civil engineering or civil w architecture (1 Viewer)

[helpmeplz123]

What is the difference between the two courses?

Also, what is the maths difficulty for engineering like compared to high school? (i did math ext 1)

Is it difficult to find a job as a civil engineer/ what is the demand for civil engineers?

 

[blyatman]

Depends on the uni. UNSW offers a civil engineering degree with a minor in architecture. USYD offers a combined degree where you get a civil engineering degree and degree in architecture.

Math is completely different. You do learn a lot harder math in uni, but the problems you do in math subjects are typically a lot easier than the problems you get in the HSC. In terms of the math you get in engineering - it's not that hard. Most of it is straightforward applications of formulas, and doesn't require anything intensive. What's important is understanding how to use the formula, the physics behind how it was derived, and how to solve the problem.

Civil engineering is a huge field, and probably has one of the most jobs in the engineering field. Everything you see around you was essentially designed by civil engineers - structural engineering for buildings, traffic engineers and road planners for street layouts, stormwater engineers for drainage, etc.

Here's an example of a HW problem in engineering (for a scramjet used in hypersonic propulsion).



Here's a partial snippet of the solution:



Notice how the calculations themselves are very simple and just involve plugging numbers into formulas. What's more important is knowing how to use the formulas to get to the answer, and knowing when and when not to use certain formulas. This involves understanding the limitations of the formulas based on the assumptions under which they're derived. That's essentially what math in engineering is - it's understanding the physics. The math is mostly number crunching and is rather trivial once you understand the concepts and how to solve the problem. Real world problems are rarely able to be modelled by perfect continuous analytic functions, so you'll find that you don't exactly do a whole lot of direct differentiating/integrating in engineering.

 

[helpmeplz123]

Depends on the uni. UNSW offers a civil engineering degree with a minor in architecture. USYD offers a combined degree where you get a civil engineering degree and degree in architecture.

Math is completely different. You do learn a lot harder math in uni, but the problems you do in math subjects are typically a lot easier than the difficulty you get in the HSC. In terms of the math in engineering - it's not that hard. Most of it is straightforward applications of formulas, and doesn't require anything intensive. What's important is understanding how to use the formula and how to solve the problem.

Civil engineering is a huge field, and probably has one of the most jobs in the engineering field. Everything you see around you was essentially designed by civil engineers - structural engineering for buildings, traffic engineers and road planners for street layouts, stormwater engineers for drainage, etc.

Here's an example of a HW problem I had in engineering.

View attachment 27301

Here's a snippet of part of the solution:

View attachment 27300

Notice how the calculations themselves are very simple and just involve plugging numbers into formulas. What's more important is knowing how to use the formulas to get to the answer. That's essentially what math in engineering is - it's mostly number crunching.

Oh god that looks confusing but if its just understanding and number crunching, then it should be fine.

Also, if I were to do civil with architecture, would that mean a lot more contact hours/ workload at uni compared to if I just did civil engineering (I want uni to be a bit more relaxed).

Either way, thanks for replying. That was really helpful.

 

[blyatman]

Oh god that looks confusing but if its just understanding and number crunching, then it should be fine.

Also, if I were to do civil with architecture, would that mean a lot more contact hours/ workload at uni compared to if I just did civil engineering (I want uni to be a bit more relaxed).

Either way, thanks for replying. That was really helpful.

You'd still be doing a full-load regardless - your degree will simply be longer. How relaxed it is depends on how you find each stream. E.g. A full engineering load might be 26hrs a week, whereas a full commerce load might be 13hrs a week. So some students find doing a combined engineering/commerce degree easier than doing a full load of engineering, because the commerce side of things slightly reduces the contact hours required. However, I'd imagine architecture to have similar contact hours to engineering, so I wouldn't anticipate a big difference in contact hours. If you find architecture easier than engineering, then it'll benefit you having some architecture subjects on your schedule rather than a full load of engineering. However, if you found architecture much more difficult, then the exact opposite will happen. So it really depends on each person.

It's also good to ask yourself where you want to end up. I don't imagine a background in architecture being useful to that many fields, except maybe for structural. If you want to go into a field which has nothing to do with architecture, then there's not much point having a minor/degree in it.

The math in architecture is pretty easy/non-existent. If you know what a right angle is, then you're set.

 

[helpmeplz123]

I'll probably just settle for civil engineering alone. Anyways, I have time to think about and come back to this after HSC, so will do it then.

Thanks a lot though!