Alumni Panel Tips Notes

  • Must learn programming going into other engineering fields

Facing Challenges in Class

  • Googling solutions on the internet helps overcome challenges in class

  • Keep trying to solve the problem at hand

  • Focus on your own path, and don’t be discouraged if others do something that’s better than your work or have higher accomplishments

    • There’s always going to be someone better than you!

  • Think through problems and flowchart your work + use google to help you solve problems

  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help from people who know how to do it

  • Don’t cut corners, have the mindset to go above and beyond

  • There isn’t only one correct answer/way to do something in CS

  • Just start coding, and troubleshoot problems as you go

Mechanical Engineering

  • UCSD: one hands-on project for freshman and senior year each

Project Based Learning in College

  • Communicate with team members daily

  • Study in groups and work with others, especially for the first couple years of college (and for general education courses

Coding

  • Knowing how to code helps you do math in the forms of vectors and matrices

  • Can code out what your object will look like for 3D printing

  • Problem solving knowledge besides coding also helps in other classes

  • Jupyter notebooks are being used for technical papers for interactive work

  • Stats major: some projects are done in R

  • Matlab is used in many fields, as well as CS

How to Get a Job or Internship as a College Student

  • Show up to office hours

  • Ask teachers questions

  • Stand out to your teacher and set yourself apart from other students

  • Many companies look for interns starting in September when the school year starts

  • Have a resume ready by early September of the year before when you want to work/intern

  • Create a LinkedIn profile

  • Build a network of people you know to reach out to get job/internship opportunities

    • Parents, friend’s parents, professors, engineers you know

  • Getting a referral from someone who works at the company is a good idea

UCSD

  • Autonomous car projects: go-kart and indy500 autonomous cars

    • Triton AI

  • Can ask professor if there’s any space in the lab for you to intern

  • Python scripting, web development, IT tools, how Linux works: all helps in college

    • Colin used these skills at his internship at Northrup Grumman: technical diagrams, website for flight data that takes information from the test database, scripting

Working on Personal Projects

  • Many companies look for personal projects that you’ve done or made

    • Help set you apart from other applicants to college/jobs/internships

  • Visual projects are great - ex. Algorithm visualizers

  • Can even make something fun; doesn’t have to be very life changing

  • Sorting algorithms, travelling salesman problem, data visualization

  • Can make scripts to make work on Mechanical Engineering projects easier

    • Data manipulation

  • Computation Aided Manufacturing

    • Editing G-code + manipulating commands

  • Material simulations

    • Can help you convert hand functions to actual functions –> set up a server –> run the data