How to get basic civil engineering formulas?

Questions about engineering school?

• So, I started having an interest in engineering very late in the high school game. It basically means I had a mediocre math record - Bs in Algebra I and Geometry and just an A in Algebra II. And if that wasn't bad enough, I took AP Statistics instead of PreCalculus. Yes, a very horrible decision in retrospect. But I will be taking PreCalc at my community college over the summer. My question is how would I get into an engineering program at this point, if at all? At this point, I know that selective engineering programs won't take me... Is there any college crazy enough to admit somebody like me? I'm a honors student with a pretty tough class record with an ACT of 30 and a GPA of 3.8. I was thinking that I should have a very strong freshmen year and then transfer to an engineering college during my second year. Another question is - would I be a year behind everybody in that case because the engineering track is so specialized? Or do engineering students still take mostly general ed stuff (like intro physics, etc.)? Let's say that I had a really good freshmen year that rebounded my mediocre math skills. Would I be able to get into say... Purdue University? Or is that still too selective? The reputation of my college isn't too important, but it would be nice to go somewhere reputable. And some general questions for people who already engineers. Would you say I must absolutely love math to be an engineer? I'm still very impartial to it, but engineering seems like the kind of job where I could suck it up and be formulaic. Granted, some types of engineering require *lots* of creativity... but aren't there plenty of engineering jobs that just require you to make calculations with the same old formulas? Basically, jobs that require your knowledge and not your brain. I work hard enough to have a basic understanding of the material, but I think have poor logical and analytical skills. I know it's generally a bad idea to go into a field that you don't like, but for me, engineering is the closest thing to a stable professional career I have. Suggestions?

• Answer:

  To be completely honest, you sound like you're on a very good track to get into an engineering program. A lot of people haven't necessarily had any calculus before entering college, so I doubt it will put you that much behind, especially if you plan on taking it as a summer class. Switching from one school to another can get tricky with getting credits transferred, and a lot of times, engineering programs will have you take general education classes (English and History and whatnot), but will also have an introduction to engineering class that you'd end up having to take as a sophomore, which can be a drag as an upperclassman. Getting into an engineering program--I think that depends a lot on where you want to go. Are you looking at east coast, west coast, big school, small school, something tailored towards engineering, or something maybe a bit more liberal arts-y? Someplace like Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is a fairly well-known engineering school in MA. There's also the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which pretty much everyone knows as an engineering school. I've heard that Stanford and University of Washington-Seattle have good engineering programs if you're looking out west. If you're looking for something smaller, I'd recommend Norwich University (but I'm biased, as it's my alma mater). I think it also depends on what kind of engineering you want to do--mechanical, civil, electrical, computer, chemical, aeronautical, biomedical... the list goes on and on. You have to look and see what programs the school offers, how big the program is, things like that. If you don't have a problem having classes with 500 students taught by a graduate student as TA, state schools are always a good option. I've always been of the opinion that someplace like Purdue or MIT or the Ivy Leagues are better left until graduate studies, as that's what they're more geared towards. Speaking personally, I went to Norwich University, in Vermont; it's a small school, originally founded as an engineering school, but has become more liberal arts since then. I wanted a small school environment, and people in New England, at least, tend to know about Norwich, and it has a fairly decent reputation (look for ABET accreditation when researching engineering schools!). I'm not a huge fan of math, at least not for the sake of doing math for no other reason than doing math. I don't have a problem applying it to engineering problems, as you tend to not have to worry about doing things the long and complicated way, and just plug numbers into a formula. I just graduated this past spring, and I just started working in the professional world at the end of the summer; as a mechanical engineer, I've mostly been doing a lot of number crunching. Sometimes, it reminds me of homework assignments at school, but it has a different feel to it most of the time (getting paid helps ;-P). Math was never one of my strong points in college, but I'm doing just fine. As long as you understand when a formula is supposed to be used, it's rather simple inserting numbers and plugging them into a calculator. And if you're ever really in doubt, people don't have much of a problem telling you what you should be doing. If you get into an engineering program, you'll probably know by the end of the first or second year whether or not you actually want to keep doing engineering. At least that was my experience at school--if someone wanted out of the program, they switched before junior year. And trust me--you'll know whether you like it or not. Good luck with your searching!