Waterloo’s Fall Open House is coming up soon, on Saturday November 4.  Registration and other information is available online.

These open houses are a very important opportunity to find out more about different programs, curricula, co-op, career paths and various other aspects.  As I’ve noted before, you want to go into a program for all the right reasons and this is a chance to gather information and formulate those reasons.

It doesn’t even have to be Waterloo’s open house!  If you want to find out more about mechanical engineering (for example), your local university probably does something similar if Waterloo is too far away.  Educationally, most accredited engineering programs across North America have similar course content within the same discipline, so what you find out about Chemical Engineering education and careers at Ryerson University will be more or less similar for the universities of Waterloo, Toronto, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, British Columbia, etc.

At Waterloo (or anywhere else), some of the best people to talk to are the students.  They will give you their impressions about the program, examples of what they are doing or have done on co-op or internships, and information about student life.  Talk to more than one student however, since everyone has a different experience, background, and perspective.  Staff and faculty are good to talk to also, of course, since they can give a broader overview of things and have a longer-term connection with the program and its evolution.