Starting junior year of ME

boneh3ad
Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:48:16 +0000

Junior year IS the hardest, but it isn’t really because of how difficult the classes are, IMO. Really, I think it is because that is where you hit the meat of your degree program, so it takes a bit of getting used to, and some people stumble a little when they get hit with the heavier technical work load. I don’t know how each class is taught at UMKC (it differs from university to university) but Fluid Mechanics is one of the pillars of ME, and will probably be a very in-depth course, so it is one to pay extra attention to. Same thing goes for Materials. I am not sure what is taught in “thermal system design” or “instruments and measures” as UIUC did not have any classes called that, but I would imagine that they wouldn’t be as difficult as the two previously mentioned classes.

As for what to review, you probably don’t need to do much since there will probably be a review during the first week of class, but here are some guidelines.

Materials will draw heavily from your solid mechanics course (or whatever UMKC calls it). Fluids will draw about equally from thermodynamics and physics (mechanics). Just make sure you are decently comfortable with those and you are fine. Of course, that goes for basically any class in ME, so that probably isn’t much help.