Engineering Myths

And being engineers we use Laplace or Z-transforms (or even graphical methods) to simplify such equations and reduce them to 'mere' algebra, with the sole purpose of making it easier to implement

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.

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Can you do one for chemical engineering please?

So if your having to use laplace transform in your daily job is that not using all of the complex maths taught during the degree as part of your job as OP puts it? or is it not complex enough than using a excel in a cubicle...

Can you do one for chemical engineering please?

Can you tell me how good a university I could do Engineering at in theory with a level 3 Btech in Engineering?

The most important point/section by far in the OP is: You’re guaranteed a job once you graduate

The job market out there is extremely competitive, there is an over-abundance of engineers at the moment.

Not true, it just depends. Everyone applies to the big companies, so getting into them is competitive. If you do your research and know which area you want to work in and start researching firms who are involved in said area, you'll find lots of SMEs who have grad schemes (maybe for 1-5 grads) but don't advertise as they can't do it on the scale of the big firms. Competition for SMEs is a lot less and competent candidates who show a passion for the SMEs business and their operating area are very likely to be interviewed.

I don't think it's that complex tbh, there are tables available for the transforms so it's as simple as picking them from the list, and if you wanted to characterise a system (get the transfer function) you can do that in Matlab, which isn't complex either. I suppose the degree would introduce you to the different kinds of systems but you wouldn't be required to use either the calculus or algebra (or disgusting matrices for state space) that you actually work with during the degree.

I actually found the maths mainly quite ... satisfying ... to study. In contrast to the engineering modules, where the calculations could feel clunky and imprecise (because they were), the maths modules felt cleaner and more precise. You knew your answer was sound.

I don't think it's that complex tbh, there are tables available for the transforms so it's as simple as picking them from the list, and if you wanted to characterise a system (get the transfer function) you can do that in Matlab, which isn't complex either. I suppose the degree would introduce you to the different kinds of systems but you wouldn't be required to use either the calculus or algebra (or disgusting matrices for state space) that you actually work with during the degree.

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Can you do one for chemical engineering please?

Not true, it just depends. Everyone applies to the big companies, so getting into them is competitive. If you do your research and know which area you want to work in and start researching firms who are involved in said area, you'll find lots of SMEs who have grad schemes (maybe for 1-5 grads) but don't advertise as they can't do it on the scale of the big firms. Competition for SMEs is a lot less and competent candidates who show a passion for the SMEs business and their operating area are very likely to be interviewed.

I only ever applied to the large firms, but people I knew kept telling me that competition was tough even in the smaller less-known companies. Your mileage will vary though.

Can you tell me how good a university I could do Engineering at in theory with a level 3 Btech in Engineering?

Probably exactly the same, the only addition would be you don't get free petrol if you work for an O&G company, but may get a discount (certainly for a utility company).

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I see. Would you say it's a job that's interesting and enjoyable? Stimulating? Or tedious and boring? Bit of a subjective question I know, but I've heard it's long hours and staring at CAD or Word on a computer all day.

Hi I will be in year 2 of my 4 year meng Mechanical engineering course. I am contemplating in doing a work placement next summer so just wondering if there's any advice anyone can give me about applying for summer placements?

replace word with excel and powerpoint!

It depends what you get given, on my placement year I've had really interesting projects using CFD to develop next generation designs, project management which was really different and helped my soft skills, a coding job which really helped me get into the fine details of the subject (fatigue calculation ) but my final rotation was was as a project engineer, which meant organising and loading work for other departments to do, then bring together their results to interpret the data to decide which direction or design decision to pursue, which means turning lots of excel data into nice graphs in powerpoint to discuss with my team.

there is an over-abundance of engineers at the moment.

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