 5th year and have yet to have any problems at all.
Starting off, you'll learn a lot of maths. Linear algebra, differential/integral calculus, a lot of matrices, etc. Only really once you've got a solid maths background will you start learning more applicable theory (of course, there are exceptions). As I've said, you can get classes from many different areas. You'll likely have classes on aerodynamics (aircraft, helicopters, rockets), thermodynamics (heat and mass transfer, combustion, refrigeration), electronics (circuitry), systems (radar, GPS), software/programming (Matlab, C/C#/C++, Abaqus, Solidworks, Star CCM), fluid dynamics (CFD, Navier Stokes Equations) amongst others.
Do plenty of reading up on the degree and all the options it gives you. Some of my friends have gone into aircraft design/configuration, propulsion research, finance, pilot training, spacecraft systems design, to name a few.
Hope this helps!
Scott
Undergraduate Rep
School of Engineering
Glad to hear you're interested in Aerospace, I'm at Glasgow University, though, but I'll share my experiences.
First of all, the Aerospace industry is incredibly interesting and exciting. Many people think it's a very niche degree but there are so many things you can do with it, e.g. electronics, systems, software, aerodynamics, fluids, thermodynamics, finance, and so on. Also, many people think it's a very workload intensive course. Whilst this may be true, it's completely possible to get a good work to social life balance. To get that, you just need to be organised, keep on top of all your work and you should have no issues. I'm currently in my 5th year and have yet to have any problems at all.
Starting off, you'll learn a lot of maths. Linear algebra, differential/integral calculus, a lot of matrices, etc. Only really once you've got a solid maths background will you start learning more applicable theory (of course, there are exceptions). As I've said, you can get classes from many different areas. You'll likely have classes on aerodynamics (aircraft, helicopters, rockets), thermodynamics (heat and mass transfer, combustion, refrigeration), electronics (circuitry), systems (radar, GPS), software/programming (Matlab, C/C#/C++, Abaqus, Solidworks, Star CCM), fluid dynamics (CFD, Navier Stokes Equations) amongst others.
Do plenty of reading up on the degree and all the options it gives you. Some of my friends have gone into aircraft design/configuration, propulsion research, finance, pilot training, spacecraft systems design, to name a few.
Hope this helps!
Scott
Undergraduate Rep
School of Engineering
Thank you very much for the reply! It sounds very interesting indeed! What is software/programming like? Is it difficult to code?
Original post by Chris_98
Thank you very much for the reply! It sounds very interesting indeed! What is software/programming like? Is it difficult to code?
Depends where you go, some uni's teach you programming from year 1 whilst others start from year 2. I know Southampton and Bristol start form yr 1, Southampton (where I attend) does python in first year first semester, where you learn the basics of python and also using math and graphing libraries to solve typical engineering problems using matrices, ODE, etc. Second semester at soton, we wrote programs to generate efficient shapes of aerofoil using bezier curves and splines mathematics, and some optimization libraries to optimize it, that was definitely pretty advanced assignment and most people found it hard. But second year onwards, its matlab, c/c++ and/or labview depending on where you go. The programming you do in engineering is ultimately up to you, you can make the absolute basic of a robot/uav or you can go pretty advanced, it will only benefit you as a person, and improve your chances of landing into some higher roles (especially if you want to go into control systems as a carrier).
- and the answer to yout question, no programming is not hard imo, just start early, learning using youtube videos etc before you get to uni,
It can be rather intensive, but you adapt to it quite quickly and I'd say most aerospace students are very involved with societies and extracurriculars. At a lot of universities you're going to be doing mainly a mix of Mechanical and Electrical/Electronic then some of materials, systems and computer science, at mine you get the choice of I guess majoring in Mechanical, Materials or Systems (technically electrical too although no one chooses it). You learn a lot more overall than say pure mechanical or electrical engineers but you miss out of some stuff which can be important for careers aimed at graduates in that subject like manufacturing, renewable energy and processors.
As for the difficulty of coding, it varies person to person, for some people it will be as easy as 1,2,3 and others will find it impossible. Try it out before you get to uni and you will get an idea of what it's like (start with C++, it's a good compromise between introduction to programming and a useful skill, or buy KSP and use kOS because that's pretty fun and you can design programs to take your rockets into orbit then other planets and stuff like that.)
As for the difficulty of coding, it varies person to person, for some people it will be as easy as 1,2,3 and others will find it impossible. Try it out before you get to uni and you will get an idea of what it's like (start with C++, it's a good compromise between introduction to programming and a useful skill, or buy KSP and use kOS because that's pretty fun and you can design programs to take your rockets into orbit then other planets and stuff like that.)
Original post by Chris_98
Thank you very much for the reply! It sounds very interesting indeed! What is software/programming like? Is it difficult to code?
As has been said, it varies a lot from person to person, and also language to language. For me at first, it was very very hard to wrap my head around any of it. It seemed so non-intuitive, abstract and difficult. Until one day, it all started to make sense, then it becomes very intuitive and can be quite straight forward.
The software/programming side of things really interests me, and it's a great skill to learn for almost any discipline. I've been to a careers fair where 90% of engineering stands would only really talk to you if you had experience in programming (primarily Java or C++).
Matlab has been my most extensively used language (its focus is on engineering/sciences and differs quite a lot from other languages) but Java has been my most applicable language. There's many different languages which are better suited for a variety of purposes. E.g. Matlab for data analysis, Python is good for controllers, Java for creating applications.
Scott
Undergraduate Rep
School of Engineering
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