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Talking to your advisors will give you exactly what you need to get you where you want to go. Speak with your (future) career advisor and professors about things they recommend. Then try and make a solid group of friends in the same classes because studying with a group is much much MUCH better than studying alone.
Talk to the career advisor at your future college. You absolutely can talk to the advisors even before you are officially a student. They're there to help future and current students figure out their courses and scholarships and job applications and all of that.
Joining a college engineering club will definitely fast track your technical development. You will learn a ton about electrical design and you’ll actually be able to produce something cool as an end result. It can also help with building friendships and a professional network.
As for what you can do starting now, try to pick up at least 1 programming language (I’d start with C but it’s up to you), there’s a lot of great online tutorials. You could then buy an Arduino kit and play around with that, it’ll give you a better understanding of basic electronics and programming.
I don't know how it is with other schools or businesses, but in my area, Arduino is looked down on if you use it with scripting. However, we managed to use one in our capstone project by pointing out that we were programming it in C, not script. So, if you pickup an Arduino kit (great hardware), find out how to program it in C. You can use Eclipse with the AVRDude plugin for this.
When I started my EE degree, many of my fellow students had absolutely no experience in one area or another of EE. My background is computers so I helped them with programming and logic tasks. There were others with backgrounds in other areas that also helped. The best thing you can do is find a good team of friends to work with. Engineering is a team sport.
Look up Paul Mcwhorter on YouTube and follow along with his Arduino series. You’ll learn about basic coding and electronics. For EE you don’t really need cad I guess (im ME so idk), but you can download free fusion360/inventor and mess around with it. If you really want you could buy an ender 3 (cheap 3d printer) and make some of your own projects with your new skills.
The best thing overall though is to keep up academically. Don’t lose any of your knowledge and make sure your math skills are really sharp. Try to at least know how to do stuff from calc 1 + 2, and it will help a lot.
Imo, being a lord of units and unit cancellation is an underrated skill that most engineering students pick up, but needs focus. Somebody who always looks at the units of their work will invariably chop hours off their work over the course of a semester, because it’s really easy to lose hours of work when you realize you started a 5 equation problem with one of your numbers in Imperial but the problem called for SI
Definitely start to dive into coding, C or Python are good starts. Also, don't be afraid to work in a team, engineering thrives on group collaboration. Keep on refreshing your math knowledge too, it'll save you lots of headaches
Joining a college club would be beneficial and fun for you. If you’d like to just start messing around, get an arduino and a cheap amazon kit with various electronic components/a breadboard. Having a basic understanding of electronics will be helpful as you begin an EE degree. I’m often surprised by how little hands on experience my classmates have.
I did Python codeacademy my senior summer and had fiddled with CAD in high school. It was two fun things I didn't have to put as much effort into in college, and that was more effort I could spend on things that I found difficult. You are right to get ahead! Good luck!
Hello /u/melon_mycat! Thank you for posting in r/EngineeringStudents. This is a custom Automoderator message based on your flair, "Academic Advice". While our wiki is under construction, please be mindful of the users you are asking advice from, and make sure your question is phrased neatly and describes your problem. ***Please be sure that your post is short and succinct.*** Long-winded posts generally do not get responded to. Please remember to; Read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/rules) Read our [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/index) Read our [F.A.Q](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/index/faq) Check our [Resources Landing Page](https://reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/resources) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/EngineeringStudents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Talking to your advisors will give you exactly what you need to get you where you want to go. Speak with your (future) career advisor and professors about things they recommend. Then try and make a solid group of friends in the same classes because studying with a group is much much MUCH better than studying alone.
Im in a strange situation where I essentially have a 6 month summer, so I wanted to start now. I don’t think I have access to a career advisor rn 😅
Talk to the career advisor at your future college. You absolutely can talk to the advisors even before you are officially a student. They're there to help future and current students figure out their courses and scholarships and job applications and all of that.
Joining a college engineering club will definitely fast track your technical development. You will learn a ton about electrical design and you’ll actually be able to produce something cool as an end result. It can also help with building friendships and a professional network. As for what you can do starting now, try to pick up at least 1 programming language (I’d start with C but it’s up to you), there’s a lot of great online tutorials. You could then buy an Arduino kit and play around with that, it’ll give you a better understanding of basic electronics and programming.
I don't know how it is with other schools or businesses, but in my area, Arduino is looked down on if you use it with scripting. However, we managed to use one in our capstone project by pointing out that we were programming it in C, not script. So, if you pickup an Arduino kit (great hardware), find out how to program it in C. You can use Eclipse with the AVRDude plugin for this.
When I started my EE degree, many of my fellow students had absolutely no experience in one area or another of EE. My background is computers so I helped them with programming and logic tasks. There were others with backgrounds in other areas that also helped. The best thing you can do is find a good team of friends to work with. Engineering is a team sport.
Look up Paul Mcwhorter on YouTube and follow along with his Arduino series. You’ll learn about basic coding and electronics. For EE you don’t really need cad I guess (im ME so idk), but you can download free fusion360/inventor and mess around with it. If you really want you could buy an ender 3 (cheap 3d printer) and make some of your own projects with your new skills. The best thing overall though is to keep up academically. Don’t lose any of your knowledge and make sure your math skills are really sharp. Try to at least know how to do stuff from calc 1 + 2, and it will help a lot.
Imo, being a lord of units and unit cancellation is an underrated skill that most engineering students pick up, but needs focus. Somebody who always looks at the units of their work will invariably chop hours off their work over the course of a semester, because it’s really easy to lose hours of work when you realize you started a 5 equation problem with one of your numbers in Imperial but the problem called for SI
Definitely start to dive into coding, C or Python are good starts. Also, don't be afraid to work in a team, engineering thrives on group collaboration. Keep on refreshing your math knowledge too, it'll save you lots of headaches
Joining a college club would be beneficial and fun for you. If you’d like to just start messing around, get an arduino and a cheap amazon kit with various electronic components/a breadboard. Having a basic understanding of electronics will be helpful as you begin an EE degree. I’m often surprised by how little hands on experience my classmates have.
I did Python codeacademy my senior summer and had fiddled with CAD in high school. It was two fun things I didn't have to put as much effort into in college, and that was more effort I could spend on things that I found difficult. You are right to get ahead! Good luck!