Recommendations for an ME Major
Recently, my nephew told me he was thinking of pursuing mechanical engineering in college. As an ME myself, I couldn’t help but be ecstatic at the news. It got me to thinking of all the things I learned as a student and how I would go about doing things if I were to start all over again. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it highlights a few of the key strategies that worked out well for me—and a few that I wish I would have done as well.
Internalize the Fundamentals
Not only will you have to do well in your first general classes to get into the major (at BYU) but the more you internalize not just the equations but the principles behind these classes, the better foundation you will have in every subsequent engineering class you take. For example, the differentials and integrals you learn in your first calculus class will become critical for your success in your multivariable calculus classes later. Similarly, you will use those same differentials and integrals in your kinematics classes when you transition from position analysis to velocity and acceleration analyses. The vector math you learn in linear algebra will be used over and over when you learn combined loading analyses in machine design classes.
I didn’t always do this as well as I should have and I often ended up having to re-learn principles from my previous classes before I could concentrate on learning content for my current class. It was a horribly inefficient way of doing it. But when I put in the effort to really internalize the fundamentals, it made every subsequent homework question or exam that much easier.
Study and Make Friends
Go to all the homework labs and make friends with the TAs and other students there. It’s not just about finishing your homework, it’s about making connections with people that will likely be your coworkers, bosses, or maybe your employees in years to come. Ask a ton of questions until you understand your homework inside and out. Then stick around a little longer and answer someone else’s questions. If you understand the material long enough to answer your own questions you will likely finish your homework. Learn to understand.
Make Your Work Do Work For You
Throughout your degree you’ll use programming languages to some degree. Python is free, and will be when you’re no longer a student, but you’ll likely use Matlab more in your classes. It’s up to you what you end up using. Getting acquainted with the coding process and mindset will help you in a variety of different classes and you will become fluent in the way programmers work and think.
In all aspects of engineering and business, it pays off to automate processes that are repeated over and over. Pay attention to the equations that you use over and over in your homework and start to build a library in your language of choice. Putting in a little extra effort to create a function where you can check your own work you do by hand will not only improve your scores on your homework, but it will speed up your assignments in the long run. If you invest in this over your time in school, you’ll end up with a library of functions that could be incredibly useful to you as you start out in a new job.
I started doing this in my last year as a grad student and it was incredibly useful. I only wish I started doing it sooner! Continue the process through your entire university career. As you get into more detailed full-time work it will continue to help you work faster and smarter and could be incredibly valuable to you over time.
Get Involved in a Club
In your first few years as a student you may be wondering; what does a mechanical engineer do? You may have seminars and talks through the college that introduce you to a variety of fields or specialities that mechanical engineers can pursue. But it doesn’t help you get a sense for the day to day work of an engineer. There are a host of awesome clubs you can get involved with on campus where you can dive into hands-on, practical engineering work. If you like cars you can do Baja Racing, or Supermileage Vehicle teams.
There are a host of options to choose from but getting involved in one or more of these will help you start to see how engineering principles are applied in real life. It’s easy for homework to feel like merely numbers on a page, but when you can heft parts in your hand, see how the go together, learn from failures, and ask questions from more senior students along the way, you’ll be fast tracking the type of experience you might not get until you land an internship or your first full-time job.
Get Involved with Research
Another way to get this kind of hands-on experience is through on-campus research. Depending on the group you join, you may be doing hands on prototyping and product development or you may be doing fundamental research that is expanding the boundaries of known engineering principles. Either way, it helps you make contacts with professors, preps you for grad school or full-time work, and gives you a better resume.
If research doesn’t sound like your thing, take a minute to look through the work different professors are doing and it’s almost guaranteed that something will interest you. Don’t worry if there are no open positions in the group that you like, go to the professor and offer to work for free for five or so hours a week. If you don’t like it, you can stop at any time and there will be no hard feelings. If you do like the work, you’ll be the most qualified candidate when the next positions opens.
I had no plans to get involved with research but found the Compliant Mechanisms Research Group. I was excited about the job because they were doing research in Origami. I had lived in Japan and new how to make three different origami models. I brought mine in for the interview and I’m sure they underwhelmed, but I got the job. My relationship with that research landed me my dream job when I finally graduated.
Find an Internship
Did I mention that the experience you’ve gained with those clubs and that research group will help you land your first internship? It’s true, and nothing will help you get a real job when you graduate better than an internship. If you don’t know where to start, show up at career fairs, talk to people, show them your resume, and interview for positions. All of this is excellent practice for the interview process and make no mistake, interviewing is a skill. A great interviewer can get a job they may not be fully qualified for. But as a student you’re not fully qualified for any job, so don’t let that worry you.
I lucked out and got an internship after my second year in school. I hardly got paid, and most of my work was busy work but I learned a lot and at the end of the summer had great experience to put on my resume. That internship without a doubt landed me my next internship at a Fortune 500 defense company. And the combination of those two internships landed me my third at a Fortune 10 company. You see where this is going. All of that experience compounded and helped me open doors to everything opportunity I had later in my schooling and post graduation.
Plan for Grad School
A masters degree in engineering is a great investment. Often, you can put in one more year of school beyond your undergraduate degree and immediately boost your earning potential by tens of thousands of dollars which will compound over your career. If you want to get out and make some cash right away, look into graduate programs within your current university. They usually make it fairly easy to transition smoothly and minimize the time needed to complete the extra degree. If you’re interested in academia or research positions, look elsewhere to find a PhD program that matches your areas of interest.
The great thing about engineering graduate degrees is that most are funded by research grants. This means if you join a research group or lab as a grad student that funding can be used to pay for your tuition as well as a small paycheck while you are working. Not only are you getting a deeper education but you can likely do it without paying any more and potentially even making a little money to boot!
Find Your Passion and Pursue It
Finally, if you don’t know what you want to do with your engineering degree, that’s ok. I didn’t either when I started. I made my way through classes, internships, and research groups slowly learning more and more about what engineers do on a daily basis and by degrees was able to discover what I wanted to do. For me, that meant being involved with product design that was going to make a difference in the world. I found that intersection with medical robotics but it could easily be self-driving cars, or a commercial space exploration company, or a million other things. You’ll never know until you try.
Once I learned what I really wanted to do, it helped me plan my path to help me get there. It took years of planning and work and a little bit of luck. But I ended up with a job I love. I know you can too.
