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Engineering Workload?

more specifically civil engineering?

I'm currently in my last year of IB with a 42 predicted that equals about 7 hours of work in school + about 3-4 hours of work at home each day.

Weekends are about 10 hours of work as well (both days combined)

Is engineering similar to this to achieve pretty good grades? (not best in class of course, but relatively high? something comparable to a 42 for ib)

or is it a bit more relaxed?

Reply 1

gordoxo

Hours worked per day or week is a pretty useless metric for workload because different people need different amounts. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the IB to make a comparison. In general, the workload for an engineering degree is fairly high, but tends to have periods of very high and very low. You get some semesters where there's nothing to do other than a couple of tutorials per week (and even those are optional - of course you'll be regretting missing them come exam time) whereas in others you'll have constant lecture and tutorial commitments overlapped with very tough and work-intensive coursework. For the latter you may find yourself working hard for weeks (about as much as you stated), followed by a couple days of solid working in the immediate runup to deadline day.

The grades you get just depend on how sharp you are. The hours you are talking about will get you straight As unless you are a complete moron, or are one of those people who say "oh man I worked all day in the library today!" when they actually sat on facebook in the library all day :P By far the biggest challenge will be keeping up that level of dedication - you have complete freedom at uni, The amount of enforced homework is much lower than in school, lectures aren't compulsory, you live safely away from your parents and it's £1 drinks night at your favourite club. Learning in school is easy with a teacher looming over you - self-imposed learning is a whole different challenge.