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[quote=Anonymous]I wish I could do it this way.  I certainly did all those things growing up.  The problem is that because I did all those things, alone, I did them quite poorly.  The stereotypical engineer has no social skills, for me that meant asking questions was just about impossible.  I floundered my way through undergrad in 6 years.  There were no jobs when I graduated and my interviewing skills stunk.

I applied to 6 grad schools and got into the worst one after being wait listed.  The first week of grad school, I met my future advisor when I started a rotation in his lab.  He started telling me what to do, mostly to help free up my time so I could work in his lab.  I followed his instructions to the letter and got my phd four years later.

I ended up with school wide recognition including an award for best dissertation presentation that year.  You would not believe how much help and encouragement I needed to get my presentation to that level.  Of course, I also used it as a job talk.  I applied six places, I got all six jobs including an assistant professorship right out of grad school. (that still happened back then)

The point is you have to be able to read your kids.  Some need to toughen up, some need their hand held, some just need to follow a step by step list of what to do and some will only do the opposite of what you suggest.

"I highly recommend that you let your son take the initiative on this. Engineering is something that HE must want to do, and he must want to research and apply to schools for his field. Once he's there he must decide which classes to take for which field he is going into. As a parent of an engineer, I can't imagine making an of those decisions for my child, or even suggesting that my child go into that field. It was totally child driven, as it should be. Any engineering degree is going to take a lot of work from your kid. It should be something they want to do and take action to achieve. You really shouldn't do anything but be supportive of their choices. They can go talk to an advisor about what the need to do to apply."[/quote]

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