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

[Invisib1e]

Hey everyone, I am a 11th grade student in Canada who is thinking about going into engineering; more specifically civil, mechanical, and or architectural engineering. I'm wondering if there is anything I can do other than having good grades that'll stick out to application officers such as EC's or projects I can create/design.

Also wondering if 11th grade marks have a significant impact on admissions b/c I didn't do to well in my first semester. The prerequisites for the programs I want to get into were chemistry, advanced functions, calculus & vectors, physics, and english. In my first semester of grade 11 I ended up getting a 60 in functions 66 in chemistry and an 90 in english. My second semester has physics with midterm mark being an 80. The reason as to why my grades were so low was honestly due to procrastinating and just not caring. I am working very hard on changing my ways and am planning to study hard in grade 12 to at least get 85-95 in all the prerequisite courses.

 

[rb1957]

"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 ?

 

[Invisib1e]

"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 ?

Ontario, more specifically the GTA

 

[Ron247]

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

 

[fel3]

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.

 

[Ron247]

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.

 

[Nofa kedata]

Hey everyone, I am a 11th grade student in Canada who is thinking about going into engineering; more specifically civil, mechanical, and or architectural engineering. I'm wondering if there is anything I can do other than having good grades that'll stick out to application officers such as EC's or projects I can create/design.

Also wondering if 11th grade marks have a significant impact on admissions b/c I didn't do to well in my first semester. The prerequisites for the programs I want to get into were chemistry, advanced functions, calculus & vectors, physics, and english. In my first semester of grade 11 I ended up getting a 60 in functions 66 in chemistry and an 90 in english. My second semester has physics with midterm mark being an 80. The reason as to why my grades were so low was honestly due to procrastinating and just not caring. I am working very hard on changing my ways and am planning to study hard in grade 12 to at least get 85-95 in all the prerequisite courses.

As many mad scientist projects as you can, and learn to weld

 

[IRstuff]

I think confidence in public speaking is nearly as critical as technical skills, IFF you want to succeed. I've known lots of engineers who are very smart, but their public speaking is often rife with hesitations and interjections, ala "um" and "er" which distracts from the technical message. I don't know if Toastmasters is still a thing, but it's a "safe" environment to practice your public speaking.

When you do a presentation, you need to be so familiar with your own material that you can do the full presentation from the titles alone. Your presentation titles should contain the "takeaway" message, so that the audience doesn't have to grind through your bullets to get your message.

Don't be afraid to admit your lack of knowledge about a specific point; promise to dig into it for the audience. When you do start working, most of the time, honesty is reward by trust in you from your customer(s)

 

[dgeesaman]

^ agree that public speaking is a very valuable skill. In technical public speaking, a very important aspect is the audience trying to determine if you're worth listening to, and the biggest red flag for me is someone who pretends to understand the question more than they actually do. So having another expert in the room to consult for a specific question is a green flag, as is taking down a question and responding to the whole group later with a properly researched answer.

As is technical writing. And manufacturing knowledge. And specific analytical skills. And computer skills. And drafting skills. And financial knowledge. And management/people skills. Really, anything that is adjacent to your core major study is valuable.

I think there are stages of preparation. To get ready for Uni, bone up on math and computer and science classes. If there are applied communication classes like public speaking or technical writing, take those too. If your high school offers any shop classes, take those. Learn to work on cars a little bit by properly changing your own oil, filters, and batteries. Work on a building crew maybe. Ask questions about what you see and get to know it a little bit and I assure you that while many tradespeople are not excellent communicators, there is a lot to learn and they'll usually share it.

If you're procrastinating and not working consistently hard now, it will get 5x tougher in Uni. At least in the US, there is a tendency in some schools for 'senioritis' where the seniors don't have to work as hard and the teachers might not push them. My senior year was a lot of hard work and I didn't experience that. But some of my university classmates did and so freshman year at Uni hit them hard. You will soon look back on the relaxed pace of high school and wish you could have applied yourself more because those are the easiest classes to ace that you'll ever see going forward.

Once you're in University, try to spend your summers doing something relevant. Work on a surveying crew; be a CAD drafter; build things; try to get an Engineering internship. Get a sense of whether you're a generalist or a specialist by nature, and whether you do better working in isolation for hours at a time or if you prefer to interact with people. In industry, the people engineers can do very well in management or technical sales while the super introverted types tend to be analytical specialists.

But that said, I firmly believe that engineering is starving for people who understand more than their own role. Too many design engineers don't understand tolerancing and manufacturing well enough. Too many engineers writing specs have no idea what actually happens in response to their specifications. Too many analytical engineers don't understand the accuracy of the inputs that go into their calculations. Most engineers don't understand what it takes to sell a product and make a customer happy. So whatever role you take on, spend as much time exposing yourself and learning all of the roles and functions that surround your core responsibilities because it's all important to your daily engineering work. (The engineers who work without that broader knowledge simply don't realize how much that hampers the value of the work they do).