Engineering Myths
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.
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.
(edited 8 years ago)
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so good I opened it 3 times 
You will certainly know more about this than me since I'm still leaning in the direction of further study (and I'm almost there!) but could you expand on this for the sake of future readers?
Original post by Smack
The degree teaches you everything you need to know. You only really begin learning about engineering once you begin your first job.
You will certainly know more about this than me since I'm still leaning in the direction of further study (and I'm almost there!) but could you expand on this for the sake of future readers?
Original post by + polarity -
so good I opened it 3 times
You will certainly know more about this than me since I'm still leaning in the direction of further study (and I'm almost there!) but could you expand on this for the sake of future readers?
You will certainly know more about this than me since I'm still leaning in the direction of further study (and I'm almost there!) but could you expand on this for the sake of future readers?
Some may be under the impression that you stop learning once you graduate. Degrees teach bits of theory. But you don't really learn how to apply said theory, how things are actually done, until you get become a practising engineer, and it can be quite difficult to appreciate this until you're actually tasked with performing an actual bit of engineering.
Thanks a lot for this 
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Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Smack
You will be using all of the complex maths taught during the degree as part of your job.
You will be using all of the complex maths taught during the degree as part of your job.
Depends where you work, most engineering jobs don't require you to use any of the maths learnt in uni as either there's a software for you to do number crunching or as you said there's rule of thumb way of doing things/ government restrictions. However if you aim to work for companies such as space X/Boeing or even just a start-up then you're bound to use advanced maths
Original post by bigboateng
Depends where you work, most engineering jobs don't require you to use any of the maths learnt in uni as either there's a software for you to do number crunching or as you said there's rule of thumb way of doing things/ government restrictions. However if you aim to work for companies such as space X/Boeing or even just a start-up then you're bound to use advanced maths
What makes you think that?
Original post by Smack
What makes you think that?
what, this? "However if you aim to work for companies such as space X/Boeing or even just a start-up then you're bound to use advanced maths"
So what, specifically, do engineers do in a day to day job? If all the maths is done by software, then do they design parts or check they will work physically or what? Aerospace for example.
Original post by bigboateng
what, this? "However if you aim to work for companies such as space X/Boeing or even just a start-up then you're bound to use advanced maths"
Yes. Just curious as to what your thought process was.
Original post by AlexeiLipov
So what, specifically, do engineers do in a day to day job? If all the maths is done by software, then do they design parts or check they will work physically or what? Aerospace for example.
Depends on what type of engineering job they've got. I'm currently a design engineer, so I design things, basically. This involves coming up with a workable concept, performing design calculations, some modelling, marking up drawings produced by the designers, writing reports, etc.
I didn't say that all of the maths was performed by the computer. What I said was that much of the more advanced maths taught during the degree is not used as part of the calculations you'll likely need to perform on your job. Mathematically, the equations I use aren't particularly challenging.
Original post by Smack
Yes. Just curious as to what your thought process was.
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
Original post by Smack
Depends on what type of engineering job they've got. I'm currently a design engineer, so I design things, basically. This involves coming up with a workable concept, performing design calculations, some modelling, marking up drawings produced by the designers, writing reports, etc.
I didn't say that all of the maths was performed by the computer. What I said was that much of the more advanced maths taught during the degree is not used as part of the calculations you'll likely need to perform on your job. Mathematically, the equations I use aren't particularly challenging.
I didn't say that all of the maths was performed by the computer. What I said was that much of the more advanced maths taught during the degree is not used as part of the calculations you'll likely need to perform on your job. Mathematically, the equations I use aren't particularly challenging.
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.
Original post by + polarity -
so good I opened it 3 times
You will certainly know more about this than me since I'm still leaning in the direction of further study (and I'm almost there!) but could you expand on this for the sake of future readers?
You will certainly know more about this than me since I'm still leaning in the direction of further study (and I'm almost there!) but could you expand on this for the sake of future readers?
Think that's the same for quite a lot of things tbh! The "real world" works so much differently to uni! (Not a "real" engineer btw. My job title just has the word "engineer" in it)
Original post by bigboateng
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.
But does the actual use of advanced control theory or modelling require one to be using advanced maths? I don't know, it's only a question.
Same thing for Boeing as they do a similar job, I guess this applies to most aerospace companies (especially software engineering roles).
I don't think that what Boeing do is similar to what SpaceX do, unless they have their fingers in more pies than I'm aware. And given that aircraft have been built successfully for more many generations now, I would be very surprised if their manufacturers have not already developed an abundance of design tools or calculation sheets where you plug in the numbers as the input, and the required numbers come out as the output. If they haven't, then that's an excellent business improvement/simplification opportunity right there.
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
What do you think makes a "top notch" product? Why do you think it's more efficient to repeat the same tasks over and over again as opposed to creating simplified methods for doing them, and why is this not "proper"?
Original post by AlexeiLipov
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.
You forgot Excel!
Most jobs nowadays could be described as staring at a computer screen most of the day. I think it's more interested to be looking at a computer screen with CAD on it, or a calculation sheet, or an engineering code, than whatever it is that most other people look at on the screen.
Original post by iceman95
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?
There are no magic tricks or tips. You've just got to put the time and effort into the application and (hopeful) interview, and not be too discouraged when you don't succeed.
Thanks for this, a few points there put my mind at ease!
Can I ask, in terms of the employability side, are BEng+MSc/MEng graduates preferred to over BSc+MSc(engineering conversion) students? Obviously this is a general question, but I'd like to hear another opinion on it.
Or maybe it doesn't matter as long as the ICE accept it as an appropriate combo for CEng status should that be pursued?
here is the thread with a bit more detail:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3490863
Can I ask, in terms of the employability side, are BEng+MSc/MEng graduates preferred to over BSc+MSc(engineering conversion) students? Obviously this is a general question, but I'd like to hear another opinion on it.
Or maybe it doesn't matter as long as the ICE accept it as an appropriate combo for CEng status should that be pursued?
here is the thread with a bit more detail:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3490863
Original post by Smack
But does the actual use of advanced control theory or modelling require one to be using advanced maths? I don't know, it's only a question.
I don't think that what Boeing do is similar to what SpaceX do, unless they have their fingers in more pies than I'm aware. And given that aircraft have been built successfully for more many generations now, I would be very surprised if their manufacturers have not already developed an abundance of design tools or calculation sheets where you plug in the numbers as the input, and the required numbers come out as the output. If they haven't, then that's an excellent business improvement/simplification opportunity right there.
What do you think makes a "top notch" product?
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.
Why do you think it's more efficient to repeat the same tasks over and over again as opposed to creating simplified methods for doing them, and why is this not "proper"?
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.
Original post by Et Tu, Brute?
Thanks for this, a few points there put my mind at ease!
Can I ask, in terms of the employability side, are BEng+MSc/MEng graduates preferred to over BSc+MSc(engineering conversion) students? Obviously this is a general question, but I'd like to hear another opinion on it.
Or maybe it doesn't matter as long as the ICE accept it as an appropriate combo for CEng status should that be pursued?
here is the thread with a bit more detail:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3490863
Can I ask, in terms of the employability side, are BEng+MSc/MEng graduates preferred to over BSc+MSc(engineering conversion) students? Obviously this is a general question, but I'd like to hear another opinion on it.
Or maybe it doesn't matter as long as the ICE accept it as an appropriate combo for CEng status should that be pursued?
here is the thread with a bit more detail:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3490863
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.
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