Around this time of year, “What’s the cut-off?” is probably the most common question we get about admission to our engineering programs. A very reasonable question, and one that helps potential applicants know their chances for admission. Unfortunately, it’s a question we can’t really answer. Not because we’re secretive or trying to be coy, it’s just a question without a direct answer for a number of reasons. Continue reading
Engineering Education
University Rankings: Round 4 – Times Higher Ed
Next up in the international university rankings, we have the 2012/2013 Times Higher Education (THE) rankings. More specifically, we’ll look at the Engineering & Technology rankings.
Methodology
I’ve had trouble trying to figure out this methodology. According to their website, the weighting of the different factors is given at the foot of the tables, but I can’t find it! So here’s a summary of the general methodology (used for overall rankings?), although it may be a bit different for the Engineering & Technology subject grouping. Continue reading
Engineering Salary Statistics
The Globe & Mail, a newspaper published in Toronto, has posted an interesting graphic that allows you to determine the average early career earnings (ages 26 to 35) of various university majors, including several engineering disciplines. This is based on StatsCan data, and so is presumably reasonably good. After a quick look, some comments.
First, Chemical Engineering (my discipline!) seems to have the highest median income (over $71,000) among the engineering fields. I suspect it’s skewed by the people working in northern Alberta (Fort McMurray, etc.) where the salaries tend to be high, but I can’t say for sure. Most other engineering disciplines are in the low to mid $60,000 range for the median salary. Not bad for someone in their mid 20s to mid 30s, and higher than pretty well any other major (except Pharmacy, as far as I could determine). For comparison, in 2010 the median lone-parent family income in Canada was $37,050 according to StatsCan.
The other thing I notice is that female median salaries are consistently lower than male. This seems to be the case for all majors. I doubt that it is systemic salary gender discrimination, but probably reflects the fact that these are the prime child-bearing years for females, with time off work and lower income.
Overall, some interesting info, and it confirms that with engineering you can mix science, math, problem solving, and a decent standard of living too.
Meeting Your Waterloo – Quantum-Nano Centre
Today was the official opening for the new Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC) on the Waterloo campus, sponsored in-part by the co-founder of RIM and the Blackberry, Mike Lazaridis. This will be the new “home” for our Nanotechnology Engineering students, with classrooms, teaching and research labs, faculty offices, and meeting spaces where people can collaborate. The opening ceremonies had the usual speeches, which were actually quite inspirational. But the biggest excitement was generated at the start when Prof. Stephen Hawking from Cambridge delivered the opening address! Continue reading
University Rankings: Round 3 – QS
The 2012/2013 QS World University rankings were recently released. As with previous posts, I’m going to focus on the faculty-specific rankings, not the general overall ones. The 2012/2013 Engineering & Technology top 200 rankings are available here. Let’s summarize the methods and results for Canadian engineering schools. Continue reading
Thinking About Mining Engineering
The Macleans article I referenced in a previous post had a story about mining engineering, and the many lucrative career opportunities that are opening up in Canada. Part of this is the increased demand for resources (a similar story for petroleum), but part is the well-known demographic wave of upcoming retirements among engineering professionals. This is a challenge in many industries, and not unique to mining. There are a couple of things to say about this article, however. Continue reading
University Rankings: Macleans Professional Schools
The Canadian magazine “Macleans” does university rankings, and recently they published their “2012 Professional Schools Rankings“. I think you have to pay to see it, or buy a hardcopy. I have a subscription, and can summarize some of the information here. Continue reading
University Rankings: Round 2 – Webometrics
The “Ranking Web of Universities” or Webometrics ranking was recently updated. I have never noticed it in the past, so it’s new to me. The first thing to say is that it is a university-wide ranking, and not specific to Engineering. In the sub-section for Canada, Waterloo ranks #11, and #198 worldwide. Not bad I suppose, but as usual let’s look at what it is actually measuring. Continue reading
Top Ten Ways to Fail Your Engineering Program
Classes will be starting shortly, and this is the time when new students typically get some advice for their future studies. If you search around the web, you’ll find lots of blogs, books, forums, and pages with suggestions for how to succeed in university and engineering programs. Rather than add one more, I think I’ll provide the following list for students who want to fail out and toss away the $10,000 (or more) it cost in tuition and living expenses to attend for a term. These suggestions are based on many years of observation as an academic advisor dealing with failed-out students, so they’re guaranteed to work! They are somewhat specific to Waterloo Engineering, but I bet that many will work for other programs too. Continue reading
University Rankings: Round 1 – ARWU
The first set of university rankings has been released for this academic year. This is the ARWU (academic ranking of world universities) put out by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I’m going to focus on the rankings of “Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences” category, since that’s most relevant to my interests, and they can be found at this link. Since prospective students and parents sometimes spend a lot of time and effort pondering on the meaning of these rankings, let’s go through them together. Continue reading
A Professor in Waterloo Engineering 