I've been telling people not to bother to do Engineering if they are doing only General Maths. People have been telling such people that the unis offer Summer School as well as bridging course; so they should be able to pursue Engineering without higher level Maths in their HSC. Since you have done so many Maths units already in your Engineering course so far, you have the real experience. What do you think? Can a person doing just General Maths pursue Engineering?
I would tend to agree with that, if someone is doing general maths then they're going to find engineering extremely hard. But if someone were to actually ask me if they should do engineering because they are interested in it but they've only done general maths, most of the time I would say they should go for it because there's still that chance that once they get to uni and actually start learning interesting stuff, they start working harder/smarter. I haven't actually done general maths, so I'm not quite sure what their syllabus is but from what I hear it will definitely be one of the largest uphill challenges that you'll face in your education years if you were to do engg after having done general maths.
But 'working really hard' is not the point; if a student lacks the intellect, working 36 hours a day would not help..
I would argue that working really hard IS the point. If you genuinely find engineering interesting, then working hard isn't as bad/tedious as it sounds because you'll actually be enjoying the work that you do. Eventually, you'll understand everything being taught. Keep in mind that 99.99% of the time, work ethic trumps intellect. Of course, there are some people for whom the maths just wont click despite hours of effort, but that's rare. But then that begs the question, if you find this kind of stuff interesting why didn't you just choose 3U/4U in high school (or even 2U)? Do you actually find engineering interesting (that is, maths and physics), or do you just find it cool that people can do a bunch of maths/physics and make a plane or a bridge out of it? If it's the latter, it's probably not going to get you through.
I'm considering university course and am set on doing Civil Engineering, but I've also considered doing a double degree with Science majoring in some area of Physics. Because i genuinely enjoy Physics and a double degree will help my employability after i graduate. But will the work load and difficulty be too much? I'm only doing 2u maths atm and am planning to take a bridging course before i start. I'm doing well in both Physics and 2u, expecting a low band 6 and high band 5 respectively and my time management has always been very good throughout Yr 11 and 12.
Getting back on track haha, anomalousdecay was spot on. Workload between engg and science is pretty similar, so that doesn't change. The only change is that you do it for 1 extra year. It only helps your employability if you want to get a job that would require a science degree with a physics major. Engg companies won't really care that you've done a BSc (Physics) because you'll have learnt anything you needed to about engg concepts in the engg part of your degree. If you do enjoy physics though, I say do a double degree. You're paying only an extra ~$9k, but doing something that you find interesting and that's worth it.
/essay.
