The next and most important part in an Engsci student’s journey is choosing electives, and this blog is here to help you in that regard, as well as give a student review of all the core Engsci papers! So, let’s get moving:
Engsci is a degree known for its huge list of papers and possible electives, and today, I am going to discuss nearly every possible paper you could take in part 2 of Engsci. I asked many friends (pretty much the entire cohort) to see what they think of the core paper every engsci-er does, and what kind of electives they are doing, and to give me a review of their courses/electives. So, the blog today has a bunch of drop-down menus where you could select to view mine or my friends’ opinions of different papers you take or electives you could choose in your EngSci degree. (Note that there are like 20 or 30 potential papers you could do in your Part 2, so I made a drop-down menu to make it easier for you guys to see information about the electives or any core engsci papers that interest you in particular.)
A review of the core papers
Below are the reviews of how some people I asked felt about the core papers we did in sem 1 and sem 2. In sem 1, the core papers were: ENGSCI 211, BIOMENG 221, ENGSCI 255 and ENGSCI 233. In sem 2, there was only one core paper, ENGSCI 263. You did ENGGEN 204 (a professional development/ethics course) and 2 electives. The student reviews for electives are discussed later on.
Elective Reviews
So, I “interviewed” a bunch of my friends, as well as wrote about the electives I did (STATS 210 and ENGSCI 205) myself, to give a student review on what happens in the course available as an elective. Consider these opinions as either me or one of my other friends presenting an elective to you on an electives night! I have included some opinions about some EEE-related electives as well (although not many ppl in EngSci take them, they are still allowed to be taken, provided you get a concession earlier on and want an EEE twist to your EngSci degree).
I have decided to not write about MATHS 250, MATHS 254 and ENVPHYS 200 because these papers are going to be discontinued at the end of this sem. Also, I could not find anyone in my circle doing COMPSCI 230 (Object-Oriented Software Development) or STATS 240 (Design and Structured Data), so I could not write anything about these electives. However, CompSci 230 is very similar to electives such as MECHENG 270 and SOFTENG 281 and can’t be taken alongside them. I think the reason why 230 is less popular is due to its 50% exam weight.
In terms of electives, u can either do a 5-3 split (1 elective in sem 1 and 1 in sem 2 with your other core papers) or a 4-4 split (both your electives in sem 2), and conjoint students just get 1 elective, unfortunately. Also, SOFTENG sem 2 papers such as SOFTENG 283 and SOFTENG 284 can be typical of engsci electives, but they do not allow ENGSCI students who did not do a 5-3 split (and chose to do SOFTENG 281 in sem 1) to take them.
Overall, you can actually do any elective that is related to maths/physics/stats/compsci and even core papers of some other specs if you send a nice concession/email to do it. However, concessions usually take 2 weeks to approve, so plan early! The only exceptions are that Engsci-ers can’t do any design paper of an engineering spec (except BME) due to these papers having limiting constraints for their own students.
Electives that you are not allowed to take
The courses below are NOT permitted as electives in the Engineering Science degree, nor on either side of a conjoint degree programme. This is due to significant overlap with core Engineering Science courses, and you will learn the content in the papers below that is sprinkled across multiple core papers of Engsci.
Likewise, you can not do 2 electives that are very similar to one another, eg, you can only do one of SOFTENG 281, MECHENG 270 or COMPSCI 230 as your choice of elective, as all of these papers cover Object Oriented Programming. Every year, there is a good check of the electives everyone is taking, and you are actually dropped out of electives that look too similar to one another.
- BUSAN 200: Business Analytics
- MATHS 260: Differential Equations
- MATHS 270: Numerical Computation
- STATS 201/208: Data Analysis
Elective Choices for different pathways
With these electives, there are many possible career pathways you can take in Engineering Science, and the recommended electives to prepare for a j*b in these pathways are discussed below. Note that there is nothing stopping you from choosing electives that are usually associated with a different pathway not listed below, or even just sticking to choosing from the lists of electives from a particular pathway – you can mix and match based on your interests and goals.
The interactive drop-down menu below is based on the EngSci electives guide, showing the recommended Part II and Part III papers for each possible EngSci j*b/future studies pathway. I have not included the full course titles here, so it’s worth looking them up and researching the papers in more detail before deciding. I would 100% recommend using the MART method of selecting specialisations, which I talked about in my first blog. The method in there was related to specialisation choice, but the same method can be applied as a method to represent your opinions and decide which electives are better for you in order to match the things that are important to you.
That is all I have to share about this blog. At the end, I would like to thank the 20+ people who responded to me when I asked them about the particular elective they took. This blog would not have been possible without their help!