How to Be a Successful Engineering Student
- 1). Stop by your professors' offices during the hours that they are available in order to ask any questions you might have, to review work you've done or to inquire about grades you've received. James Deaton, a Ph.D. candidate from the Georgia Institute of Technology, credits this as one of the strategies that allowed him to earn his BS and MS in civil engineering with marks good enough to qualify for his doctoral program.
- 2). Apply for any scholarships that the schools you apply to offer. School-specific scholarships for engineering are often of higher value than the national offerings. Getting a scholarship means you can spend more time on study and research and less time working a part-time job to pay for school.
- 3). Learn to work well as a part of a team. Success in engineering classes often depends on the result of a large group project, so you need to be able to function successfully as part of a larger unit. Thomas Wolff, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies at Michigan State University, explains that in order to be accredited, engineering colleges need to include extensive components of teamwork in their curricula.
- 4). Get involved beyond the bare minimum of study required for your classes. The more extra projects and groups you become a part of, the more work experience you will generate. Become involved in projects and add them to your portfolio so that when you graduate, you will have a leg up on those who just concentrated only on class work.