General Advice for your First Year of Engineering

Note that these views are purely subjective based on my own experience in first year (freshman) engineering.  They may not be applicable to everyone, so do what you think will work best for you.

I remember in the first week of first year, all of the engineering students were crammed into a lecture hall for some class – maybe first year mechanics. And before the class started, some professor or department advisor came in to discuss what we should expect from our first year. It seemed to all of us that he came in with the idea to scare us, or at least that’s what we felt at the time. But in retrospect, everything he said was more or less accurate. For many of us, our expectations were different than how first year turned out to be.

The first bit of advice was to not get a job.  And this is something I agree with. Engineering in first year will demand all of your time; it is a full time job. Your job is to get used to school, to your classes, to your peers, to your course load. To being away from home for the first time. This advice may not be realistic for many of you. School is expensive – not just the tuition, but the cost of living, and also the opportunity cost. There may have been some of you that could have a job and making a living right out of high school. So getting a job to support yourself during first year seems like the responsible thing to do. But you’ll likely underestimate the amount of free time that you will have. You are immediately putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to everyone else that did not get a job. They will have more time to study. Perhaps more importantly: they will have more free time to make friends, to join engineering clubs, to relax and pursue other interests. They will have more time to figure things out a bit better. Those are huge advantages. You will need time to decompress after courses, exams, assignments. Having even a part time job will leave you stressed out and, in the long run, will probably not be worth the money you will make. And the during the worst time of the semester – exams – you really will not have free time. During exams, even taking time to eat feels like a excessive break from studying. While that may seem like an exaggeration, it becomes reality when you’re studying for probably five exams, four if you’re lucky.  (And to tell the truth, apart from the stress and misery, some of my best memories are from exam time. There is a sense of ‘we’re screwed’ among everyone, and studying and joking at how badly you are going to fail forms some of the best friendships. Everyone is in it together.)

At worst, having a part time job could leave you stretched too thin and not allow you enough time to study properly, even just to pass. I had friends in first year that had jobs, and a few of them ended up failing courses or being on academic probation. Failing courses is a bad idea, because you can end up having to take courses in summer school, which may prevent you from getting a job over the summer or getting a much needed break to travel or visit home. Failing courses is stressful, and can result in lowered marks in other courses due to loss of motivation or loss of time, depending on when you make up the course. Overloading your course schedule is not the best answer. You need enough time for each course. You also need enough time to enjoy other aspects of your life.

Academic probation should be taken seriously and avoided – the stress that comes with that designation can be overwhelming.  Academic probation occurs when you have passed your courses but just barely.  You then need to get higher marks in subsequent terms to avoid having to withdraw from studies for a certain amount of time – often an academic year (8 months).  My advice would be to skip the extra bit of money you will make in first year and focus on your studies instead. Graduating with an engineering degree will likely land you a decent paying job (even if it takes some time to find one), and the money you could potentially make with a part-time job in first year will have a negligible effect on the money you make over your lifetime. It is better to take out sufficient loans to cover your living expenses, focus on being a student, and then make as much as you can during the summer breaks. It is better to get off to a proper start in your first year, a proper foundation for your academic career. Don’t get a job in first year. Maybe in second year when you have things figured out a bit better, depending on your course load.
The second advice bit of advice is that your study habits will need to change from high school. The advisor said this: ‘typically, your average will drop by 25% from high school during your first year.” This got quite the reaction. A few weeks later I failed my first calculus exam, and was well on my way to seeing my average dip by that much. Many of my friends averages were lowered even more. Of course, many people faired a lot better too. This isn’t to say that people whose averages dropped a lot aren’t up to the challenge of engineering. The expectations are just different between high school and engineering. In high school, 90%+ is great and anything less than 80% can feel disappointing. In first year, you just hope that you got above 60% when you get your exams back.  The concepts and courses are difficult, but the marks are kept low intentionally as well. It’s something about the atmosphere of first year. It is almost tradition to punish engineering students in first year. And your high school studying habits will probably not be adequate. You need to study much more. You need to become good at exam writing, not just at studying, as there is a difference.  Exam writing is a skill all on its own – of course, you need to know the subject matter, but this certainly doesn’t guarantee you will do well on the exam. Past exams are your best friend. Discover past exams and do as many of them as you can – and don’t leave them until the night before the exam. It is best to at least look at a couple while studying, to see what you’re up against. This is a big mistake that many made initially. Some students, such as myself, were not even aware of the existence of past exams. Often there will be a school website with past exams for each course. These will become a focal point for your studying. You can gauge the difficulty, the length, the types of questions, and the type/length of answers they are expecting. Doing these alone will not prepare you however. Each exam will be different, and knowing how to do the past exams alone will not guarantee success. So my advice would be to study as much as you can while viewing the past exams, and then once you feel that you have the concepts under control, write the exams. It doesn’t matter necessarily if you write them like an actual exam in the allotted time. Often, I just wrote them with friends; discussing the questions and answers as we went. Just make sure that you do them.  One note about past exams – sometimes the instructor will let you know how similar the past exams will be to the one you will write.  This is good information to have, especially if the course was taught by a different instructor during previous years, so different material may have been taught.  Don’t be afraid to try to get information about the exam from the professors and instructors. It is fair game to ask what material will be on the exam if they do not offer it up.

There you have it – some general advice about first year that was given to everyone when we started first year.  Don’t get a job (if you can avoid it) and don’t worry about a free-falling average from high school.  Just change your expectations and your study habits and aim to just pass your courses!