What type of engineering should I do ?help

celligraphy

Hello , I hope to go back to college in September , as a mature student , I have always had an interest in making things , such as fixing my own electric stuff taking things apart to see how they work ,sometimes I can fix sometimes I can't .

I just love how I find it so enjoyable making fixing and learning how things work

Should I go for engineering

General entry to an engineering course would make sense and then decide on a discipline for second or third year.

Digital Solitude

Pretty much the above. NUIG and UCD Engineering is a common first year where you pick your denomination in second year. I'd assume most courses are like this though

celligraphy

Perfect thanks in the mean time can you recommend any books to start getting the basics of engineering ?

smalls90

I hope you like maths. :-) If you enjoy the practical side of engineering then maybe lean more towards a course in an IT. There will still be plenty of maths but it should be somewhat balanced out by labs and workshops.
From speaking to friends who studied various Eng degrees in Universities you'll be lucky to see any workshops at all. It may all be theory.
Try to narrow down a particular field of engineering if you can.

celligraphy

I don't mind maths but I would rather more hands on stuff , I was in honours maths in school until 6th year and then started being lazy and dropped to foundation as all my friends were in it and I was being lazy.


I really do love maths challenge and find myself more of a logical person than anything finding other ways to solve stuff.

I thinking of doing electric engineering

anothernight

smalls90 wrote: »

I hope you like maths. :-) If you enjoy the practical side of engineering then maybe lean more towards a course in an IT. There will still be plenty of maths but it should be somewhat balanced out by labs and workshops.
From speaking to friends who studied various Eng degrees in Universities you'll be lucky to see any workshops at all. It may all be theory.
Try to narrow down a particular field of engineering if you can.

At least in TCD it's not all theory. For mechanical anyway we also had labs and workshops. I would have thought it was the same pretty much everywhere else.

OP, definitely do a course that starts with a bit of all streams and then lets you decide which one you like the most. In TCD you do two years of all streams and then another 2 (BAI) or 3 (MAI) of the one you want to get your degree in. I think most other courses do at least one year of common engineering though.

KeithTS

I don't want to be negative, I was in your situation, went to study Engineering as a mature student and absolutely love what I do now so good luck with it!

However, there is a massive drop out/fail rate in first year (at least in colleges I've heard about) as people have the entirely wrong idea of what engineering is. In a lot of courses 80% of what you study will be theoretical with some labs dotted around here and there. If you like pulling things apart, making things and a lot of hands on stuff perhaps an engineering degree isn't necessarily for you. It'll be a lot of maths, tough maths at that. After the course, you may never get any hands on work depending on your field. A lot of jobs are sitting in from of a desk and PC.

As I said, I don't want to be negative but don't rush into an engineering degree head on without understanding what it's about fully as you'll struggle if you're not into it.

All that aside, it's a very rewarding career path with a lot of potential avenues to venture down.

kevohmsford

I studied Mechanical Engineering in DIT. At the start I thought I wanted to study Structural Engineering but choose Mechanical. I work in Maintenance and Project Engineering so it can be very hands on.
As other people have said there is a lot of Maths during study with plenty of labs and projects in a third level engineering degree.

TheHillOfDoom

Have you any plans to re-sit Maths? I doubt you would get into any engineering course without at least Ordinary level maths? Open to be corrected on that.

Would you consider mechanics? Rather than mechanical engineering?

In terms of work, engineers are based mainly at their desks - even the mechanical engineers are building models using programmes.

Civil engineering is fascinating. Building big things lol.

In all cases, engineers become shamelessly over-excited when they actually physically see what they've been working on, in the flesh.

KeithTS

TheHillOfDoom wrote: »

Have you any plans to re-sit Maths? I doubt you would get into any engineering course without at least Ordinary level maths? Open to be corrected on that.

Would you consider mechanics? Rather than mechanical engineering?

In terms of work, engineers are based mainly at their desks - even the mechanical engineers are building models using programmes.

Civil engineering is fascinating. Building big things lol.

In all cases, engineers become shamelessly over-excited when they actually physically see what they've been working on, in the flesh.

Technically not true, 9/10 I'm devastated that my prototypes don't work which takes away from the elation somewhat....