Ub As A 2nd Year Engineering Major example essay topic

PART I: CAREER CHOICE An engineer is someone who sees something in the world and sets out to make it better. I'm an engineer and always have been, but I would enjoy getting paid for it. I would like to be a Manufacturing Engineer. Manufacturing Engineers are in charge of making things in a plant.

They decide the best and most efficient ways to get the job done. As businesses try to make products better and at less cost, it turns to manufacturing engineers to find out how. Manufacturing engineers work with all aspects of manufacturing from production control to materials handling to automation. The assembly line is the domain of the manufacturing engineer. This job is for me because it involves a lot of thinking and hands-on problem solving which I would enjoy more than desk work. Job openings for engineering are endless, but at the same time the best jobs are almost impossible to get.

Everyone joining the workforce wants the big money and since most engineering graduates paid a lot of money for school they expect to be treated to a 6 figure starting wage. Many of the plants in western New York have closed down but there are plenty of jobs here in Buffalo to make finding one pretty easy. Detroit has a lot of auto manufacturing plants and steel plants. The demand for a good manufacturing engineer to keep the plants moving in the right direction is very high there as in most port cities around the world. New York City is also looking for a lot of manufacturing engineers work with all aspects of manufacturing from production control to materials handling to automation. The assembly line is the domain of the manufacturing engineers.

Conditions in a factory are hazardous at times but being an engineer the hard hats would be only precautionary. For the most part they like to keep the brains of the operation out of harms way as much as possible. Depending on the plant and what the engineer is doing that day depend on whether his job is hazardous. Some manufacturing engineers spend most of their time behind a desk but that isn't for me. I would want to be right on the floor so as to see just how everything is going and what can be done to improve production safety, time management, waste management, and worker fatigue. Engineering is not a career to enter in hopes of becoming famous, rich maybe, but never famous.

Some people did get famous for engineering though and other were famous and just happened to be engineers before hitting it big. Jimmy Carter our 39th president was a student or reactor engineering and nuclear physics. Leonardo Da Vinci was known for his art but what engineers truly appreciate him for were his inventions. He anticipated many inventions far before they were humanly possible, such as the helicopter.

He was also a master of optics and hydraulics. Yasser Arafat, Neil Alden Armstrong, Thomas Edison, Lillian Gilbreth, Herbie Hancock, Alfred Hitchcock Herbert Hoover, Tom Landry, Boris Yeltsin, and Montel Williams were all people known for things other than engineering. I am currently taking a series of courses titled project lead the way which is basically 5 1/2 courses designed to educate future engineers and give them a feel for what's in store for them. This is a very worthwhile series of classes and colleges look at it as above and beyond their prerequisite standards for engineering school. Engineers, as I said in the beginning are just people looking to change something. I truly believe than they are instilled with this future from a young age.

Ever since a child destroys their first radio, or takes apart the toaster just to see what makes it work they are destined to follow a career of figuring out how "stuff" works. Pay for manufacturing engineer's ranges greatly due to the great diversity in job criteria. Out of college a first year manufacturing engineer can make anywhere from $50,000 to $85,000 with a four year degree. A Manufacturing engineer with a masters starts at around $100,000, and one with his doctorate can make upwards of $150,000. Plant management engineers can make up to millions a year if they are working in a large plant. Benefits for engineers of any genre are endless and plentiful.

Paid vacations, medical insurance, dental plans, 401 k's, stock options, great unions, huge bonuses, demo testing of top of the line products, free products, and just the satisfaction of basically keeping a plant running smoothly are some of the many perks of being a college graduate in a factory full of workers with no more than a high school degree. One of the biggest perks is that if you save a company say $1,000,000 you will get a small chunk of that at the end of the year, probably 10%. Engineers retire at around 55 with large pensions and usually leave just as the stress of having an entire company rest on their shoulders starts to get to them. Where most people complain that business is expanding to other countries manufacturing engineers can rest assured that they will be need at the homeland facilities as well as those globally which means a lot of traveling and a lot of airline food. PART II: COLLEGE OF CHOICE Schooling for manufacturing engineering is long and grueling. Most manufacturing engineering go for their masters in order to work in management positions.

Without a master's degree, companies won't put you in any sort of power position and you won't make as much money ads you deserve. College courses for all engineering start of with the same 4 years of college. These for years include one which is the basic classes all students leads to graduate college. By the second year of college though the engineering students get heavily engrossed in the field with which they will graduate. For the most part engineering classes are the same till the 4th or 5th year where students start to specialize in a certain aspect of engineering as in my case, the manufacturing aspect of engineering. The University at Buffalo is a great school for engineering.

It offers affordable tuition's and has an excellent reputation for its engineering program. Labs are a big part of engineering because most of engineering is hands on in the field work. Most engineering programs at UB will focus on not only the theory but the application of that theory in real life situations. Most schools do not have the resources that a large school like UB has and most cannot afford certain hands-on labs that UB takes for granted.

The Majority of the 2001 entering class at UB had over a 1000 on their SATs. Some scored lower and were still accepted on the basis of other criteria. As for ACTs, students averaged around a 24 or better. Almost all UB students graduated in the top half of there graduating class. Undergraduate enrollments at UB total almost 18,000 students. This categorizes UB as a large school.

Another 8,000 students are graduate students. I, myself am most interested in UB because it fulfilled all my criteria for choosing a college. I chose UB for its quality engineering programs, its costs, it's location near my hometown. Also I chose UB because I have heard that it is a fun campus to live or commute to.

I know people there already and would still be close enough to my friends still home while in college. I would like to live in a dorm because even though I want to stay closer to home I still want the freedom associated with college life. Another solution to the dorm dilemma would be to go from dorm to dorm sleeping on a different friend's floor every night and eating their cereal in the morning. This would be as cheap as living at home with the freedom of living on your own. PART : SELF REFLECTION Engineering schools are just a notch above other majors. They expect very bright students to join their ranks and are very quick to turn most applicants away.

They look for SAT scores above 1200 and Gas of 3.5 and higher. My GPA is about a 3.0 so I plan on breaking 1300 for My SATs. I know I can do this because I have gone very far in math class and I plan on studying very hard for the verbal section of the SATs. I also plan on bringing up my grades my senior year to show schools like UB that I am buckling down and am ready to enter college a straight A student. Whereas most students see Senior year as a slack off year I see it as an opportunity to show colleges that I'm serious and wiling to do what it takes to be successful in the field of engineering. I plan to take a full schedule of classes that will be very challenging and very necessary as a pre-engineering high school graduate.

Project lead the way will probably be the most important thing next year. I plan to finish the 5 part sequence and have it as my major. This will be very impressive to college boards because it shows that I already know what's ahead and I am willing to stick with it. I know that with my past school record Schools like RIT won't accept me so I set my sights where I can reach them with some work. UB will not accept me soley on grades so I will probable have to prove to them with a letter and many recommendations that I am a perfect candidate for their school of engineering. If UB doesn't accept me for their engineering school I plan on starting at a smaller college on a 2+3 engineering program where after two years I will transfer to UB as a 2nd year engineering major.

After my four years, I plan on staying in school part time till I get my doctorate in manufacturing engineering. I would like to finish up my doctorate at a school like RIT but would definitely be satisfied with a doctorate from UB.

Bibliography

University of buffalo. May 10, 2003.
SUNY. web College board. May, 9, 2003.
web Society of Manufacturing Engineers. May 10, 2003.
web Engineering is cool. November 2002.