Kalvimalar

If you like dealing and working with the wonderful of technology, then engineering is the field for you. Engineering as a field of study, gives you a wide variety of choices to choose from. We will talk about that later.

First let us understand a little more about choosing Engineering as a career. Today in India, it is the most widely sought career amongst +2 students. Even medicine takes a second place. Are all the people opting for engineering doing so because they love to work with engineering technology?

From my experience as a career counselor, I keep getting calls and emails from engineering students who are not happy after choosing the career. Some of them realise this, in the college days itself and some after they finish college and start working. It is quite a frustrating experience for these students, because it is not that easy to get an engineering degree. It takes a lot of hard work to get good marks and get an engineering college seat, and four years of studying hard in the college to get the coveted BE/ BTECH degree. After all the hard work, if he/she is not happy in the field, it can be very disturbing not only for the student but also the family.

There is nothing wrong with engineering as a career. It is a wonderful field which has most definitely changed the way we life today. It has more to do with on what basis the career choice of engineering has been based upon. Our cultural psyche is such that, if you are good at scoring high marks, you are considered intelligent and are programmed to think of only two careers- Engineering or Medicine. Bright students are expected to opt for the science group and the others for Commerce and Humanities. The parent of an engineering students takes great pride and acclaims loudly to the whole world, "My son is studying engineering", while the Commerce students parent is much more humble.

One does tend to get conditioned to make ones career choice based on these stereotypes or choose careers which carry a lot of social prestige. It is not a very conscious process. It just happens, and before you know you are in an engineering college. Like getting up and brushing your teeth in the morning, it just happens automatically. If it also matches with your aptitude and personality, great, good luck. But quite often it does not happen so. There are more than 25 branches in engineering, each requiring a different set of aptitude and personality.

Most people I have noticed seem to have a lot of clarity about choosing engineering as a career, but when it comes to the specialization, are clueless. The follower types amongst these safely choose what the current trend is, which invariably is either IT/ Computer Science or EC- Electronic communication. That is mainly due to the IT wave and the higher salaries

Engineering is a field for which you have to have a passion for technology as well as good analytical ability to understand the concepts. Another factor is an aptitude for Maths. I know of a few students who like working with machines, but their imaginary fear of Maths has pushed them away from this wonderful field. I would call it imaginary only, because their aptitude tests show that they have a good numerical aptitude.

If you are not good at conceptual thinking, but still would like to work with machines, and have a good mechanical aptitude, there is another option to consider. After 10th std, you could join a diploma course which is of three years duration. You have diploma in nearly all the branches of engineering like Mechanical, Civil, Chemical, Electrical, Electronics, Computer science, etc. The advantage you have in studying diploma is the theory of machines is balanced with practical work. With the result that you understand the theory much more easily. After your diploma you can directly join the 2nd year of BE- Engineering course directly. This is called Lateral entry. Every engineering college has a certain number of seats earmarked for Lateral entry. Doing BE/ BTech after +2 also takes 16 years of studying and doing your BE/BTech after 10th and diploma also takes 16 years. .

There are a lot of companies who prefer diploma students over engineering graduates, because the diploma students are capable of performing from day one on the job, because of the practical orientation they had in their diploma classes.

And the engineering course will be definitely easier for you, because you would have studied most of the theory in your diploma course. In India very few students think of this option because most people are not aware of it, secondly both the parents and students would not dream of stopping schooling at 10th std and going for a diploma. A diploma is considered less prestigious too.

Therefore if you are seriously considering taking up Engineering as a career, please understand that the real hard core engineering job involves working more with machines and tends to be less people interactive. So if you are a people loving person, but at the same time love technology, I would advise you to consider a midway involving both worlds- doing your graduation in Engineering and then do an MBA. This gives you a good advantage because most companies are manufacturing based and as such it becomes easier to make vital decisions if one has the technical knowledge to understand what is happening on the shop floor of the factory.

we shall look at the core specialisations within the field of engineering and what it takes to succeed in each field.