"Paul F Austin" wrote in message
. ..

"Tarver Engineering" wrote

"Tex Houston" wrote

"sibersmith" wrote
This really bums me out. I went into Aerospace cause I wanted the
job
of my dreams designing aircraft. Nobodys gona hire a medocree
looser
that doesn't excell in math.

So how Important is a good GPA when looking for a job?

If this is an example of your work you might put in some extra hours
of
study in English. Just using a spellchecker would help.

Nope, the low math grades pretty well disqualify him from engineering.
There are plenty of places where he could make a good living with the
2.3,
however. The only thing that would help is if he is one of those
"worked
through school". If family paid, or there were loans, forget
engineering.

GPA is a go-no go screen for many companies for new-grads. We won't review
a
resume for a new-grad whose GPA is below 3.0. It's less important for
people
with 2-5 years experience and GPWhat? after 5 years in industry.

Many companies take into consideration the grading policies of the
university and the applicant's work history in determining wether to use the
3.0 hard floor. Comparing a student from a bell curve graded program to one
from a university where a "c' is the lowest grade possible requires some
additional leeway.

Tarver is right that mathematics is critical. I interviewed a power supply
designer yesterday. He had 10 years experience as a technician, 12 years
as
an engineer but he was 'way too weak analytically to do the work. Most
people who haven't done design don't realize that design-is-analysis.

Every real engineering problem involves an integral. Math becomes a way of
thinking for an engineer and without that a man/woman will never do any real
engineering. There are many in the wage slave class of engineers that never
learned the math, even though they earned high marks. The same "cram and
dump" study habbits that work for medical students tend to produce poor
engineers. These types tend to flee to management at their earliest
convenience.

Drawings only define-what-you will analyse. The analysis provides the
details of dimensions, component values and so on. Analysis proves that it
will work in all of the conditions contained within the customer's
requirements. All this is from an aerospace point of view. I've worked in
other industries where un-degreed engineers are common and virtually no
analysis was done.

Non-degreed engineers are common at BCAG, but those are drawn from the ranks
of technicians. It is a means through which some injured in the shop can
continue to have productive lives in the industry, as well.

The practice in those places was to get the topology
right, breadboard or prototype the design and refine the design in
hardware
to make it work. Not only can we not afford to work that way, doing so is
unacceptable because the breadboard and prototype testing can't possibly
cover the range of environments, component variations, workmanship and
process variations.

In my experiance there is no shame in going "roll b", for a new design, but
I will agree with you that a breadbord's performance has little relevence in
aerospace applications. An airplane is a rather nasty environment, from an
electrical perspective.

I was a blockhead at math when I flunked out of college in 1967. The stern
discipline of Hyman G Rickover's schools jerked my **** straight and when
I
went back to school, I had the great good fortune to have a calculus
professor who was a great teacher, rather than a mumbling,
English-is-plainly-not-my-mother-tongue eccentric. Both those things were
necessary for me to acquire the skills I needed.

Math has always been easy for me. I am a California "gifted child".

The ability to write clearly and precisely is also very important. Not
only
does sloppy spelling and grammar prejudice your audience against what you
are trying to communicate, it also creates ambiguity about what you
actually
said, which can be deadly.

Grammar is a source of ambiguity in design specification and theory of
operation type writting. Although, at some point a money pitch is usually
required to get anything done and there polish is necessary. Today there
are grammar and spelling bots included with word and even the illiterate can
come across as educated. Here at ram we have an example of such, without
his heavy use of homonymns, I would have never caught on to the bots.
Management is usually far less attuned to logical flow than a working
engineer, so it is probably unnecessary to even hide the bots.

With our latest TSOA applications, FAA lauded Skylight for our short and to
the point documentation. The way it has been explained to me, most
applicants will turn in a binder of fluff, that includes about one page of
aprovable data; times as many engineers as are on the project.

When I made up a means to procure parts seperate from the NSN system, I had
all of RPL's MIS group to create fluff for management. RL later replaced
the Mil-Spec component system with that work. So, in conclusion, fluff and
polish seem to work well when seeking funding and these days all of Federal
Electric lives off of it. ("the reliability people")

That said, the anchor-man in my class went to work for HP as a sales
engineer. In the early modern era (1977) he made $100K the first year,
about
6 times what_I_made that year.

Comercial pays a lot better than government work, but production becomes the
issue.