Try Making Admission Decisions

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Here’s your chance to see what it’s like to make an admission decision.  The following is a hypothetical case, but not unusual.

Let’s say there is only one space left in our Fusion Engineering program (no, we don’t actually have a Fusion Engineering program; it’s hypothetical!).  The following 5 applicants are next in the ranked list of candidates, and have similar total scores (overall average + AIF score).  We will assume that they all come from typical high schools in Ontario and that there are no differences in adjustment factors, and no extenuating circumstances to consider.

Which one would you pick?  The one with the highest average, or highest AIF score (indicating exceptional extra-curriculars or awards)?  Or, one with better English, or physics?  Leave a comment with your choice and an explanation if you like.

Applicant:
A B C D E
English 89 72 79 70 86
Chem 94 83 78 71 87
Physics 78 82 79 88 81
Functions 81 79 81 88 72
Calculus 79 82 80 88 72
Other 81 83 96 90 95
Average 83.7 80.2 82.2 82.5 82.2
AIF Score 1 4.5 2.5 2.5 3
Total Score 84.7 84.7 84.7 85.0 85.2

Interesting Engineering Student Stories

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Haven’t had much time for writing posts lately, being busy with admissions, teaching an Air  Pollution Control course, and dealing with several research projects.  But here are a couple of interesting stories on what our students do outside of class, just to illustrate the diversity of opportunities.

Emily

Emily is a Civil Engineering student with a big interest in entrepreneurship.  She has started a company and won several prestigious awards.  Her company is not based on what you would call “classical” civil engineering, but nevertheless it involves project management, problem analysis, and creative solutions.  You can read more about her and the business here and here and here.  Emily has taken full advantage of the entrepreneurship and business training and experience opportunities at Waterloo, such as Enterprise Co-op, CBET, and VeloCity.  Her story is also interesting, because she came to Waterloo as one of those very few successful transfer admissions from engineering at “another university”, where she found the student culture was not a good fit (story here).  We are glad that she found a good fit and thrived at Waterloo.

Dominic

Dominic is a Mechanical Engineering student, and he has worked in the petrochemical industry during his 2012 workterms.  Specifically, he worked with Shell Canada, where his problem analysis efforts (Root Cause Analysis) resulted in $1 million savings per year for the company, and a Co-op Student of the Year award for him (see the story here).  It’s not clear from the story, but it is worthwhile to point out that he was only a second year student at the time.  Something to point out to those who claim that our junior students don’t know enough to be useful to companies.  We’ve always known that isn’t true, and Dominic is just one example. It also illustrates that if you want to work in the energy/petroleum industry, chemical engineering is not the only route.  There are lots of roles for other engineers too.

So, a couple of stories that I hope you find interesting and informative.  I always like learning about our students’ work experiences, and am frequently amazed by what they accomplish.

Management Engineering Design Projects 2013

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It’s that time of year when lots of examples of engineering design projects are available, and I recently found the ones from our Management Engineering program.  They have quite a nice project brochure, with projects ranging from optimal hydroelectric generation, to hospital emergency department staffing, and financial trading strategies.  A common theme among these projects is the use of mathematical tools for rational analysis and decision-making.

Electrical and Computer Design Projects 2013

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Continuing the topic of the previous post on Mechatronics fourth year design projects, here is a list of projects completed by the graduating students in our Electrical and Computer Engineering programs.  Again, these are the result of the group design experience that is required in all of our engineering programs.  These projects are organized by “themes”, such as power systems, music/entertainment, software, sensors, and transportation (to name a few).  The list is a nice example of the scope and breadth of things that students in the ECE programs get involved with.  I assume that some of these projects are in collaboration with companies, although they aren’t explicitly identified.

If you would like more details on some of those projects, there is a book of “Abstracts” that gives a brief description about each project.  Glancing through, I like the naval collision avoidance system (and the helicopter missle avoidance too), the “Watchdog” animal monitor for veterinarians, and the electrostatic speaker design project.  But there are lots of others that seem quite interesting too.

Mechatronics Design Projects 2013

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Next week our graduating Mechatronics Engineering students present the results of their fourth year design projects during their Mechatronics Engineering Design Symposium.  There is a project list with links  so that you can see examples of what senior-level students do as their “capstone” design experience.  It is quite an interesting list, covering a variety of application areas such as biomedical (laparoscopic surgery and assistive devices), environmental (water treatment), agricultural (egg washing and sorting), and a rather intriguing 3D chocolate printer.  There are quite a variety of other things too, well worth looking at if you’re wondering what mechatronics engineering students do at Waterloo.

All Waterloo Engineering programs have similar upper year group design projects, usually selected or initiated by the students, and sometimes in collaboration with company sponsors.  The purpose is to provide an opportunity for “real world” design experience, with project management and communications included.  In many cases these are projects that are inspired or initiated during co-op work terms, and sometimes they are ideas that the students hope to commercialize after graduation.  For high school students trying to decide on a future path, looking at some of these projects can be very helpful in understanding what engineers do, so I’ll try to find more examples in the coming weeks.

Learning to Code – II

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Here’s an interesting article from TalentEgg on a Toronto-based non-profit group that runs workshops “for women (and men) who want to learn computer programming and other technical skills in a social and collaborative way”.

Women Cracking The Code: Programming As A New Literacy | TalentEgg Career Incubator.

The group is called Ladies Learning Code, and it looks like quite a fun and interesting way to teach/learn. I can see this expanding to the Waterloo area, if it hasn’t already.

Learning to Code

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My colleague Dana pointed out this nice little video promoting the teaching and learning of coding (i.e. programming) What Most Schools Don’t Teach . While it seems to be aimed at elementary or secondary school, I can appreciate the sentiment.

It’s not that everyone should be an expert in C++ or whatever. The idea I like is that learning coding or programming develops problem solving and logic skills. the ability to think in terms of algorithms, with inputs, outputs, loops, counters, etc. Even if you never need to code again, that is a useful learning process. Continue reading →

Our New 3D Printer

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Our new 3D printer, a Fortus 360mc rapid prototyping machine, was officially launched today in our Engineering 5 building.  I haven’t actually seen it, but there is a website link that describes what it is and how it works.  I will certainly have a look in the near future, because I can already think of a few custom parts I could make for my research projects.  I just need to teach myself AutoCAD first.

Apparently the 3D printing costs are some of the cheapest available, and anyone can submit a job, whether faculty, staff, or students.  Some of the student design teams have already been using it, and I bet it will be popular with a lot of student research and design projects.

Why No Early Engineering Offer?

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Last week (week of February 19th 2013) we finished processing our first round of offers for applicants who are Ontario high school students.  Some of the processes were described in an earlier post, How to Get an Early Offer.  But to summarize, we took the data we had at that point and made enough offers to fill about 1/3 of our available spaces in each program.  These are applications where we have enough data and it’s clear that they are competitive, based on previous years experience.  We are relatively conservative and don’t give out too many offers, since we want to leave lots of spaces for a fair competition in the final round in May.  Some universities give out a lot more offers and earlier, but that’s simply a matter of less competition and so they have that flexibility. Continue reading →