How heavy is the schedule in college while majoring in Mechanical Engineering? Is there time for anything else?

Hello Sean.

I might not be able to answer from the mechanical engineering standpoint, but pretty much any decent engineering major requires similar degree of intensity regarding schedule. A very important thing to remember is that your schedule is not only the allocated time to go to your classes, sometimes the lecture itself may represent only 30% of the time you are supposed to dedicate to the subject per week. Therefore it is very important to keep this in mind if you want to have time for something else. Some things to have in mind as well are:

1. 
   

   Course work is not everything. I support your desire to play basketball during college. College is an experience of 4-5 years. The course work is supposed to be your main focus, but the real advantage of college is building up your professional skills with sports, cultural activities, having initiative, leadership among student chapters, and so on.

   
   


2. 
   

   Focus. You should not worry about turning what would be a productive 2-hour long study session into an all nighter, only because your friends are doing so. This will only take up more of your time and will not really give you a lot of advantage over low-hour intense study sessions. This was for me, one of the hardest tasks to accomplish, given that we have iPhones, iPads, and screens everywhere; distraction and procrastination ARE your worst enemies in college. If you got into the university, we know you are smart. But being a successful college student is not always about intelligence, it is about discipline and quality. So focus.

   
   


3. 
   

   Do not let one week go by without you getting into the basketball court. If you want extracurricular activities, go and pursue them. Being successful at dealing with several projects/activities during college is a great intellectual boost as well, which in fact will make you feel better about how you manage your personal time.

   
   


4. 
   

   Manage your personal time. Get your Google Calendar full with everything you have to do. I mean lunch, classes, homework time, sports, family, girlfriend, whatever you need to put in there and then stick to it. In business you set up a 15 minute phone call and you have to make darn sure that you can get your point across and wrap everything up in 15 minutes. Professionals respect their schedules because really, what's more annoying than wasting time?

   
   

I graduated with honors from Chemical Engineering (5 years), was Student Representative of my generation, was President of my Student Chapter, and won several acting awards throughout college and highly ranked in international engineering competitions.

Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time for basketball. Mechanical engineering is very straight-forward. The courses that will consume your time are the non-engineering courses because you will have to write papers, which require many hours of research into a topic. Chemistry and physics are another time consuming class, not because of the class itself, but because of the labs and lab reports that you must participate in and write. You have to choose your courses strategically. Chemistry and physics are unavoidable, but you can choose your electives. I chose Psychology and Political Science. In both of these I didn't have to write any papers. Psychology was really good, I enjoyed it, but Political Science was really boring. Don't choose Philosophy. That course is all about writing papers. The best thing you can do is investigate the course and most importantly visit the professor the semester before you take the course and ask him/her how their class is structured (how your final grade is calculated) and get a course syllabus. If the course involves writing papers, try to take a different course or take the same course with a different professor.