• Question: Does it take a long time to become an engineer

    Asked by arms23ted on 28 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Alan Diaz

      Alan Diaz answered on 23 Mar 2021:


      According to a university, it takes your 2-5 years to become an “official” engineer. But an engineer is someone that solves problems that can be modeled/represented in an abstract manner (i.e., with mathematics or diagrams) and makes decisions based (for the most part) in logic. If you’re already thinking analytically, you could potentially be an engineer in the making!
      As with everything else, to become a good engineer it can take several years of practice. By practice I mean that you do that regularly (most days a week). For example, if you want to become good at playing guitar or cooking you would need several years of “practice” to feel comfortable in saying “I know how to play a guitar” or “I know how to cook”; if you play the same songs or cook the same dishes over and over again, then you might become very good at doing those, but that doesn’t mean that you’re a guitarist or a chef!. With engineering it is slightly similar, if you regularly practice thinking analytically, and study and understand how to solve a variety of “engineering” problems, over time you become good at it!

    • Photo: Ciara McKenna

      Ciara McKenna answered on 24 Mar 2021:


      I did a four-year Biomedical Engineering degree at NUI Galway to become an engineer. Then I did a four-year PhD to learn some more!

    • Photo: Peter Megyesi

      Peter Megyesi answered on 24 Mar 2021:


      It always depends on the complexity of the problems the engineer will solve. You could become a decent Software Engineer for example in 4-5 years but if you wanted to do research or work on a field that only few people did (e.g. aerospace) that would take a few years extra.

    • Photo: Jun Lin

      Jun Lin answered on 24 Mar 2021:


      Doing a at least 4 years undergraduate course is the best way to start becoming an engineer.

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