Engineering Myths

I have long suspected that there is a general preference for those with the full undergrad engineering background as it really does cover a lot of things that won't be covered in a one year masters, but I'm not really sure since I don't have to make that decision and bits of paper aren't necessarily the be-all end-all anyway.

yeah 100%

Boeing is sorta getting in the space race as they also have contract from NASA to build a commercial space craft like SpaceX. But unlike space X Boeing's cost more even though Space X's is better. This is partially because space X uses new methods in both manufacturing, design and control. But then again this is rocket science here so both of them use 'adanced' maths. I can't actually think of any other engineering companies apart from aero where you need to use uni level maths.

definitely something that stands out. You obviously don't need maths to make a product that stand out. However for example recently everyone got into quad copters because they realised actually creating a quad copter which is controlled by a mobile app, where the user can tap on any location and it flies there is better than your normal quad copter with remote controls. That boosted the industry and there have been new emerging start-ups trying cool things with quad copters like ones which follow you and film you etc. Start-ups like this will not have much ground works to rely on so they will have to start from scratch. Therefore using maths.

Its definitely easier and cheaper by repeating the same methods however that makes the engineering job boring, I don't wanna be in a cubicle using excel. I definitely want to go into an industry where I have to do more than using excel. That's why I wanna go into the space industry.

But doesn't that contradict what you say about the 'real learning happening on the job'? On the basis that the things not covered in the masters shouldn't hinder the BSc+MSc graduate when they start work? Or have I misinterpreted that part?

If the graduate meets the academics to achieve CEng status doesn't that mean they would be just as capable as those with full undergrad engineering backgrounds? Or am I overestimating the importance of ICE membership?

I'm also slightly confused if I can even obtain membership, I keep seeing vague terms such as 'numerate degrees' to describe those from the non-engineering background. They tend to give no indication what level of maths/physics they expect. Soton state that A-level is fine, but I would have thought that a 20-something year old with a maths/physics qualification they obtained several years before starting the MSc would probably not help them out all that much. But I don't know really. It's all a bit ****ed tbh

The "real" learning starts on the job but the stuff you do in your degree is very useful training, especially if you approach it right and augment it with work placements.

Whether a qualification meets the requirements for CEng isn't really the issue. The Engineering Council isn't the arbiter of who is and is not qualified to practise engineering. They are the body that kinda loosely regulates the profession, for those that wish or chose to be under that umbrella.

So for someone doing a degree like mine, would it be best to stay away from converting to civil engineering due to it likely being a struggle to get a job on the otherside of a conversion MSc?

Don't know, but I would never be discouraged from doing something you really want to do because it might be a little bit tricky.

Any advice as to how I might find out? I suspect employers would be a little reluctant to be fully honest if it was the case that they didn't like to hire students with a BSc as a first degree. Perhaps universities offering the conversion courses would be the same since they would be wanting me to pay them £10k.

There is next to nothing on the internet, at least from my searches, the key words I need tend to bring up a list of courses.

As this site is mostly students, it is hard to find anything accurate really.

I have been drawn to civil engineering for a long time, but I've have obstacles in my way (usually myself), hence why I am looking at conversion courses. However if I was to switch and end up wasting a year and £10k because I couldn't get a engineering job it would be pretty hard to deal with. Hence why I want to find out now, but can't seem to be able to.

UCL require people such as myself to take the 1 year pgdp, then the MSc, so 2 years and £20k, which I can't actually afford, but if Gideon follows through on his annoucements last year and brings in some PG-student loans it might be possible. In your opinion, how would that compare to the average MEng student?

Sorry for hijacking your thread.

I don't know. I think you're just going to have to take a gamble.

Someone will produce a software package that handles it, as there would be a clear demand for it. The company I work for uses several software packages that are, ultimately, based on solving very complicated maths numerically to provide a solution. Ultimately an awful lot of the things you need to calculate cannot actually be solved using the type of purely analytical methods taught during university, hence the predominance of FEA and CFD software to simulate more complex geometries and flow patterns.

Given that helicopters have existed for decades I am sure that the dynamics of their flight is fairly well know by now, and that creating one that can follow you around is more of a software solution than an engineering one.

I think a lot of people would find the job boring if they had to derive everything from first principles each and every time they were going to perform a calculation, and I also think you're a bit naive about the realities of the space industry versus other industries.

Poor response rate from everything really, graduate recruitment teams, ICE and random people on linkedin(that's how desperate I got).

Of the 2 responses I got back, only was had something I could use.

And it wasn't much more than what you said here, that I would need to take a gamble and hope for the best.

They did say that MEng would be advantageous though, which I already knew. However they didn't rule out that a BSc+MSc could make it. But all they said really was that there was nothing to stop me applying and they would consider the application like the others. To me, they basically said, take the gamble and make sure you make up for not having a first degree in engineering. Though maybe I misinterpreted.

Either way, I am a little discouraged from taking the conversion course. There are geotechnical engineering courses I can take after graduation which are more related to my first degree and more suited to my interests than straight civil.

Sure, well for companies like space X, they have to develop landing algorithms for their space crafts, this is no simple task. So in order to work on the team that does it, you will need understanding of advanced control theory or modelling. Same thing for Boeing as they do a similar job, I guess this applies to most aerospace companies (especially software engineering roles). Also for the start up, they will want to make sure their first products are top notch and different so they will hire people with top class in their degrees and try to do derive things from scratch but later on they will probably fall back to doing things the old way. I say this because I've know of a start-up company that tries to get engineering student's to work on different parts of their product whiles they still have knowledge of the 'advanced' maths required for that company to make something new and different. Companies with a lot of money will probably do things anyhow and let it be done with but start-up's would want to be as efficient as possible therefore they will do things 'the proper way', that's what makes companies like Space X thrive. T hats my opinion anyway :P

no control theory is a field where everything definetely has to be derived from scratch, all the time. Of course there are software like Matlab/Labview which makes it easier but you first have to model whatever you're trying to control by maths then you can use the software to program it.




Isn't creating software part of engineering? hence Software Engineer? and also to create a software you still have to use maths, not just addition and subtraction, creating a software to autonomously fly a quadcopter requires the knowledge of algorithms like PID which is calculus which looks a bit like this
$\mathrm{u}(t)=\mathrm{MV}(t)=K_p{e(t)} + K_{i}\int_{0}^{t}{e(\tau)}\,{d \tau} + K_{d}\frac{d}{dt}e(t)$ .

Of course no engineer has to derive this from scratch every time because its a general equation just like the quadratic formula, but catering it to your needs requires you to already know high level calculus. So you aren't necessarily deriving every time, you're having to apply it to different problems which is hard.

no control theory is a field where everything definetely has to be derived from scratch, all the time.

Isn't creating software part of engineering? hence Software Engineer?

and also to create a software you still have to use maths, not just addition and subtraction, creating a software to autonomously fly a quadcopter requires the knowledge of algorithms like PID which is calculus which looks a bit like this
$\mathrm{u}(t)=\mathrm{MV}(t)=K_p{e(t)} + K_{i}\int_{0}^{t}{e(\tau)}\,{d \tau} + K_{d}\frac{d}{dt}e(t)$ .

Of course no engineer has to derive this from scratch every time because its a general equation just like the quadratic formula, but catering it to your needs requires you to already know high level calculus. So you aren't necessarily deriving every time, you're having to apply it to different problems which is hard.

Again you don't need to know the maths behind PID to implement it. You just need to know how to code. You seem desperate to find justification for all those long hours spend studying advanced maths. I understand.

Again you don't need to know the maths behind PID to implement it. You just need to know how to code. You seem desperate to find justification for all those long hours spend studying advanced maths. I understand.

Yeah, well, as I said, I wouldn't be discouraged trying to pursue something that you want just because it's going to be more difficult because of previous choices you've made.

But is preventing you from switching to an undergrad civil engineering degree?

Isn't creating software part of engineering? hence Software Engineer? and also to create a software you still have to use maths, not just addition and subtraction, creating a software to autonomously fly a quadcopter requires the knowledge of algorithms like PID which is calculus which looks a bit like this
$\mathrm{u}(t)=\mathrm{MV}(t)=K_p{e(t)} + K_{i}\int_{0}^{t}{e(\tau)}\,{d \tau} + K_{d}\frac{d}{dt}e(t)$

You seem desperate to find justification for all those long hours spend studying advanced maths. I understand.

They either use algorithms that already exist or hire an actual mathematician for that. Having the same guy design the rocket AND write algorithms really isn't clever. Best to split it between two specialists.

Laplace or Z-transforms:

There are a few myths that surround the study and practise of engineering, and a few of the same questions that keep getting posted again and again by every successive generation of applicants. Hopefully this addresses some of them.

You will have no time for a social life/you will have to study all the time. This is probably the most prevalent myth surrounding studying engineering, and perhaps also one of the most damaging. Look, if you’re studying almost any subject at university there is going to be lots of hard work involved. But students of even the most rigorous degrees – maths, medicine, physics, law, etc. – manage to balance a social life with studying. If you can’t, then you need to study more efficiently, and/or improve your time management skills.

You need work experience to get into an engineering course. This one in particular seems to worry many prospective engineering students, but given that I’m posting this in a post about myths, you can guess what it is. Given that in the UK it is the norm to attend university immediately after finishing secondary school (not withstanding a possible gap yah to Combodiah), you’re not expected to have obtained any work experience before commencing an engineering course. In fact I am going to posit that it is almost impossible to gain genuine work experience before starting the degree for the simple reason that without any sort of engineering education there are no engineering tasks you can perform. It would be remiss for a company to get a pre-university student to perform a genuine engineering task, such as to perform a calculation or mark up a drawing. What “experience” in this context usually means is “shadowed someone for a bit, and maybe got the coffee”. Only a very small amount of engineering students will have done this before their degree and I have heard no evidence whatsoever that admissions tutors are particularly bothered about it. Good if you can get it, but certainly not a deal breaker if you can’t.

You will need to get a good laptop to run CAD/other engineering software. Lots of people ask what kind of specs they’ll need to handle the software they’ll be using as part of the course. The answer is always the same: there is no point in buying an expensive laptop solely or primarily to run CAD or other computer intensive engineering software because the department will have computers that will run the software. So if you can only afford a cheap laptop that will only run Chrome and Word, it’s fine.

You will be using all of the complex maths taught during the degree as part of your job. This is probably the most common myth surrounding engineering as a job. I understand why you would think this; after all, an engineering degree is largely about applying complex maths to supposedly real world problems. Why would engineering degrees have so much calculus if it practising engineers rarely, if ever, use it? The answer to this question, like the maths itself, isn't exactly simple, but the best way to think of an engineering degree is one that provides the theory behind why you do what you’ll be doing during your career. Engineering degrees work you through the steps that are gone through to produce the equations you’ll be plugging numbers into; they train you how to think rigorously about physical concepts. Yes, many practicable problems may be solved analytically, using a fairly high level of maths, but once the analytical solution is known, the problem is then generally reduced to a simple arithmetical one. And now, with the widespread use of finite element software, numerical solutions are increasingly easy to use, and required in many cases where an analytical solution would either be quixotic at best, impossible at worst (situations involving complex geometry, non-linear behaviour etc.) To add to this, there's a whole lot of experimental data that goes into engineering too... in some cases, experiments and experience are much more useful than pure maths (e.g., friction coefficients). So, if you think that engineering is a career where you get paid to play with calculus all day, then you may be quite disappointed, unless you stay in academia.

You automatically get chartership after four years. In reality, the amount of years experience you have bears little on whether you are eligible for chartership. It’s about achieving a minimum level on key competencies. Some companies offer accredited graduate schemes where as part of the scheme you will gain the relevant competencies to become chartered in a four year period. Perhaps this is where the four year figure comes from. But if you’re not effectively being fast-tracked to chartership by your company it can take more than the mythical four years (in fact it probably will). In fact it may be that chartership isn't even for you.

You’re guaranteed a job once you graduate. It certainly isn't “guaranteed” by any stretch of imagination. Merely sitting and passing your degree isn't enough nowadays, you need much more than that. Employers are looking for candidates who at least show signs of being able to be competent engineers in the future, so you’re going to sit some fairly rigorous interviews where you’re really tested in a way that is more relevant to what’s required from industry than passing university exams. Your “soft” skills are going to be tested, too, as are your presentation skills (presentations are very commonly used as part of the interview process). So don’t sit back and expect the job offers to come swarming in because you passed all of your exams (even with flying colours), you need to put effort into developing yourself into an employable person.

The degree teaches you everything you need to know. You only really begin learning about engineering once you begin your first job.