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I was heavily involved in solar car racing during college, so much so that my grades suffered because of it. But for the most part that didn't matter. Most recr
by onesun 9y ago
I was heavily involved in solar car racing during college, so much so that my grades suffered because of it. But for the most part that didn't matter. Most recruiters I spoke to ended up being much more interested in the stories I could tell about all the challenges we had as a team and the novel solutions we invented to overcome them. I knew that if I talked to a recruiter and they only focused on my GPA, then that was a good sign I didn't want to work there. After my first job, GPA became irrelevant. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing. Fifteen years later, I still count my teammates as some of my best friends.
- jacquesm 9y agoWhich team was yours? I've been following the solar races quite intently, some of the work is amazing.
- onesun 9y agoI raced Mizzou's SunTiger 4 in 2001, then became Mechanical lead and Project Co-manager for SunTiger 5 in 2003. Mizzou's solar car team changed to a hydrogen car team for the eco-marathon competition after ASC 2005
- jacquesm 9y agoCool I found a whole bunch of pictures: http://mizzou.orgsync.com/org/mizzouecoracing/Media_Press http://mizzou.orgsync.com/org/mizzouecoracing/Media_Press
- isatty 9y agoI'm heavily involved in one of the AUVSI's autonomous vehicle competitions where recruiters from SpaceX etc show up frequently. I'm a senior now and my grades have suffered as well. I wouldn't say it was purely because of the competition - but I've a similar experience to yours where recruiters love stories from the competition and about how we managed to achieve our goals. I've learnt a LOT of stuff that I wouldn't have managed to in class. Similar to you, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing.
- eloycoto 9y agoHow envy I am! I'm working mentoring some students to get this projects. Local companies don't see any value on this, you can't imagine how frustrated I am sometimes.
- colechristensen 9y agoWhat do they do and how could they be out-competed?
- humanrebar 9y agoThis is partly why we should be more open to non traditional educations. I don't see why someone needs an entire four year degree to be able to contribute to these kinds of engineering problems. There are certainly "university level" subjects that need to be covered, but that could easily be taken as needed. Or in a more condensed form.
- colechristensen 9y agoI think you are quite wrong, at least in the narrow sense covered by SAE competition engineers (and areospace engineers). Recruiters look at grades and activities. If all you have to show for yourself are perfect grades, it's entirely possible (and sometimes way too likely) that the only thing you're good at is getting good grades. Add in experience that you can prove yourself by talking about and suddenly grades matter a lot less – you still have to pass your classes and understand the material, but the experiences prove your competence in combination with the grade. Not everyone developing a product has to be an engineer, so if you want a lot more technicians, fine. But you still need a good portion of engineers with the full depth of knowledge. People who program don't necessarily understand this, because a lot of programming work is technician work that you can teach yourself. Not that it's impossible, but very few people self-teach partial differential equations, and it's not something you can just pick up via osmosis.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoPerhaps software engineering needs more engineering and less "stack-overflow technicians". Yet, the need to gain extensive knowledge does not require the traditional university-then-work model.
- colechristensen 9y agoI could see 3-year degrees, but that's it. Having gone through an engineering program, the first two years were prerequisites which were entirely required before anything useful was learned starting in year three. And it wasn't just extensive knowledge gained, that was the least important part. It was learning how to think. There was quite a lot of mindset change. It just isn't feasible for many kinds of engineering to babysit high schoolers for 5 years before they become useful. (undergrad graduates aren't useful when they start either).
- jedc 9y agoDitto; & well-said. A number of friends and colleagues from my solar car days (at the University of Michigan) are now working at SpaceX, Scaled Composites, etc.
- roamingryan 9y agoSimilar story here. I didn't completely tank my GPA due to solar racing (Rose-Hulman, ASC2001) but it certainly didn't do it any favors. None of that mattered though as the practical engineering skills I gained far outshined anything academic on my resume.
- onesun 9y agoHa! I think I have a Rose rain jacket from ASC 2001. Was that the last year Rose competed? I forget. I raced Mizzou's SunTiger 4 in 2001, then became Mechanical lead and Project Co-manager for SunTiger 5 in 2003.
- seal6105 9y agoBS Mechanical Engineering here from big name school. I wish someone explained this to me in college. I realized my deficiency one day senior year when I let my car overheat and had no idea what to do. I left engineering as a result and came back to it 10 years later.
- onesun 9y agoSome of my classmates in college all went to a city a couple of hours away for a weekend, in a not so new car, and the car quit them about half way there. Turns out a car full of "mechanical engineers" drove an hour on the interstate with the car in 3rd gear because the gear selector didn't quite make it to D. Cooked the engine and I think they ended up totaling the car. They were top students too. That definitely reaffirmed my belief that GPA is a poor indicator of a quality engineer.
- sslayer 9y agoI think your deprecating comment should be directed at the engineer who designed the shifter.
- onesun 9y agoBut.... an hour with the car at redline? They joked about it for months afterward. I think even they wouldn't have placed the blame on the aging shifter.
- gaius 9y agoThere's an episode of the Big Bang Theory where all the fancy scientists mock the internal combustion engine for being primitive technology... But when their car breaks down, Penny has to come and help them out :-)