APESMA is great when you a student but yeah I don't see a use for them now as an engineer. My sister is an accountant who got the CPA and had to do exams to gain accreditation, where as with CP Eng you just do reports. Apparently its recognised in all english speaking nations. So if you want to work outside of Australia its handy.
LOL those cadetships are ridiculous, I honestly cannot believe anyone signs up for them. 10 years at uni part time while working part time followed by four or so years signed to the company where they can pay you whatever they like above minimum wage, what a joke. Furthermore you do your university study through uniSA, which is a horrible university when it comes to engineering, i would not let my dog study engineering there. The major problems with these cadetships is that they let almost anyone into them after sitting a simple, strait forward test. If I am ever in the position to hire engineering graduates, I can assure you I will not hire somone who has completed their degree at uniSA, because it is not worth the paper it is written on. As for books, I spend at most $400 a semester on books if I buy every single book on my book list and i get HECS for my uni fees, I will not even notice im paying these off. If you add up both cases, you are getting royally screwed and would be much better off to get your degree done in four years and go and work wherever you want and not where you are told, that is if you could have got into a decent university with a minimum entrance score of over 80.00
I'm doing a cadetship.. nothing like that though! Mine's just 1 day a week while I finish final year full time (not at unisa), and when I graduate I'm guaranteed a full time job there. The pay is pretty damn good for an undergrad too Don't bag out unisa too much, just because they had a low TER to get into doesn't mean you don't come out with a quality degree.
the TER has nothing to do with it, the quality of the courses you undertake is what determines the quality of the degree. The quality of the uniSAs engineering degrees is the problem, particularly in the civil/mechanical fields. A few engineers in senior positions have commented that the quality of uniSA engineering graduates are far below that of the Group of Eight University's and other university's throughout Australia and this is what I am basing this on. At the end of the day everyone would like to maximize their pay packet, but you should not choose a degree based on the wage you will earn at the end of it, you should choose a degree that you will enjoy, especially when it comes to engineering. As for working in mines for the big cash, mining life is very different to that of normal city life if you are living on site and alot of people do not cope, I know I am very comfortable living in mining towns as I have spent to majority of my life living in mining towns with my father who has worked in the mine my entire life and completed a large amount of schooling in these towns in less than perfect school. Working on any mining lease also requires you to be drug and alchol free, and trust me, you will be randomly tested and if you are found to have a BAC of over 0.000 or any drugs in your system you will be dismissed and trust me, word travels fast amongst various mine and you will likely have trouble finding another job for a while. If you are looking at chemical engineering there are a few things you need to ask your self like what specialisation you would like to do and do you have any medical conditions such as asthma, which will greatly restrict the conditions you are working in.
Ah well im just going by the amount of unisa educated engineers I seem to be working with, who all seem to really know their stuff Granted they're all electrical/electronic engineers though.
Hey Dufus, the external cadetships really arnt as bad as you think. Ive been on two cadetships so far, I just continued studying as I changed jobs. The beauty of doing it this way is that you get ON SITE experience while you work, by the time you've done your degree your alreay on the way to the top in your organization and have 6 years of experience under your belt. Sure it can be hard to find motivation to study at times but for some its really ideal. Also you will find that MOST employers will give study leave and will also reimburse the money you spend on course fee's, so its FREE aslong as you PASS.
It could, will depend on where you want to work, best to check with a qualified chem engineer on this though.
Hey mate, just finished my Elec eng degree last year, and starting my grad job next week. Is it really the case where the hardest part is doing uni, not the actual job itself?
Uni is really just a test of your capacity to learn. If you can learn at uni and pass, you should be able to learn what you need at work. As a graduate, you start at the bottom. No one cares what degree you've done or what you scored. What counts is experience. I went to Flinders Uni in Adelaide and in 3rd year for the entire second semester I was on my placement. On that 20 week placement I realised that its the experience that counts. Only a fraction of what you learn at uni is ever used and you learn the rest at work. In the end I'm working at the same place I did my placement. I'm not getting the highest wage, I'm not always in an airconditioned office but I love what I do. I get to design equipment, commission it and make it do whats its designed to do. And I'm learning so much valuable stuff along the way. So bottom line. Next week don't go in like you own the place. You're at the bottom so you need to work your way up all over again!
Depending on what path you take, you do use a fair bit. Probably more from 3rd and 4th year subjects. For instance, I wish I paid a lot more attention in my Mining Rock Mechanics subjects at uni, it would have saved me a fair bit of relearning later on. Hehe, aint that the truth. I have just reached the stage where my job title has changed to senior engineer, and I have seen plenty of grads come in thinking they are king ****, only to fall splendidly on their faces within 6 months. Working in the mining industry sorts everyone out quick smart, especially smartass grads as all the mining engineering grads usually have to spend a year on crew. But as you said, keep your head down and your mouth shut for the first few years and it will be fine.
uni is hard because you have to do the work yourself, at your own pace. there is no one looking over your shoulder. i've got an eng. degree and an MBA, but trust me the eng. degree is much harder. arts-based degrees, within reason, you can write any old fluffy stuff mostly and your point of view will be accepted to varying degrees and marked accordingly. but in engineering, unless you can sit down and sweat out how to do differential equations and the various other stuff you need to learn, you will fail. there is no BS-ing your way through that stuff - you can either do it or you can't and it takes hard work to learn it.
Hey mate, I'm working at a company called Maunsell. Cheers mate for the advice, got no problems starting from the bottom and working my way up, have had to do it a couple of times in various part time jobs over the years. Lol, exactly what I don't wanna be doing. The old mans works in the construction industry and said the exact same thing. Thanks for the advice, seems I need to keep my head down, arse up, mouth shut and go from there. Amen to that brother!!
Anyone know of any PT jobs that uni students can get relative to engineering? And no, im not interested in selling my life away to a cadetship.
Huh, wait untill you have done more than 3 weeks of engineering before you decide you can work part time and juggle your work load. Dont think summer school is full time anyway?
how do you figure the next step is mine manager?, I would say maintenance manager, electrical engineering bears little resemblance to mine management per se. For that (DPI mine manager) you will need some of the following: A DIPLOMA of Surface Coal Mine Management OR a Diploma of Extractive Industries OR A Mine Engineering Degree / Graduate Diploma / Masters etc, something to do with mineral engineering directly from uni, civil wont cut it. OR None of the above but you must occupy a position above overseer for 2 years in a MINING discipline, a maintenance superintendent role wont cut the mustard. After that you will need to take the DPI exam for a certificate of competency as a mine manager (manager of mine engineering), if your background is electrical then it will be interesting. I am guessing you have looked at the application rules that state you will need PRACTICAL experience in open cut mining / underground mining, 3 years for no degree, 1 year with degree. After passing the written examination, you will then be required to attend an ORAL examination, I just had one for my DPI Cert of Competence as an Open Cut Examiner, to call it hard and pressure cooker is an understatement. Best of luck with it mate, BTW, don't be tempted to stretch the truth with the DPI, on the forms or in any other manner, read the CMHSA 2002 and CMHSR 2006 and you'll get what I mean :yeah: (you'd also be hard pressed to find a Mine Manager who will lie on these app forms anyway, as they can lose their ticket) Obtaining a seat in the exam through deception of your experience or qualifications will get you in deep ****, not overly deep but rap across knuckles and maybe a disqualification from sitting for a while. If you then pass said exams and obtain ticket but are later found to have lied about ANY element of your experience / qualifications, meaning you were ineligible to sit, the DPI will render the qualifications void (certificates of competency are numbered, a lost one costs money to replace) and may charge you under the CMHSA 2002 with an offense against the Act, highest penalty, prison (not likely), mid range penalty, monetary fine and tickets voided (potentially) or at the very least, tickets voided, you blacklisted and banned from obtaining them at any point (HIGHLY LIKELY). All this is better than forging a ticket though, that just gets you in a world of hurt, there is even a section in the CMHSA about that, it attracts penalty units for you (think $$$$$$$$$$$) and the mine that allowed you to perform as a "competent person in a function required by the regulation" gets a bigger amount of penalty units. EDIT: If you don't know what the CMHSR and CMHSA are yet, don't stress, but you'll be studying them for about 4 hours per day leading into the exams, along with OHSA 2000, OHSR 2001, EA 2003, ER 2005.
Exactly what dufus said. I only did part time work in my final year because I had two full days off in second semester cos I overloaded my first semester. In hindsight I should have used those days to work on my honours project but I don't regret it. I think I did about 12 weeks but I worked on tools development which was basically Visual Basic programming with excel. Basically I made calculation programs for the full time engineers to use and verify. I didn't do much project work but it was good to be in that support role. But for your first two years it will be very difficult to get an engineering related part time job. I know that some unis require you to do about 12 full weeks of work in your spare time ie summer, so you may want to check that
