Engineering

Lucas10101

I've completely removed all science courses from my CAO form and am moving towards Civil Engineering. This has much better employment prospects and seems like an interest professional qualification to have.

But am undecided between UCD and TCD, which would you recommend and anything wrong with the Civil Engineering course there. You only start specialising in Year Three and UCD is Year Two I think, is this not advantageous or not?

Anything else would help about the course and what they actually do so I'm not deluding myself about the work involved.

Lucas10101

Lucas10101 wrote:

I've completely removed all science courses from my CAO form and am moving towards Civil Engineering. This has much better employment prospects and seems like an interest professional qualification to have.

But am undecided between UCD and TCD, which would you recommend and anything wrong with the Civil Engineering course there. You only start specialising in Year Three and UCD is Year Two I think, is this not advantageous or not?

Anything else would help about the course and what they actually do so I'm not deluding myself about the work involved.

Oddly enough, I've just finished Civil, Structural & Environmental at Trinity...

The first two years are general engineering, with a mix of all bits and bobs thrown together. You get your Physics & Chemistry, Engineering Maths, Computer Science, Mechanics and Tech Drawing (with a few others) in First Year, and then you get more Engineering Maths, more Computer Science, Solids & Structures, Fluid Mechanics & Thermodynamics and a few other smatterings from the various departments of engineering in second year. You make a choice at the end of second year as to what area you'd like to go, as you've alluded to above.

In third year (for Civil) you start off doing 7 subjects with 4 of these examinable in January. Then you have 4 new subjects examinable in June, with the 3 subjects left taught for the entire year and examined at the end of the year. You deal with surveying, soil mechanics, reinforced concrete, etc.

In final year, you have compulsary courses for the first term, and optional courses for the second term (with one subject continuous over the entire year - Engineering Management). You also have your final year project which you can either pick or suggest yourself (subject to a random selection process) which is due in April. The courses I chose in final year were Materials (4A1), Design & the Built Environment (4A7), Advanced Design of Structures (4A6(2)) and Advanced Theory of Structures (4A6(3)). I think 4A6(3) was probably my favourite subject in college (it dealt with vibrations in structures, something I'd love to do further work on in the future).

In terms of how enjoyable the course is, it will actually depend on what you like and dislike - which you won't know until you get to college. I discovered that I truly hate soil mechanics (now), but found a liking for the structural side of things. But the good part of the course is (ironically) down to how much work you do in the other fields. Because the first choice in engineering you make is at the end of second year, you get to see what the other fields are like not just for one year. This does add a bit of pressure on the latter two years of the course, but it is also handy for anyone undecided about what area they wish to pursue.

As for the work involved, the first two years don't involve that much (unless you do Schols) but third and fourth year both count towards your degree so it would be the time to get the finger out. Fourth year can be tough in relation to assignments, but it's definitely manageable.

If there's anything else which I didn't cover in my above babbling, feel free to ask.

Stargal

That's a pretty comprehensive post from Myth. If you're still looking for info then this thread from a couple of months ago is a big debate about which is better for Engineering, UCD or TCD (the conclusion, bizarrely, is that people from each college thinks their own is better )

There's also a general Engineering in TCD thread here which might be helpful.

You might want to check out the UCD forum on boards, and maybe read some of the older posts on this forum to get a general idea about life in each college. There's a lot of negative stuff about UCD in their forum about the ongoing multitude of problems for undergrads (exam results not being given out til months after the actual exam, no communication from staff, cock-ups over exams, etc). There are a lot of changes going on in Trinity at the moment too, but so far they don't seem to have affected students in the same way as the ones at UCD have.