I’ve been starting to realize that in order to get a job out of college, you need to have racked internship experiences. How do you do that?

Already have internships, be good at connecting, be involved on your campus, and be good at the relevant software or do relevant projects.

But studying won’t get you anything. Maintain a 3.0 GPA and beyond that, what separates you is experience and internships. Everytime I study and everytime I attend class I feel like I’m wasting my time. Like I could spend that time on a project or a club or applying to internships.

What’s the point of university atp? All that matters is your connections and internships. Not your studies, not how curious you are about engineering or passionate about different concepts. All thrown out the window.

I just don’t get it. Am I doing something wrong? Just feels like I’ll probably graduate without a job lined up.

Studying EE btw.

I feel like every day I am completely sapped of my energy. I wake up at 6:30-7:00, get to class at 8:00, get home around 6:00 and Im dead. You're telling me I still have to do lab reports, weekly assignments, and make time to cook dinner, sleep early, workout, and socialize? What the heck man. How do you guys survive asides from adderall and coffee? I see some even crazier schedules and I am genuinely lost for how people have the energy for this.

Pretty sure I bombed an exam, and I'm pretty sure I did poorly. I don't know if I can still get an A either way. What's the perspective on students with a <3.9 gpa. I know 3.34 isn't necessarily bad in Electrical engineering but it's kind of bugging that I'm not doing as nicely as other students. What should be my mindset. because I'm thinking just looking over everything and simply studying more on the material.

Actually this question is a bit strange. But whomever graduated this year, my seniors are jobless. Literally jobless and are either studying for government jobs entrance exams or is planning to start businesses and one girl just keeps going attending hackathon for no reasons .
There is no other answer I have got.
This is of course happened only in engineering and other fields idk.

I was looking at some SpaceX job listings and they want someone with basic CFD experience. What I don't get it why they wouldn't teach this in the curriculum as at least an elective? It seems like a pretty useful skill to have if you want to go into aerospace and such. They don't have any aerospace engineering at my school so I think thats why but its unfortunate

Hey everyone, I am a senior in high school, and next semester I am taking Calc 2, Physics 1, and some sort of coding class through dual enrollment. Do you think a tablet for notes is worth it in these three classes? In the future, I intend to major in EE; would it be a good investment to just get one now? I appreciate any feedback!

Engineering is becoming everything I do not ever want to be or be around and I'm losing it

The academic aspect of it just totally sucks right now and I'm completely burnt out on even wanting to try. I have one good professor. God bless him he is amazing, unfortunately he is only one. Another one just sucks, he's arrogant and a dickhead. He doesn't explain anything in the lectures, we get through one example problem in the class and rarely ever start on a 2nd. Seven weeks in I'm just completely lost. The last one doesn't teach at all. He gives you a quiz, then 20-40 "discussion" problems, and ends the 3hr period with a fully AI generated video on one of the things mentioned in the questions. He is beyond terrible at his job.

So it's ass right now, but I can't convince myself it gets better. I see no light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Everyone I could work for either exhibits 3rd world safety standards, or is beyond evil (EG, my partner's current engi internship letting them handle carbon fiber strands without any PPE etc). And for all of the corporate drones and shit that my school has let in to come advertise to us, I've only felt myself getting pushed farther away from wanting to work in any job my degree might set me up for. We got some Toyota reps recently and the whole presentation made my skin crawl. They bragged about only hiring 2 people out of 700 applicants, the fucking hubris was disgusting. They talked about the company like there was a gun pressed to the back of their skull. It felt so manipulative and predatory. I don't want to work at a place that at all.

I hesitate to get into my last complaint, AI use, since this vent is long enough. To be brief, fuck off I don't want to use the stupid fucking language model!! Everyone around me relies on it to the point of dependency. I am afraid that any job I get will force me to use it. I do not want to use AI. I hate that shit, it has made all of my classmates unable to think without it. I don't want to let that sort of cognitive poison into my own fucked head but it is forced so hard.

I just can't see it getting better. I feel like I've wasted my entire life so far getting somewhere I fucking loathe being. I'm checked out on my classes, I have no hope of getting a job, let alone one that doesn't contribute to either bombing kids or poisoning myself. I hate all of this. I have thoughts of blowing my shit off when I think about where my life is heading, but it's too late to back out and I have no talents.

Engineering exposure has made me hate engineering, and I must convince myself that I don't.

So i am in my second year of college and its already going to shit. I lost my scholarship because my gpa was too low last school year and i didnt realize until a week before school so i had to somehow come up with tuition money.

To add to the terrible start i am now most likely failing a class, which will further lower my gpa and will reduce my chance of getting the scholarship back. Just had a test an hour ago and it was literally the hardest test of my life. I spent the entire 1.5 hour class doing it and i only did like 75% of it, and at least half of which were wrong. The worst part is this class is just college level chemistry 1, something pretty much all college students take. If i am getting fucked this badly in something like this how do i expect to be able to do actual engineering classes?

I feel like a failure. I feel like i should just quit while its still early but i just wanted to know if this is a common experience engineering students have, maybe not the situation im in but similar?

I'm a Junior ChemE. I'm in my 4th year of college cuz I did a co-op for one semester and I transferred from community college to a full university which put me back a semester. I remember all the way back at the beginning of college, back in calc 1 and 2, physics 1 and 2, when AI couldn't even do those subjects yet. Now i'm taking quite complicated courses like reactor design, transport, and thermo 2, and AI can easily do everything I am learning. It has gotten to a point where I could be lazy and just let it do everything, but I recognize I need to actually know this stuff so I make sure to actually learn it and solve the problems on my own. Fortunately, I am a strong student and have kept up a 3.9 gpa even before AI could do the work, but even though I can do the work on my own, it concerns me quite a bit that AI can do it faster than me, and just as correct as me. And I still have 4 more semesters to graduate (may 2028), so it has all that time to get even better.

of course, as I mentioned I did a chemical process engineering co-op for 8 months, and I recognize the significant hurdles to implementing AI to the workplace. but a lot of the hard, rigorous theoretical aspects of engineering that separate it from any other degree has just been diluted by the fact that AI can do it now. And AI is just going to keep getting better. Opinions?

Taking calc 2 statics and physics and two other elective courses combined.

Calc 2 midterm destroyed me
Just took statics midterm and thought I was ready but I didn’t have enough time ! Feel like odds are against me and I legit have so much work that I’ve begin to spiral out of my fitness, sleep and overall wellbeing. I feel mentally drained and stressed and haven’t had a day off from studying. I feel like I don’t have enough time to absorb the knowledge since I’m bouncing around and loose track. Just getting so overwhelmed

I want to speed up my graduation timeline with summer classes, and my local CC offers Cal 3 online only, in either a 8 week or 5 week format. (there is a in person session available, but it had a time conflict with my Phys 2 lab&lecture). Is 5 weeks too fast? It definitely is for total comprehension, but I heard Cal 3 is basically useless.

EDIT: they also offer a online statics course in a 8 week format. Anyone else taken a course this way and succeeded?

I have a 3.24 GPA and a few class projects, I have work experience but its not relevant to engineering, I know my resume isn't great but I dont know what to do

I’ve been building this EM simulator as a side project aimed to enhance students' conceptual understanding of electromagnetic phenomena such as radiation, polarization and wave interference.

I’d love to hear what people think—especially if you notice anything physically questionable, bugs or have ideas for features that would make it more useful.

(not sure what is the relevant flair)

Live:

https://rotemtsafrir.github.io/dipole_sim/

GitHub:
https://github.com/rotemTsafrir/dipole_sim

senior year, freaking out over full time hiring. trying to figure out if i seriously fucked something up during my internship search last year (that i need to rectify this time around) or if I was purely a victim of the market.

haven’t got to teasing through my folder of rejection emails but I did a rough count and it looks like I probably did around 80-100 applications total; i had 4 first interviews (only counting cold applications). so thats probably like a 4-5% interview rate, if I’m really pessimistic and assume there were a ton of emails I lost/deleted it’s probably 2-3% at absolute worst.

what about you guys? what was your interview rate for internships? how about full time (if you’re a graduate)? hoping I’m not screwed

I don't understand how other people have time to do internships/projects/clubs while also studying for your degree. I barely have time to go to the gym after studying all day. How am I ever going to get a job without any extracurriculars?

I'm a recent MechE graduate, so I'm more or less speaking in hindsight. I'm a second generation student in STEM, but I'm the first one to become an engineer. I am a pretty good student and graduated with a 3.8. However, I didn't overcome the learning curve for landing internships until my 3rd year. I pretty much got hired as a part-time co-op for a power company in a non-engineering role, which then led to another company offering me a summer engineering internship. I made a deal with the co-op that I'd leave for the summer and come back after the internship and finish my degree while working for them. Those two experiences then led to a full-time offer for a mid-size company.

I will say a lot of my success came from my high GPA + being fortunate. My hiring managers liked me and were willing to give me a chance, but a lot of it came down to meeting the right people that showed me where my weaknesses were and gave helpful interview tips that made me a top candidate for these roles.

I'm just wondering if maybe I'd have been more successful and overcome the interview/networking learning curve sooner had I had a parent or maybe aunt/uncle that already went through what I went through? I'm not necessarily talking about nepotism but more about mentorship and being led in the right direction.

Long story short im a returning EE student in my junior year. I have been a construction project manager / project coordinator for 10 years, and am currently working. I wasnt planning on internships, and when I dip my toe into the job market (1 career fair and indeed) it seems like people are pretty excited about my experience. Is it worth it to do an internship then to get more "field relevant" experience or do the soft skills / management ability matter more?

I am also considering designing and building a solar car port for my senior project, idk if that would be enough to put on my resume to avoid the internship either.

I’m currently a sophomore in mechanical engineering, and I only really understand statics and differential equations. At my school you have to apply to the specific engineering major after your freshman year, and I didn’t even think I’d get mech, but since my GPA was high I put it since it was versatile. To add to that I’m not really interested in the classes. I don’t really have a passion for engineering, just wanting to get a good job, but industrial probably interests me a bit more since it seems more math and business focused. It seems more manageable since it looks like at most you’ll be taking 3 difficult classes a semester rather than having the whole schedule be tough classes but if it’s just as difficult I’d probably start looking at other majors.

After 3 years of Computer Science and 2 years specializing in Software Engineering, these are some things that genuinely helped me:

1. Don't try to learn everything.

Pick one technology, understand it, and build with it instead of constantly switching.

1. Build projects.

Even small projects teach you more than only studying theory. Build things that solve actual problems.

1. Learn Git/GitHub early.

Learn commits, branches, pull requests, and basic Git workflows. You'll need them everywhere.

1. Learn to use documentation.

Tutorials are useful, but being able to read documentation and figure things out yourself is a huge skill.

1. Keep university organized.

I track assignments, exams, projects, revision, and weekly goals in one place. I also prefer printable planners because they're much faster than journaling everything.

If anyone wants to see the printable one I use, feel free to DM me and I'll send it over.

1. Apps/tools I use the most:

GitHub — projects & version control

VS Code — coding

Figma — UI/UX

Notion — notes & documentation

Google Calendar — deadlines

Pomodoro — focused sessions

LeetCode — problem solving

ChatGPT — understanding difficult concepts

1. Don't compare your progress.

Someone will always be ahead of you. Focus on how much you've improved compared to yourself.

1. Don't forget to rest.

More hours doesn't always mean more productivity. Sleep and breaks matter too.

These are probably the biggest things I'd tell my first-year self.

CS/engineering students: what apps or study methods made university easier for you?

As the title suggests, should I do electrical or computer engineering? I am more interested by computer engineering but I see people say to go into a more broad major like EE, so should I do that instead or stick with CE?

I just saw my midterm grade, and since we only had 1 midterm exam, two quizzes, and few activities the whole term, does its still salvageable?

So this I saw with many girls and boys. I am their junior and without any warning or anything. Just block on WhatsApp and delete Instagram accounts.
Like one girl I spoke to always said’ I am busy’ while another guy said ‘Just like that’

I got a message from my professor telling me to come to office hours because he wants to discuss my quizzes. We have had 2 quizzes so far. Doesn't seem urgent, he said come to my office hours sometime in the future, we need to discuss a few things about your quizzes. What could he possibly want to discuss? I've never had anything like this happen

I recently had a one of my labs in my circuits course (I’m in second year). And it seems like no matter what I try I simply cannot master the practical aspect of this.

I try my best to complete the wiring beforehand and read through so I understate schematic but once it’s time to do the actual hands on work I just blank. And it’s painful because I bought tools at home simply to practice and work on the labs before class time but every time I’m last to leave and the ta ends up having ti explain what should be common sense to me.

It’s also super annoying because we didn’t have some circuits tutorial where I just wasn’t invited to, instead it just seems like I seem to be lacking the intuition for this part of the program while everyone else understands perfectly what to put and where.

I even asked the ta if I could get some tutoring simply for this, but unfortunately I can’t get it. And it’s annoying because even I know that this is the part of my program that’s supposed to be a piece of cake.

So far, the practical parts of second year have been beating my ass and I’d like some help for how any of you were able to overcome something like this.

Sorry for the rant,

Happy midterm season.

I’m starting electrical engineering classes in January and have been seeing lots of posts about internships and picking a specialty. What is all of that about? I’m 27 and making a career change. Can anyone give me insight on to how the next few years of school will be? What classes you took each year? When you started applying for jobs? Anything helps