Engineering

clem

Hi
I'm looking to do a degree and was wondering if engineering would be for me. The only subject I was good at in school was maths. How could I tell what type of engineering course would be for me. If at all?

Thanks again
Clem

Well, the maths in engineering can be tough over the years of study, but it is doable. You just need to have a bit of a logic in the old noggin.

There's a website called STEPS.ie set up to get people to into engineering, and it has some bits on 'careers' here: http://www.steps.ie/Sheets.htm.

If you are thinking about doing a degree in engineering you should go along to some of the open days, or get in contact with the department where you want to attend. They might put you in contact with some of the students and from that you will find out what you would be studying.

If you don't mind, I'm going to copy this thread over to the Engineering forum (but leave the original in the M&NT forum).

clem

Thanks for the reply. I'm the sort of person who likes to sit down with a problem and work it out. If i'm asked to study pages of text i'll get bored and my mind will wonder. Based on that would you recommend engineering for me?
If not what other subjects would you recommend?

Thanks again

DU.LLAHAN

Hi iwould like to go back to college to study engineering. is there any fetac courses that i could do that would help my application to do an engineering degree

motherfunker

I am a second year mature student doing Building Services Engineering. It is a largely maths based course taking in electronics, physics and a bit of chemistry, along with the building services subject itself which is more maths. I was crap at maths at school, not too bad at pass level but struggled with honours. That was 1993, hadent done any since, started this course not realising the amount of maths it entailled, panicked a bit in first year, thought I might need grinds, panicked a bit more. I thought I would never get through the physics and electronics but to my surprise I found I really enjoyed them, especially the physics. The maths also fell into line, it is now one of the subjects I am not too worried about, in fact I am not worried about any of the maths based subjects. When you do so much maths every day your brain switches on and you get used to it. Dont let the maths put you off engineering, its not that bad.
If I can recomend any area of engineering to you it would be Building Services Engineering, it is one of the fields in the construction industry that is actually growing and not being affected by the downturn as much as other areas. It is also quite interesting and it deals with a lot of environmental aspects to energy use and conservation. There is also a shortage of BS engineers so employment prospects are quite good with just a basic degree whereas with civil engineering you may need to take your studies further before you can stand out from the crowde.

clem

sounds good motherfunker thanks, where do you study?

motherfunker

I'm in Letterkenny IT but the course has been cancelled for next year due to lack of numbers applying. Another good reason to get into it, there is a serious shortage of graduates, there are only 4 people in my year, 6 in 3rd year and about 8 in 1st year, that will drop also. The civil engineering class has about 30 people now, add that to all the other civil courses in the country and you have a lot of fighting for jobs. I think there are only 2 other Building Services courses in the country, all with low numbers.

sickle

DIT Bolton street also do a part-time Building services engineering and Civil engineering. Its one evening a week and 1 full day. Most jobs will accommodate this and mine even pays for me to do it!
As motherfunker said the building services class is much smaller there too compared to Civil. linky to building services info:
http://www.dit.ie/DIT/study/parttime2007/programmes/dt033.html
and civil info:
http://www.dit.ie/DIT/study/parttime2007/programmes/dt032.html