Need advice for high school student considering engineering.

CalAlum
Sat, 26 May 2012 10:03:40 +0000

@perazziman,

My daughter studied both physics and engineering/computer science at MIT, and graduated in physics last year. None of us ever thought of the question you’re posing, but she did a number of activities that helped to confirm her interest in engineering and gave her a strong background coming in to MIT:


She sent away for “build your own” robotic kits, taught herself to solder, and built a couple of little robots that scooted around on our kitchen floor. This was about ten years ago, before we’d even heard of FIRST Robotics, and I assume you can still find such things. These kits weren’t made for children, but the models were scaled according to difficulty, and she started with the simplest. I think she was around 11 years old at the time, but any teenager with a latent engineering talent would be interested.
She took an electronics course in high school, freshman year. This was a vocational class, but what she liked was that they sometimes took things apart, from toasters to old laser printers
Joined the school’s FIRST robotics team
Joined the school’s mathematics competition team
Took Stanford EPGY’s summer quantum mechanics class (not mathematically challenging, really) the summer after sophomore year
Began independent research on projects and entered the regional science fair multiple times


7.Took physics C junior year


Took C and C++ programming courses after finishing up AP Computer science
Read every physics book she could get her hands on


She was lucky to be in a large public school that had a FIRST team and a math club. Not every student has access to the resources she used. But that doesn’t really matter, because of the things on this list, I think the training in mathematics and the hands-on experiences in research and programming were the most important. Based on anecdotal evidence from friends whose sons and daughters have struggled in engineering, I’d say it’s really important to have a solid foundation in mathematics and problem solving. The good news is that your son could self-study, and there are some wonderful free online resources through the American Mathematics Competitions website.

For any parents reading this and thinking, “Oh, okay, I’ll just tell my son or daughter to do these things,” it doesn’t work this way. Neither my husband nor I are scientists or engineers. My daughter is a talented artist (she ended up designing MIT’s admissions poster 4 years in a row), and frankly, when she was young, I thought she would follow that path. Everything on the above list is something she initiated. As in, “Hey, can I get this kit? I want to build this cool robot!”; and “Hey, I’ve joined the robotics team!” and “I’m going to be home late – I’m on the math team and we have a practice session!” etc. etc. If you have a son or daughter who is like this (and believe me, you will know if you do), then you can encourage and support. But I don’t think it works to try to force anyone in this direction.