What should I be doing in high school to prepare for going into engineering in uni?

"procrastinating and just not caring" ... yeah, that'll do it !

"planning to study hard in grade 12 to at least get 85-95 in all the prerequisite courses" ... good plan, now put it into practice. GL

Course work is all planned (pre-requisites).
The best thing is non-course work, like projects that use Engineering discipline and show you can apply what you've learnt. Great if you've started, but many opportunities in Uni.

Where in Canada ?

rb1957 said:

"procrastinating and just not caring" ... yeah, that'll do it !

"planning to study hard in grade 12 to at least get 85-95 in all the prerequisite courses" ... good plan, now put it into practice. GL

Course work is all planned (pre-requisites).
The best thing is non-course work, like projects that use Engineering discipline and show you can apply what you've learnt. Great if you've started, but many opportunities in Uni.

Where in Canada ?

Click to expand...

Ontario, more specifically the GTA

I am not from Canada but your situation is very common. My initial recommendations are:

• Find out all the universities that are accredited in the fields are you interested in. Initially, treat all of them equally. For the most part, ignore rankings but even more importantly, ignore un-accredited ones.
• Pick 3 or 4 and contact the general admissions and the curriculums (Civil, Mech etc.) you are interested in. Directly ask them what they value. You may find they have different answers. Make sure they know your name. Make sure you record their names, titles and the date/time you talked with them (it may be handy later).
• Subject yourself to the fact you cannot change the past, but you can do a better job with your future. Dwelling on the past is counter-productive.
• Work on your Communication skills, written, verbal, body language, facial expressions. Ultimately, this will be a communications project. Before you contact schools, work on communication skills. Learn to field unexpected questions, etc. (i.e. don't say "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" until you can think of an answer)
• I assume EC means Extra Credit. Some schools place value on volunteer work, some don't. Following with rb1957, as an example, volunteering with an organization such as Habitat for Humanity (in the US) might look good. Involves knowledge of structures and volunteering

I think it will work out if you apply street smarts equally to grades (past or future). As an example, I did not take any calculus, chemistry or physics in high school. Got in a decent, accredited college and passed Civil Engineering with no real problems other than money. Also, make sure you understand that Civil is mostly a "catch-all" field for 5-6 different areas of interest that are somewhat unrelated. It covers transportation, environmental, structures, hydrology and earthwork. I am in structures only and was only interested in that aspect of it. So, as an example, I did not need chemistry at all whereas environmentals needs it a lot.

Good Luck

To follow up Ron247's post, specifically his bullet about communication skills, the most important non-math, non-science course that I took in high school was Forensics (i.e. public speaking). I am a typical engineer type: shy, introverted, and (back then) afraid of public speaking. However, I understood that for my chosen field (civil engineering) I would need good public speaking skills. As it turned out, I became pretty good at it. I debated one year and my partner (now a business law attorney) and I earned an 11-4 record. I competed in two individual events--Impromptu and Extemporaneous--for two years, earned a couple of trophies (including a first place), and was in the top ten in my region in both events my senior year and just missed out on making it to the State tournament. Not bad for an amateur competing against a large number of peers who had been in Forensics competitions for three to six years (all the way back to 7th grade in some cases).

The other skill you need in abundance is writing, but if you can't master that then become a good editor of your own work. I am not a natural writer myself, so I have focused on being a good editor. I have received high marks from professional peers and supervisors for my writing, but it's only because nobody sees my first draft except for me.

As fel3 pointed out. Proofing your own written work is VERY difficult. When you proof your own work, you mentally fill in a lot of data that is not present in your written words. Write that perfectly clear document, hand it to someone who does not directly know what you are talking about but is familiar with the terminology of the subject, and note how many questions they come up with.