For UTFR, it was just walking into the environment at the right time. There wasn’t anyone to take over the Aerodynamics section and there was a lack of knowledge transfer at the time; UTFR at the time was just a lot of Mechanical Engineering students, and they don’t get a course about fluids or CFD until third year. Therefore, walking in with some knowledge of aerodynamics and especially CFD, I was able to present my skills and explain what I wanted to do with the Aerodynamics section, and where I could help out. From there, I was luckily given the position of Aerodynamics lead, and I worked very hard to build up the section. I went back to research again the next summer.

“By then, I had all this experience with UTFR, which was very practical hands-on work; it was the actual process of going through engineering design that companies like to see. Backing it up with my knowledge and research, I think that’s what I was able to use to sell myself to these companies that were looking to hire people.”

The one downside about aerodynamics is that it’s a very complicated field and oftentimes employers, even for interns, will want master’s or PhD students, just because they have more knowledge in the field and don’t have to be taught as much. For a lot of companies, I felt like I was fighting to prove that I could do the same work as a master’s student, which was not always the case at the time.

Just play to your strengths. Everyone has something on their resume that people will find interesting.

“I feel like EngScis are just so talented, smart, and interesting, too, that companies will want to hire them. It’s all about highlighting the areas you think that companies should see, as opposed to thinking that you’re unqualified for the job because you don’t have a certain experience.”

Also, you need to remember that your GPA really isn’t everything. My GPA is definitely on the lower end of the spectrum for EngSci Aerospace Engineering majors. I have many friends that have amazing GPAs, but I feel like it’s my practical experiences outside of the classroom that positively pushed me over the edge for these companies. Frankly, I’ve interviewed for some top companies who have not asked for my GPA.

I’ve always loved doing extracurriculars. In high school, I loaded up my schedule, but in university, I got the amazing advice to start out by joining just one design team and one club, and seeing where that takes me. I recommend students to join extracurriculars and find what they’re passionate about in their first and second years, so you can also determine what you want to do in your third and fourth years.

I think joining a design team is absolutely critical for EngScis, because it allows you to get a lot of practical experience and hands-on work. Design teams push you through the design cycle, including the building, testing, and competing, just like the engineering design process you will learn in Praxis. As I stated earlier, companies love to see that we’re balancing all of that.

I’m probably not the best person to ask about that, because for me my design team takes over my life – but I enjoy it that way! I know it’s hard to let go of grades, so I always tell people to almost, like, introduce your design team into your life little by little, and then you see how much more you can handle. You’re not immediately diving right into the deep end. Instead, you’re just trying to find where your balance point is. For a lot of people, including myself, it’s easy to get sucked into design teams and the hustle culture of it all. There does need to be some balance, and I’ve had to dial it back sometimes.

Learn how competitions work, and how teams operate. If you stick with a design team, you’ll be going back the next year in a higher position, as someone more responsible for different aspects of the vehicle and moving the team through competition. Also, use design teams and competitions as networking events. You might get money for your team or even a job for yourself; I got my summer internship through networking with a design judge at competition. Even if there aren’t many sponsors, go to talk with other teams about things like your subdivision and interests, When I went to my first competition, I went around and talked with people from other universities about aerodynamics. Competitions are such a unique experience that you only get from being on and committing to a design team. Bond with your team, get your name known, and make contacts with them. At the end of the day, don’t stress about those aspects – just enjoy the overall experience itself. I encourage every single one of my recruits to go to competition and experience it all.

One of the reasons why I chose EngSci was because it exposes you to many concepts. Coming here, I had no idea what I wanted to do in the future, so it was really nice that I got experience in different courses and disciplines through the curriculum. Also, I just like to try out different things through design teams and other activities when identifying my interests. That’s one of the good things about the program and the variety of opportunities that we have: I see something I like and engage with it, and then see how it goes.

Through my experiences with different teams, it’s really cool to hear about the experiences of the people I get to meet, especially those pursuing completely different paths. I think I’ve learned a lot from them, even though what they’re doing is completely different from what I’m doing. I think that’s also a benefit about trying different things.

Personal projects push you to do something you can think of yourself, while learning a lot in the process. They also help build your confidence! Hackathons and team-based projects are even better because you work collaboratively and make friends. These experiences add something on top of your academics and let you see what you can do with what you learn in courses. I gained my project experiences from hackathons and design teams, and that’s how I learned these skills.

I think the main thing is time management. It’s important to set expectations while acknowledging that you can’t always work on school.

You need to set aside time to do something else that you are interested in. Even if you think you’re not dedicating enough time to your academics, doing things you’re interested in can motivate you to work more efficiently. Don’t discard your interests and hobbies – keep them in mind when you talk to other people, look for resources online, and find specific opportunities that interest you.

I believe that once you set your mind to do something, you’ll find time to do it, and that’s how I did some of these projects. My main advice is to try out different things. A lot of opportunities come from these activities rather than just studying well.

I found it on the EngSci Info Hub on Quercus, which is a great resource, especially when you don’t know where to find opportunities. They do a good job of listing many opportunities and scholarships. I also applied for other job opportunities through the Engineering Career Centre portal. I think those two resources are enough to land a job. Talking to other people and attending activities from different clubs that focus on different fields also give you a good idea of where to start.

My favourite endeavor was my first hackathon experience because I had never done any hackathons before, even in high school. I was really surprised at how productive we were in 24 hours. It was an eye-opening experience, and it comes from trying out different things and figuring out your strengths and what you want to improve on.

My favorite course was linear algebra, MAT185. I liked writing proofs because it’s a very rigorous and logical process. It makes sense to me because everything is based on theorems and axioms. Another course I enjoyed in the second year was Praxis III. We got to form our own teams and build something. In the end, we had something to present to everybody, and it was really cool to see what we accomplished as second year students. We worked on garbage sorting in Bangladesh. We built a little robot that would lift garbage to an ergonomic height and used computer vision to identify recyclable materials, assisting workers with sorting. It was a cool prototype. The EngSci curriculum exposes you to many things which remain in your mind, [so that if you face a similar topic in the future] you know what to look for. This helps a lot when doing hands-on work instead of just learning the theoretical frameworks.

[To the incoming class], I think you’ve made a great choice coming to EngSci, not only because of the excellence of the courses and opportunities, but also the community here. Because everybody has the same schedule for the first two years, you really get to know your classmates and have a tightly knit group. And because EngSci is as hard as it is, everybody helps each other out and I think this is something that’s unique to our program. I think you’ll enjoy your time here, and good luck!

In high school I was in [the International Baccalaureate (IB) program], and FIRST Robotics was my primary extracurricular. I did a few other extracurriculars, like Computer Science Club and whatnot, but IB and Robotics were my primary commitments.

EngSci leaves a bunch of my options open; it was the best program that I got accepted into, and it was where I wanted to go. At U of T, I found first semester to be pretty ok and quite enjoyable, since I was already used to a very high workload in high school. During second semester, I couldn’t ride off my previous knowledge as much, and had to learn a bit more, but it was still very doable and manageable. I found MAT185 (Linear Algebra) to be especially challenging.

During first semester, I never worked on any weekends whatsoever, except when building the bridge for CIV102 (Structures and Materials). In second semester, I tracked how much work I did down to the hour; on average, I would spend a bit more than 40 – 55 hours per week on school, which included going to lectures. I thought that it was fully manageable, and similar to a full-time job.

I want to be more involved in Skule extracurriculars. Because I was so involved in high school, I took a back seat in first year to give myself a break. During peak season, I would clock 40 hours per week in robotics, on top of IB. I did not give myself those breaks back then and I wanted one after that. But I want to get more involved next year; maybe I will join University of Toronto Formula Racing Team (UTFR) or a different part of UTAT. I learn a lot in class, but I have to do the extracurriculars to further apply my engineering knowledge.

I noticed that in second semester, I was giving myself too much time off, and because it wasn’t as easy as first semester, my grades started to drop a little bit. The whole hard rule of not working on weekends I’ll make lighter next year because at a certain point, you realize that if you work way too much in one day, your efficiency starts to drop, and then there’s diminishing returns.

“Quit doubting yourself! Have confidence in yourself; other people have done it; you can do it too. One’s confidence is proportional to their actual success in a way.”

When you’re surrounded by other people who can do it, you start thinking that you can do it too. I entered EngSci very doubtful, because people from my high school would come back and like say that “U of T Engineering was so hard.” I’m just trying to say that it’s not that bad; if you can manage your time, you can handle EngSci. Most of us do make it through in this program, and almost everybody passes. If you put in the work, you’ll get an outcome, and you can still have a life if you invest just a little bit of effort.

The primary thing I can think of is going on a 16-person road trip on a Monday to see the eclipse from 5 AM to 11 PM. As long as you can find your people, you’ll make amazing memories. Like in all honesty, in my 19 years of existence I would say that this has been the best year of my life. Basically, please take care of yourself; take care of your body, mental health, and hygiene. Then, your grades will be taken care of just like that.

I made an extremely last-minute decision to come to EngSci. I met a family friend who did EngSci Biomedical Engineering, and she told me that she loved it, which basically converted me to this trajectory, which I think was for the best. At the time, I was super set on doing Biomedical Engineering, and I had never coded before. Coming into first year, I was really intimidated by the fact that I would be coding, and that a lot of other people had done it before. But ESC180 was a really good introduction to coding for me, and then I just got hooked. I also really liked the physics courses in second year, and almost went into Engineering Physics (I was extremely torn between, like, six of the EngSci majors) but I picked ECE since I could code and do physics. ECE kept my options as broad as I could have kept them, which is such a classic EngSci thing, but I just really liked that I could focus on either the electrical side or the computer side, and within the computer side focus on hardware or software.

Biomed was still among the six options that I was considering. However, in Engineering Physics or Biomed, you’re learning about something that already exists and already works, such as physical systems or the body. In ECE, I really like how you have the ability to create things if you’re coding something and consider more design questions. Part of it is memorizing whatever standards there are, but humans created computers and we know how they work; it’s now a matter of what we can do with them.

The benefit of EngSci was that I got to see which parts of each discipline most strongly resonated with me.”

I started with Engineers Without Borders (EWB) in first year, and I did a bunch with them for a couple of years. Then, I got involved with Skule Mental Wellness, which is through the Engineering Society (EngSoc). After that, I had another project directorship with EngSoc where I was the Orientation Chair. I did other things here and there, especially in my 4th year, such as intramurals, and being a barista at the Victoria College Cafe.

Through volunteering, I immersed myself in a great community. I found EngSci hard, as did most people, but I also found that because of how demanding it was, it could easily over your life; when that happens, if you have something like a bad midterm or a hard course, it’s easy to let those things define you more if that’s like the only thing that you have in your life. Volunteering with EWB was such a nice break. It was just a consistent thing that I could come back to, and I knew that I was doing something positive. Helping people was what guided which extracurriculars I chose, and this turned out to be very fulfilling. When we went online due to COVID, we did a food bank; there were so many food-insecure people on campus that we didn’t need to advertise it at all, and we had so many people using it constantly. I got to meet people and do things that would impact others positively.

I appreciated the community, and I also noticed myself growing a lot in those roles and learning a lot about potential career paths or having interesting discussions, connecting with and receiving mentorship from upper-years (many of whom I’m still close with).

Opening my eyes to the less traditional things you could do with engineering was really helpful. I felt proud of the things that we were accomplishing as a team.

Another classic dilemma. Besides an elective course called TEP448 (Systems Mapping), classes were my place to learn technical things. Regarding design teams, I wanted to have other non-technical experiences through my extracurriculars. There were times when I questioned if I should do more technical projects, since many people do personal projects when applying for internships. I did research placements, but for the most part I never opted to just “code something for fun.” In EWB, I definitely did technical things, but they were always in-service of something non-technical (which is engineering as a whole). I was always drawn more towards social questions, but because so many people around me were doing technical extracurriculars, I definitely questioned it a lot. I still do question it because my resume is much less technical than some people who had a different focus, but there were a lot of amazing things that came from those leadership experiences, which allowed me to develop more as a person. I think that was how I found my place in engineering, and overall, I didn’t have too much trouble finding a somewhat technical job.

My earlier research placements in quantum computing, which I still love and find interesting, inevitably became extremely technical. AI ethics, which involves many technical aspects with deep mathematics, is still in service of a bigger social concept, which I find to be more motivating. There’s a personal balance that everyone should determine. Eventually I’ll go to graduate school and now that I know what I want to do, I can determine thesis ideas to propose to professors, that are well aligned with what I want to do.

I told this to a lot of people during F!rosh Week, but just have fun with EngSci. You’ve made it here and you’re competent enough to be here, now just enjoy the experience. I did best when I took a step back and appreciated how cool it was that I got to study special relativity and quantum physics as a second-year student. Do things because you enjoy them, not just because they look good on a resume. Even though some extracurriculars had nothing to do with my courses, they still helped me have a better mindset for them.

Once I started doing that, the opportunities just came up and people will notice your competency and passion, after which they’ll ask if you want to do other things.

My experience was shaped by the many mentors and upper-years who I had, and that’s why I always go back to extracurriculars because most of them I wouldn’t know without doing that.

I felt a responsibility to contribute back to my community because I knew how many people had taken time out of their day to help me and provide guidance.

Other events that convinced me to come to EngSci were the Girls’ Leadership in Engineering Experience (GLEE), and the conversations I had at that EngSci dinner before accepting my offer. Upper-years have helped you become part of the community, so you should do the same for new students. I think a lot of people will do that anyways. At some point during your engineering journey, you will become an upper-year that someone looks up to; you’ll have many insights to share.

Also, go to office hours! I had some of the most helpful discussions at office hours, and it is truly mind-boggling when people don’t attend them. Like, the professor is there, and they write your tests, and they will tell you exactly what you need to know!