Fireworks and Air Quality

/ profbillanderson / Leave a comment
English: The New York City fireworks over the ...

English: The New York City fireworks over the East Village of New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we approach Canada Day (July 1) and Independence Day in the U.S. (July 4), our thoughts turn to the pyrotechnics that are a typical part of the celebrations.  For a chemical engineer, pyrotechnics are a fascinating topic because they rely on rapid combustion reactions and the presence of various elements that give rise to the different colours.  However, my research interests are in air quality and I’m at the Air & Waste Management Association conference in Chicago, so I’m going to review the air quality impact instead. Continue reading →

Co-op Education: Try before you buy

/ profbillanderson / 1 Comment

In the Globe & Mail newspaper, there is a short opinion article about the value of co-operative education (i.e. a structured mixing of academics and work experience).  It’s written by one of our Systems Design Engineering graduates, Andrew D’Souza, who is now COO of the educational software company Top Hat (yet another Waterloo engineering student start-up).

Andrew’s points are similar to what Waterloo’s literature tries to get across, but he is much more blunt about it.  For example, in the article he says:

If university degrees came with a 90-day refund policy, I think we’d see a lot of unemployed students waiting in the returns line. Co-op programs are as close to a “try before you buy” deal as we’ll see in higher education anytime soon.

He also explains how he started in university with some pre-conceived notions about a career path, and how these quickly changed once he saw what it was actually like during a co-op work term.  Hence the “try before you buy” idea, and the remaining work terms are an opportunity to switch gears to alternative paths, as he explains.  When I talk to our students, this is a fairly common point that comes up in one way or another.

It’s an interesting article from someone with first-hand experience and a few years after graduation to reflect back on how it helped shape his path.

Who > Where

/ profbillanderson / Leave a comment

The Bank of Montreal (BMO) recently released an interesting survey (summarized here) that ranks the qualities that business leaders look for when hiring new grads from college and university.  Basically, the ranking is:  Personality traits > Skill set > Work experience > References > Degree/school.

Not particularly surprising.  Nobody is going to hire someone whose personality is a “bad fit” for their organization, no matter what their degree says or how great their reference letters are.  Likewise, a great fit with good experience and skills will get snapped up even if their degree is from the University of Neverheardofit.

I didn’t see any details, but I would assume that this ranking is based on an interview process.  How else would one determine the “personality traits”?  So what about the earlier stages of a job search, when employers are deciding who to interview?  I suspect the ranking remains similar but without the personality traits, i.e. Skill set > Work experience > References > Degree/school.  At least, that’s what I usually look for in the hiring I’ve been involved with.

The take-home message?  If you’re working on building your career, focus on the top three things (personality, skills, experience).  For the degree and school, do whatever works best for you and your situation, because it probably doesn’t matter all that much in the long term.  Just my opinion anyways.

Switching Engineering Programs

/ profbillanderson / 108 Comments

A prior post dealt with transferring into Waterloo Engineering from some other program or university.  More frequently, the question is “can I switch to X Engineering if I start in Y Engineering?” (where X and Y are two of our own engineering programs).  This is an “internal transfer” process, so no OUAC application is necessary and there is a bit more flexibility.  But it is also potentially more confusing, so let’s look at some scenarios. Continue reading →

Engineering Failure Rates

/ profbillanderson / 8 Comments

We typically get a few questions each year about our failure rate.  I’m never quite sure why people ask, or what they are expecting.  Do they want to hear that the failure rate is high, so they are convinced it’s a tough (and therefore good) program?  Or maybe they don’t want the failure rate to be high, because they are concerned that they won’t be successful?  I’m not sure what the motivation for the question is, but anyways let’s examine failure rates.  Continue reading →

Decision Analysis for Your Offers

/ profbillanderson / 9 Comments

At this time of year, applicants have often received two or more offers to a university program so the next step is to decide which one to accept.  You could just randomly pick one, or survey your friends and family to see which one is the most recommended.   But scientists and engineers tend to prefer more evidence-based and rational methods for choosing things, what is sometimes refered to as “decision analysis”.  Most engineering programs introduce this, either formally or informally, at some point because engineers frequently have to decide from among several alternatives.  Let’s illustrate it, as applied to the problem of selecting a university offer. Continue reading →

Comparing Scholarship Offers

/ profbillanderson / 16 Comments

During our last round of offers in May, we also decide on entrance scholarship awards based on a combination of grades and the AIF score. (These are separate from the $1000 Merit and $2000 President’s scholarships that are automatically awarded based on admission averages over 85%.  Almost all Engineering students get these.)  Our engineering entrance scholarships range in value from $1,000 to $20,000, but the majority are around $3,500.  Some are from the university, but many are gifts from alumni, companies, and other donors (thanks!).  In total, there around  200 spread among the 1500 students that come in September, so I suppose the odds of getting one are about 15%.  For those comparing offers, here are a few observations about entrance scholarships, at Waterloo and in general. Continue reading →

Transferring to Waterloo Enginering

/ profbillanderson / 128 Comments

Another common question during our admission cycle is whether someone can start a program (let’s assume engineering) at another university, then transfer into Waterloo for 2nd or 3rd year.  These might be people who didn’t get an offer to Waterloo, or maybe want to try another place first but keep their options open.  The short answer is that yes, it is technically feasible, but the likelihood of successful admission to 2nd year is pretty low.  Here are some of the major reasons why: Continue reading →

Considering an Alternate Offer

/ profbillanderson / 25 Comments

When people apply to Waterloo Engineering, they apply to the program of most interest but can also identify a second and third choice on their AIF.  That way, if they are not quite competitive for the 1st choice, we can still consider them for one of the other two.  We assume that the choices are ranked in descending order of preference, so we try to get the 2nd choice if possible, then the 3rd.  This year, about 300 people got one of these alternate offers to their 2nd or 3rd choice (a typical number each year).  Some people are quite happy with their alternate offer.  Others, not so much.  Those holding an alternate offer will have to decide what to do with it, so here are a few questions that commonly come up. Continue reading →

Decisions

/ profbillanderson / 59 Comments

It’s been a hectic few weeks with many of our Admissions team working late nights and weekends, but our last round of Engineering admission offers are starting to come out.  The OUAC Form 101 offers (i.e. Ontario high school applicants) are posted to Quest (our internal system) and will show up on OUAC soon (if not already).  The OUAC Form 105 offers are in progress and should show up on Quest in the next day or two.  At this point in the admission cycle there will now be groups of happy and unhappy people, so a few preliminary observations to put it in context.  I’ll try to post additional information and suggestions in the coming weeks.

This year we had about 9000 applicants to Engineering.  About 5500 did not get offers, so our “selectivity” is around 0.39 (i.e. 39% of applicants got offers).  In a previous post about selectivity, our number was 0.44.  So it has obviously gotten more difficult to get an offer this year.  This is not by design, it’s simply a function of more applicants for a fixed number of available spaces.  We already run at the limits of our capacity in classrooms, labs, and teaching resources, so taking more students is not presently feasible.

This year the competition was significantly tougher for the spaces in Chemical,  Nanotechnology, Software, and Electrical and Computer Engineering.  Mechanical seemed to be a bit tougher too.  The other programs were at similar competition levels as last year.

It’s sort of shocking to have to turn down so many good applicants, many with grades in the 80’s and 90’s, and I’m sure they are shocked too.  But we don’t have much choice.  Too much popularity and not enough capacity.