NUIM GIS Postgrad

01mirelly

Looking for info on NUIM GIS Postgrad. Am thinking of going into the area of Cartography and GIS. Graduated with a MA in Geography.... so I want an area to really specialize in.

Would love to hear from people who completed the course, how they found it and what is the possible job market like out there?

Also considering the MA in Climate Change.

SandyRamp

Hey, I have just finished the course (It ended in December) and have already gained employment in a GIS role, as did a good number of my classmates.

It is fairly technical, mostly practical work on computers and there is a good bit of maths involved too so if you are considering it maybe brush up on those skills!

I think the course has been restructured for next year to include programming which is, as you can imagine, also extremely technical.

The workload is pretty full on, as the majority of the marks awarded are based on CA, projects etc.

The summer work placement is brilliant for getting a taste of working in the industry, and is handy for including on your CV when applying for jobs after. All the projects can also be used to create a portfolio of your work which is useful when applying for jobs too.

I considered applying for the Climate Change Masters also, as it is an area I am extremely interested in, but in the end I chose the course which would offer me the best chance of employment and career advancement, and I don't regret my decision.

Good luck with your choice, whatever you decide !:)

01mirelly

SandyRamp wrote: »

Hey, I have just finished the course (It ended in December) and have already gained employment in a GIS role, as did a good number of my classmates.

It is fairly technical, mostly practical work on computers and there is a good bit of maths involved too so if you are considering it maybe brush up on those skills!

I think the course has been restructured for next year to include programming which is, as you can imagine, also extremely technical.

The workload is pretty full on, as the majority of the marks awarded are based on CA, projects etc.

The summer work placement is brilliant for getting a taste of working in the industry, and is handy for including on your CV when applying for jobs after. All the projects can also be used to create a portfolio of your work which is useful when applying for jobs too.

I considered applying for the Climate Change Masters also, as it is an area I am extremely interested in, but in the end I chose the course which would offer me the best chance of employment and career advancement, and I don't regret my decision.

Good luck with your choice, whatever you decide !:)

If you dont mind me asking... Could you give me an idea of what working with GIS in a work situation is like everyday?

I would be very skilled in the area of geography and art/drawing. I do work very well with computers. I would not have been the best at maths.

SandyRamp

TO be honest, all the drawing is done with computer applications like ArcGIS etc. , there is no real hands-on drawing element to it. But Geography would definitely be an advantage when working with things such as topography etc.

My working mostly involves mapping buildings, but there are all sorts of aspects of GIS, it is used in many different areas. If you google the uses you will see the vast list! Even retail is getting in on the act mapping store performances and the likes.

I suppose if you wanted to have a play around with some GIS apps there are a number of free ones available on the web, I have used Q-GIS and found it very user friendly. It would give you a good idea of what to expect from the course and jobs involving GIS. If you google it you should find a link to download it.

I wasn't the best at maths either, and to be honest they do move fast in that aspect and assume a good bit of prior knowledge so my advice would be to get even a leaving cert honours maths book. I found myself teaching myself how to do the problems a lot of the time as there was so much to get through in such a short time.

Ostrom

I cant comment on the course content specifically, but I took the GREP module in GIS at Maynooth (part of phd), and did my BA there. As others have said, the course has little to do with drafting, and most of this is handled by the programmes themselves (ARCGis or CAD in engineering).

A little maths would probably help - basic arithmetic and a little intuition will make working with coordinates easier if you're doing any georeferencing or manual input. Even some very basic statistics (i.e. you might want to color areas with unemployment rates greater than 2 standard deviations, so it helps to be able to interpret!) When you get into running queries, they can become a bit complicated, but often they boil down to little more than basic arithmetic.

More advanced techniques such as geographically weighted regression will require some familiarity with regression, or some basic algebra (again, I dont know if this is even covered at all in the NUIM course), and from there, the complexity and difficulty can grow quite quickly.

The department is great, I enjoyed my time at NUIM (I'm still there four years on!), and the GIS course was one of the best I took in the last four years - we got lots of face time with staff from the NCG, and some who worked on the ghost estates project with the geodirectory data.

SandyRamp

The maths aspect of the course is almost 100% within the Remote Sensing side of the course. It is assumed that you are fairly proficient with indices, etc. There are also calculations regarding the movements of satellites, orbital velocity, radius etc. so I would really advise getting your hands on a maths book!

I agree with efla, it is a really enjoyable albeit challenging course. The lecturers are so helpful, even afterwards with regards to job opportunities they have heard about. The class is also small enough that you are guaranteed individual attention should you have any problems.

I have also found that when I was applying for jobs many employers had good things to say about the course, and either completed it themselves or had a number of employees who were past students.

Ostrom

SandyRamp wrote: »

The maths aspect of the course is almost 100% within the Remote Sensing side of the course. It is assumed that you are fairly proficient with indices, etc. There are also calculations regarding the movements of satellites, orbital velocity, radius etc. so I would really advise getting your hands on a maths book!

Forgot about the remote sensing - I miss all of this immensely

If you're at all doubtful about the above, khanacademy have some great online tutorials that will get you up to speed in no time. It really is great fun though, working with and manipulating actual data. And its nearly all applied math, so you get the added satisfaction of seeing the real-world consequences quite quickly

lstevo

Hi
Does anyone know anything about the Geospatial Engineering M.Sc in Dit. I would really like to get into surveying an work more outdoors.

Absolute Zero

Hi. I am not in the Msc Geospatial engineering, but I am in Glasgow studying the MSc geospatial and mapping science which is very similar. give me a buzz if you want info regarding the surveying/geomatics field.