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if you have dc as engineering major. . .


Guest Barb B
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What would you and dc say is most important for junior and senior high school students to have and do to prepare them for the rigourous engineering major (especially for easier transition into the difficult college engineering work load). What in hindsight would you do differently; what did you do that was good for preparing your dc for an engineering major?

 

Barb

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What would you and dc say is most important for junior and senior high school students to have and do to prepare them for the rigourous engineering major (especially for easier transition into the difficult college engineering work load). What in hindsight would you do differently; what did you do that was good for preparing your dc for an engineering major?

 

Barb

 

My ds took application heavy math courses and thorough science courses with labs.

 

The rest of his course work was lots of reading and writing heavy. I didn't slack up on any of his subjects. He worked a minimum of 7-9 hrs per day.

 

He took 18 hrs of dual enrolled credit hours his senior yr.

 

The one thing I would do differently would be to have required a high school physics course. He really wanted to take anatomy and physiology, so that is the route we took. His first exposure to physics was cal based physics. He did fine, but it was probably more difficult than it needed to be if he had had a high school exposure. (My 8th grader is taking physics this yr!!)

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What would you and dc say is most important for junior and senior high school students to have and do to prepare them for the rigourous engineering major (especially for easier transition into the difficult college engineering work load). What in hindsight would you do differently; what did you do that was good for preparing your dc for an engineering major?

 

Barb

Barb,

 

I would second momof7's recommendation for rigorous math and science courses in high school. Math should include Calculus in high school (or at a local college while in high school) if at all possible. While it's possible to go from PreCalc straight to college Calc in engineering school, that route is much harder and fewer succeed in engineering having taken that route.

 

The chemistry & physics courses should have labs and at least some formal lab write-ups required. Biology is also a good course to have, but unless one goes into Biomedical Engineering, I don't think it's essential -- better to spend two years on chemisty and/or physics and either skip Bio or take a "lighter" bio course in jr or sr year.

 

We also spent high school doing a lot of writing and history. I figured that this was probably my son's only chance to study history in any depth, and I wanted to make sure he had a good background. He thanked me for that the other day over the phone because his history knowledge helped him understand a professor's lecture better.

 

What I would have done differently is what I recommended above, skip Bio in early high school and focus on chemistry & physics as long as your dc has the math required for chemistry (Algebra 1). That is the route my younger guy is following.

 

HTH,

Brenda

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Make sure your child is "computer literate".

 

At a minimum, that means that your child can use most of the standard office programs.

 

At a higher level, that means that your child is familiar with one or two programming languages.

 

As an engineer, he WILL use computers to design, explore, manipulate data, etc. He MAY be expected to go in and alter programs so that the data given out will be in a different form etc. He MAY even be expected to to in and write his own code.

 

For an engineer, computer familiarity is a VERY useful addition to his bag of skills.

 

As an example,this summer my son (not an engineer but dealing with an engineering-related issue) dealt with data that was in form A. The data manipulation program had no way of reading the data in form A. My son wrote a program to change the data in form A to form B, which the data manipulation program could use. Prior to my son, the students had just read the form A data out loud to another student and entered it manually into form B.

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Our ds is a sophomore in engineering at VA Tech. He was totally homeschooled, and had taken no outside classes. Dh and I both majored in engineering there, so we knew what it would be like for him. He's doing very well! Here's my $0.02:

 

1. Ditto the above comments!

 

2. I would recommend even more strongly than the above posts to have your ds take Calculus (Calc I is fine) and Physics in high school. Ds has a homeschooled friend who did not get accepted to Tech's engineering program because he did not take Calc & Phys in high school. His friend WAS accepted to both Tech AND the honors program, but admissions just told him that all the other accepted engineering applicants had taken both of those courses in high school.

 

3. I'd recommend 2 years each of Chemistry and Physics, and fitting in Biology if you can. Ds did Apologia Biology, Chem I & II, and Physics I & II. Apologia is fine, but bumping up the 2nd year of Chem & Physics to an AP course would be even better. Chemistry is more do-able as an AP study because of the math. Physics C is the AP exam required for credit at engineering schools. Since Physics C requires Calculus, it can be tricky to get in the math before. If you can't get in at least Calculus I before the 2nd year of Physics, that's ok, just use a non-Calculus Physics. If you can't accomplish all this, don't despair!

 

4. Plan on having him study for at least about 12 credit hours of AP credits, which is about the average ds said his fellow engineering majors seemed to have. Some students had a lot more, a few had less. Look at the college catalog to see what they will take before planning.

 

5. Make sure your son is self-motivated, organized, and efficient BEFORE he attends engineering school. He should be able to keep up with most things without being nagged. Some kind of electronic organizer is best, such as a "smart" phone that has his schedule (classes, activities, and assignments) and his contacts. Engineering school is challenging - the pace is brisk, and you must keep up or you will not do well.

 

That's all my little brain can come up with after doing school all week!

 

GardenMom

Edited by MomsintheGarden
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Thank you all! We are not far off track I guess. Ds is a junior, last year he had saxon physics and this year apologia advanced physics. We have gone through saxon alg I and II and are finishing up Adv. Math this semester and will begin calculus Jan. of this year. I have begun having him write up formal lab reports for physics this year. Also we have Seton English which requires a nice number of essays - 6-8 per year (not mom graded which I like). For history - we are using an ap text (the American pageant) and supplementing with readings from Bill Bennet's history text. I just told him today that I will be assigning essays (small - med papers maybe better called) based on dbq essays in the back of his text (maybe 6 per year). Of course there is electives (religion texts here) and spanish. Also, we are hoping to be accepted into the "Nasa Inspire Online Community" - but we really don't know what to expect of it yet.

 

Thought I would tell you a bit more of our classes. Any other suggestions are greatly appreciated!

 

Barb

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ds has said that C++ programing has prepared him well for his Computing for Engineers class.

 

He used this book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=hklfknZ02eMC&dq=c%2B%2B++in+24+hours&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=cBdykyhW_v&sig=iSkXtLydy7QiGsSNUgHBPPqdCQM&hl=en&ei=Nxi0Sov4H9C3twfAzqy-Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

 

We bought it at our local Borders.

Edited by langfam
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I don't have a child old enough to be dealing with this yet, my ds8 may later, but not now. But I did go to school in engineering and I watched many of my classmates struggle freshman year. The biggest academic hurdle for many of them was math. They were inadequately prepared for Calculus.

 

But by far the biggest problem wasn't math it was the idea of studying and doing homework. That meant reading the assigned chapters before class. Paying attention during class. Asking intelligent questions after class. And doing the homework. Without having someone tell you that you need to go study. There are so many interesting and cool things to do on a college campus and many (most?) of the students had come from schools where they could get great grades with little effort. So they didn't know how to study, they didn't know what studying meant, and most of all they didn't want to learn to study. They wanted to play.

 

So I would work really really hard on study skills and the reality of having to study while at college means you may miss out on some of the cool things that are out there.

 

(My experience wasn't this bad. I went to a Math/Science school in high school. The work load was worse there. I learned how to study then. My grades looked like I learned how to study on the job, but I did figure it out. My roommate freshman year did not. She came from a school where she did every extra curricular thing imaginable, didn't study and did very well. Then college hit and her freshman year grades were awful. She lost her ROTC scholarship. I am not sure if she ultimately graduated or not.)

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My only experience is due to my nephew who'll be graduating in Dec. w/an engineering degree. He didn't have calculus in hs & that fouled up his math sequence.

 

I'd also recommend checking the foreign language to graduate requirement. My niece (above's sister) is a Biology major & even though she had 4 yrs hs Spanish, she still needs 1 yr of college language to graduate. If your dc can do dual-enrollment to kill both the hs & college requirement, that would help free up class time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My husband is an electrical engineer. My daughter, a junior, is also interested in engineering. Several times she has interviewed a variety of engineers. Other than heavy of math and science, physics specifically pops up in several of the interviews. Robotics club and math clubs are also mentioned for a hands on experience. Good luck!

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