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My Experience With The Job Hunt

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I like these honest and factual posts. In Engineering we try to not “sugar-coat” things. It’s going to be hard, probably the hardest thing most of our admitted students have ever done in their lives so far.

Engineering Girls at University of Waterloo

Marieta’s post, Apply, Interview, Rank, Repeat, is a great post on what the co-op job hunting process is like. Everyone has their own personal experience with the job hunting process though, so I thought I would share what my experience was like with this first co-op term.

Job hunting is stressful, to say the least. While you’re drowning in school work, you’re expected to carry the weight of having to find a co-op job on your back. It’s tough. Reality is, as a first-year student you’re going to run into more challenges with the job hunt than upper-year students. Experience is important and it’s something that comes with time. When I say experience, I’m talking about all sorts of experiences from work experience to experience in your career field. What kind of knowledge do you have in this specific area? How about that area? It is perfectly okay to…

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First Impression on My Co-op Term

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Another interesting post about personal experiences in our co-op engineering program.

Engineering Girls at University of Waterloo

Man, co-op terms can be amazing.

This is my first co-op term and I am working for General Dynamics Canada in Ottawa as a NATO AGS Software Engineering co-op. Yes, it is a wicked first job. For security reasons, I cannot speak much about what I do other than that I work with military and defense technology, I guess. So far, I haven’t done much work but I’ve learned about my team’s project and what goes on within my company. I’ve had the opportunity to look at the production plant and aircraft component construction so far, but next week I’ll be looking into tanks. How sick is that!? I’m very fortunate to have this opportunity with GD Canada. It’s an incredible start for me, as I do plan on working for the aerospace and national defense industry in the future.

I have to admit though, getting used to a new environment…

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1A – COMPLETED

/ profbillanderson / 5 Comments

Nice reflections on the shocking transition from high school to university.

Engineering Girls at University of Waterloo

Ah, it’s over. It’s aaalll over.

What a strange feeling it was to have over the holidays. The feeling that you don’t have to do anything. No homework, no assignments, no studying. Just whatever you feel like doing. It honestly felt as though I wasn’t being productive enough and I that I should have gone to review my notes or finish an assignment. Instead I watched movies all day, played a new game that I got, Starbound, and went skating. What a great ending to a fun term. Don’t get me wrong, it was super tough, but in the end it was very satisfying when I finished all of my exams and didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

The first term of university was amazing. Frustrating and stressful at times, but still a really great experience that I do not regret even one bit. You know how as…

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Comparing Biomedical Engineering Programs

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Choosing a Biomedical Engineering (BME) program is a bit more complicated than many other programs, like chemical or mechanical, because there is actually quite a variety among them.  The following is my impression of the various types of BME programs.

First, what should a Biomedical Engineering (BME) program look like academically?  Here is a reasonable definition given by ABET, the U.S. “Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology“:

The program must prepare graduates to have: an understanding of biology and physiology, and the capability to apply advanced mathematics (including differential equations and statistics), science, and engineering to solve the problems at the interface of engineering and biology; the curriculum must prepare graduates with the ability to make measurements on and interpret data from living systems, addressing the problems associated with the interaction between living and non-living materials and systems.

(The Canadian equivalent of ABET, CEAB, doesn’t publish any definitions but our expectations would be similar anyways.)

Within that framework, there are actually several different “flavours” of BME, and for potential applicants it is very important that you recognize and understand this.  Otherwise, you might end up in a program that is completely different from what you might have had in mind.  Here, I will attempt to summarize my understanding of the different “flavours”, with some example programs in Canadian universities. Continue reading →

The Tour Guide’s Guide to Campus Tours

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These seem like very reasonable suggestions and advice!

Campuscene

I gave campus tours for four years in college and witnessed too many mistakes being made by applicants and their families while visiting a campus.  Seeing a school first hand is one of the most important steps in the college search, and its important you make the most of your time on campus. Check out these 5 insider tips on how to get the most out of your campus visits.

1. Choose Your Visits Wisely

On my tours it was all too common to see a student completely lose interest within five minutes of being on campus. I choose to ignore the possibility that I was boring them, so it must have been that they didn’t want to be there in the first place!

Choosing which colleges to visit is not the time to throw darts at the dartboard. Take virtual tours, explore school websites, and look at photos…

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“Silicon Valley’s Canadian Feeder School”

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That’s the title of a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about the University of Waterloo’s engineering program that appeared this week in their Technology Section.  You can read the article on this website.

It goes on a bit too much about Blackberry, in my opinion, but does have some interesting statistics.  For example, there are over 1,000 local tech companies now, and 700 start-up companies.  Coincidentally, Macleans magazine listed Waterloo as Canada’s most innovative university for the 22nd year in a row this week.

UW Engineering Shadow Program

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This is a great way to experience Waterloo engineering…well worth a day off school.

Engineering Girls at University of Waterloo

For those of you who are considering UW Engineering, have you heard about the UW Engineering Shadow Program? It is handled by the Engineering Student Ambassadors Team and we would love to spend a day with you for you to experience a day at the University of Waterloo as an Engineering student.

The days available are typically from 8:30AM to 4:30PM from Mondays to Fridays. There are students available from all engineering programs and you may request a specific ambassador although it will depend on the ambassador’s availability. You can find the profiles of our ambassadors here.

Shadow days for the Fall term (September-December) are reserved for grade 12 students only. Starting in the Winter term through Spring/Summer (January-July), shadow days will be available to grade 11 and 12 students.

If you are interested, definitely register now. It will be a great…

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I want to be an engineer. What will my salary be?

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Here is a slideshow from the Globe & Mail, showing interesting facts about engineering careers, including salaries and projected future demand.  It’s fairly generic, but might be useful to look at.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/life-at-work/i-want-to-be-an-engineer-what-will-my-salary-be/article14666313/

 

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Comparing Starting Salaries

/ profbillanderson / 2 Comments

People are sometimes interested in “Return on Investment” (ROI) or “value” of their university education, and part of this analysis needs the expected salary after graduating.  Data within Canada seems difficult to find, so I sometimes look at surveys like that produced by NACE (the National Association of Colleges and Employers) in the US.  Their most recent result (April 2013) is available here in summary form (the full version requires a paid subscription, which I don’t have).

Summarizing the results for 2013, we see the reported average starting salaries for various broad areas (rounding off to the nearest $1,000):

Business:  $54,000
Communications:  $43,000
Computer Science:  $60,000
Education:  $40,000
Engineering:  $62,000
Health Sciences:  $50,000
Humanities & Social Sciences:  $37,000
Math & Sciences:  $43,000
Overall:  $45,000

In many universities, engineering and computer science tuition are among the highest of the programs, so it’s good that their starting salaries are the highest too, on average.

The survey also shows average starting salaries by industry sector.  The sector labelled “Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction” had the highest value, at $84,000, while “Finance & Insurance” had the lowest at $53,000.  I think the first one is skewed by a pretty small number of highly paid jobs though, since there were only 1,100 new grads in that sector versus 100,200 in the Finance sector.

I don’t know how relevant or useful that information is on an individual level, but it’s interesting to look at.

Ideas start here

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Here’s a nice short video about innovation at Waterloo. Our Creative Services department always does a nice job on various materials, including this video. I like the part about “Bring us your curiosity…imagination…drive”. I think that nicely captures the spirit of the types of students we hope to attract to Engineering.

bethbohnert

Script and concept: Beth Bohnert
Production: Creative Services, University of Waterloo

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