In this episode we talk about the top 10 things that you can do to make sure you're prepared
for engineering school so you don't have to move back in with your parents and work at
Starbucks. Oh yeah don't do that. What's up everyone in this is Jake Voorhees and you're
watching Episode 23 of the 1% engineer show. If this is your first turn the channel make
sure you hit the subscribe button so you can crush it in your career and become a 1% engineer.
OK so lots of you have just been accepted to engineering programs. First of all congratulations
hats off to you!
Big achievement probably the largest accomplishment you have done in your life so far so good
for you. Because a lot of people can't even get into engineering school and you are already
ahead of the game.
Great. And secondly you need to make sure that you're prepared for your first semester.
So you get a jumpstart out of the gate and don't mess anything up. Don't get bad grades
don't fail out. You can actually get a good start. Make sure that you don't Crusher's
EPA like I did and like lots of engineering students do who get destroyed by freshman
year courses. It's very common. And we're going to make sure that doesn't happen to
you. Engineering school itself is hard enough. You didn't make sure you utilizing every resource
out there having every possible advantage. So you can succeed like watching these videos
like focusing on this top 10 list of things that you can do this summer before you start
your first semester in engineering. And like I suggested I struggled a lot in my first
semester at university Delaware.
I went to a public high school in Maryland and it was fine. But the change the jump the
disparity in difficulty between my high school and the engineering program at Delaware which
I think civil engineering was top 10 in 2005 when I started was just so massive. And I
didn't have the best grades fall semester I didn't have the best grades spring semester
and literally was paper thin margins a way from taking a suspension or potentially not
even making it into second year. And if you don't finish your freshman year chances are
you will not go back. So don't let that be you don't be a statistic guys. The only statistic
you should be was 1 percent. So here's the top 10 tips you can do in the next two to
three months to make sure you're prepared one by the books and now in advance this gives
you the ability to review the course material and have an advantage when you get there Week
One two three. You
already know the coursework you know the gist of things and you can start reviewing the
material ahead of time so it's not some foreign language when you get into your first couple
of weeks of classes and as you're already a little bit familiar with what you're going
to see. So you reach out to other students at Delaware. We had a freshman orientation
before the summer began and I met some engineering students. Shout out to my buddy Josh Moore
burrito from more Buteux consultants. The first engineer ever met 12 years ago we've
seen in terms of how the ability to make some relationships with engineers at the beginning
of the summer. And it gives you good ability to keep in touch with them throughout the
summer chat with them about how they're preparing for classes. Maybe you're going to have a
friend in your first couple of classes and this just gives you a little bit of an advantage
that you can share that summer you can go into it knowing someone just gives you slightly
better vibes.
Maybe you'll be living next to each other. So this stuff helps. I also see lots of engineers
using things like uty 17 engineering and certain hashtags that are for their graduating class
four years from now five years from now probably four years from now. So you can find engineers
that way to me. Introduce yourself to the professors. You'll know exactly what courses
you're going to take in the fall semester. And you can do some research on which professors
from the university teach those courses and you can look up the email addresses of the
professors who are teaching those courses and you can email them and introduce yourself
and I guarantee you you will be the only student who does that.
So you will already have an advantage they already know your name and then when you say
oh hi I'm Sally Sue or Bob the Builder or they are already going to like you because
you took the initiative to say hi that summer to introduce yourself in advance. So e-mail
your professors this summer for find an engineering team. What do I mean by this. Depending on
what type of engineer you are that will be certain teams that go out for competitions
like steel bridge or concrete canoe for you civil engineers. There are robotics teams
for McKean's there is solar powered car competitions. There's all types of clubs that compete in
regional and national events. And if you make friends with these students not only are you
networking with other engineers right away.
Not only do you have friends right away but you also are going to build relationships
with people who have been through your program who have passed the classes that you're going
to be trying to pass and building relationships with these people is really good. 5. Be a
part of an engineering society. This includes things like Engineers Without Borders it's
not necessarily in that competitive team category but it will give you another opportunity to
meet more engineers right away to build relationships with older students who have been through
some of the coursework. You will be going through who can give you advice and it also
is another resume builder so you have a team and you have a society on your resume right
away. And when you go for internships summer after your freshman year you're already going
to have more experience in the other engineers because with Engineers Without Borders and
steel bridge and whatever competitions you're going to get yourself involved with an engineering
society and also a team you're going to have built up more applicable experience than other
engineers who are competing with you for those roles and you will stand out.
This is one percent Engineer status be one percentage in your 6 by the right calculator
for you can use your TIAA E3 or to-I 89 but you're not going to be able to use that on
exams because professors know you can just have some sort of program that does integrals
and other types of equations for you. So they're not going to allow it. Plus these graphing
calculators will not be allowed on the F.E. when you take that exam junior or senior year.
So you need to get used to using a scientific calculator that is not a graphing calculator
I can pretty much guarantee you that your professors will not allow you to use those
on your exams.
So just be ready for that if you want a couple of suggestions Here's two that are about$20.
They're built for engineers and science people. So the main for you the first one is a T 36
x pro scientific calculator can do integrals as an inverse the functionality and sine cosign
and everything but the main thing is that you can do integrals switch. Not every scientific
calculator can do. That gives you a big advantage you can check your work on exams. You can
check your integration on homework's and that's a big deal. The other one is the Cascio F
X 115 but I would say go with it. Texas Instruments is definitely the leader in calculator technology
2083 HIIT 1992. It's 92. These are the leading graphing calculator that everyone knows about.
So here is the way I would go but the Casio's an OK alternative and this calculator example
leads us into another product. Tip
7 buy the right laptop through Listen to the top 10 because this is a very you two very
popular Google query for young engineers. They
want to know what's the best laptop for a student engineer. The truth is the best laptop
is the one that you have. You're not going to be required to download a bunch of engineering
software or not be required to do a bunch of calculations on your laptop or whatever
software is whatever crazy things you may be involved with with labs or computer science
courses or whatever you're going to be doing that at some sort of university computer labs
don't worry about that too much. I suggest that you get a laptop that you can afford
within your family's budget. Don't worry about going crazy because what most engineers don't
realize is that if you get a souped up laptop it's just going to be heavy. And when you
meet up with your team when you meet up with your groups when you want to take it to class
when you want to go to the lab and use that it's just going to be a problem.
You may be reluctant to even use it. And then it just sits in your dorm. You don't actually
get the functionality of that laptop. You may as well just bought a desktop. But either
way I'll give you a couple of ideas so you can have some examples for laptops. The first
one is the HP and 17 the 17 inch screens. Pretty good graphics software k but it's a
pretty decent option. I think it's about a thousand dollars right now that's a little
bit more of the cost effective model for engineers right now. But the one that I would go with
is the ace's video book pro.
It's a 17 inch for k monitor and it has two hard drives the SSD with operating system
and a 1 terabyte storage drive. So it's going to be super fast to get started and has plenty
of storage. You can keep video files and gaming programs and what have you guys to do. I did
a lot of gaming when I was in college so extra storage space super fast SSD drive which was
even around when I was a freshman 12 years ago. The SSD drive can't figure out where
your classes are. This
may seem a little silly but you definitely don't want to be getting lost the first week
and be late and be embarrassed about how your the student hours later Class X Y Z. So just
look at the map study it go around on street view and just kind of poke around at the walking
paths and things like this so you know how to get to your classes. You may even want
to stop by and visit again a month or a couple of weeks before classes see you at least and
know how to navigate campus. Also
take some time and look around at other places. Most campus environments are beautiful and
they pay a lot of money for the landscaping and keeping everything nice and there in a
good part of town. So spend a little bit of time get to know your campus environment.
Go to the little ice cream shops coffee shops and figure out similar restaurants with your
parents and things like this. Maybe get together with some friends that you know are going
to university going to college with you and acclimate yourself to an environment so you
already know places to go and can familiarize yourself and be able to navigate and at least
know where the classes are. You can figure out more things in the environment that's
great but really just a big bonus. 9 learn good study habits ahead of time. Most guys
if you're going into engineering for college.
High school is most likely a breeze for you and you may not have had to strategically
study and Chunk your subjects and give yourself breaks and turn off all distracting devices
and really focus on how to be the best student how to actually study properly how to actually
manage your time properly. These
things are key to success. Your first year in engineering so do a little bit of research
on how to be the best study year how to actually again compartmentalize and do your most challenging
tasks early and before the other ones to 20 to 25 minutes of homework at a time and take
five minute breaks because that's really all the brain can tolerate and just learn time
management skills and really look into how to study read up on it read a couple blogs.
Leave a question in the comments of who wants many examples of where to learn about better
studying habits. I follow a couple of college mentor you tubers and they can definitely
give you some tips on how to best study how to manage your time well. Things like this.
This brings us to our last tip number 10. Educate yourself on the four year curriculum
you may have an opportunity to shift classes around or make some decisions as early as
spring semester of freshman year and definitely by sophomore year in the fall you will have
the ability to juggle some things around you should be able to investigate the professors
that you may have options regarding who to take in your classes so make sure you familiarize
yourself with the curriculum make sure you are looking at things like maybe taking a
course in summer or winter programs.
If your university offers that so you will have full control of your four to five years
so you have full control of your schedule and you can make sure you know the best teachers
are in make sure which are the really really tough semesters so if you get slammed with
like three super challenging engineering classes or maybe for super challenging engineering
classes maybe you can break that up and maybe have the ability to again have full control
and dictate when these heavy hitting courses are falling into your schedule so you don't
get nailed with like chem two dynamics and differential equations with a physics lab
all the same time and just get crushed and that's really not what you want to do.
By the time I figured this out it was probably late sophomore year junior year and I found
out that one computer science professor was really really hard and I decided to take a
different type of computer science and if I had known that in advance it would have
been so much better for me. So do some curricular research should you have full control over
your fate with your classes. So those are the top ten tips.
Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out on the future episodes.
Thanks for watching the 1% engineer show guys and stay hungry on your quest to become a
1% engineer. Cheers!