Preparation for Engineering in College

A97

Hi all. I've applied for Engineering in TCD as my first choice on the CAO and I've also applied for the courses in UCD, DCU and DIT. Nothing is certain, but I should achieve their entry requirements. Anyway, since Engineering is a very broad field, I'm wondering if there is anything any of you would recommend for me prior to entering college. I know that these courses only require a HC3 in Maths, but should I attempt to get a grounding in anything else? For the Leaving Cert, I did the following. I would imagine that the bolded ones might be of the most importance and the italicised ones might have some use:

Maths
Physics
Biology
Accounting
English
Spanish
Irish

Furthermore, I have a Junior Cert background in the following subjects:

Chemistry within Science
Technical Graphics
Geography
Business and Economics within Business Studies
History
CSPE
Religion

I also have a very basic first year knowledge of:

Metalwork
Art
Woodwork
Home Ec

If you were going into college again, is there anything that you would do differently or recommend? I'm guessing that Chemistry, Applied Maths, CAD, drawing skills and perhaps some basic knowledge of computers would be of benefit to me. Would it also be worth my while to go over Calculus and Electricity? They could probably do with some freshening up if I'm going to need them. I'll likely be doing an undenominated course for two years.

Obviously, some time off is important, but just to reduce some of the workload from September onwards, I might just dabble into anything that might be useful to me for just a couple of hours each week until the college year starts. I have Eircom StudyHub as a resource as well as the internet. I can view any of the lessons in this link so I could just learn topics of relevance rather than entire courses:

http://www.examsupport.ie/all_subjects

Also, this question might be better suited to the Third Level forum, but is there anything I should do aside from academics to prepare for third level? What stationery and the like should I have? I mainly ask this because I bought some A4 hardback copies for my Leaving Cert subjects only to soon completely run out of room and I resorted to a less organised approach to how I recorded things i.e. I just used any empty copy I could find at home.:P

Thank you for reading.:)

Applied maths and chemistry are useful to have for college but not essential. For now, just enjoy your summer!

Stationary - pens, A4 pad. Job done. You'll pick up everything else you'll need when you start, no need to plan this far ahead.

CatFromHue

Yeah you're jumping the gun a bit.

For someone who has missed a few years between school and starting college it would be a good idea to re cap LC stuff, but if you just did your LC in June you should be OK.

It's more important what you do when you start college tbh, like going to all your classes and tutorials!

First year in college is about getting everyone up to the same level as you will have people with a very broad spectrum of people in the class (people straight out of school, mature students, people who didn't do any of Physics, Chemistry, Applied Maths, Eng. Workshop).

JIdontknow

You'll be grand, having done physics it should really stand to you too, a lot of people won't have done physics and third level engineering courses are designed to allow for this so any subjects you'll have that are relevant will be very useful but without them you would still get through the course once you attend classes and take notes etc.

For stationary all you'll need for now is a few pens, highlighter, pencils ( for engineering drawing some places use drawing pens, others use pencils, hb, 2h and 4h) but it depends, they will tell you when you attend. Lever arch folders with dividers are handy to have and just use a4 refill pads and tear the pages out and put in lever arch folder every so often and use dividers to seperate subjects out. That way you're only carrying one refill pad in bag and one folder. Also buy a packet of them refill pad page hole protector sticker things. Handy to have and put on pages as you put them into the folder.

Irish_Elect_Eng

My Thoughts:

It might be a good idea to get a head-start on familiarizing yourself with the CAD packages associated with your chosen course. There are usually free/student versions available. Solidworks / Autocad for Mech. / Schemalic capture / PCB layout for Elec

Take a look at the free college courses available on-line in your chose field. (Open University, MIT, Etc.) See if there are any areas that spike your interest.

willowthewisp

Maths & Physics have you sorted.
The Junior Cert Tech Graphics should also give you enough of a foundation for Drawing also.

You will be all set.

KeithTS

If you're keen on getting up and running look into any programming modules you might need.
If you don't know any languages just start messing around with C to get the basics down. Applied maths is always good to know but i'd imagine you have that sorted from the LC maths and physics.

It'll make me sound like a bore but the best thing to do is a little bit of study in the evenings after your lectures when you get started. If you manage to keep up with your tutorials and lectures throughout the semester you'll be laughing, fall behind and you'll start getting stressed.
If you start of strong you'll get a lot more out of it, I studied with lads who were still grappling with the basics from 1st/2nd year throughout their final year projects. I did not envy them.

You're only in college once (generally...) enjoy it!

mikhail

In my experience, a lot of engineering students who don't have chemistry find that tricky. It might be worth doing a little reading there.

And as someone said, some coding experience will stand to you - there are loads of good sites for mucking about with the basics in C programming.