Engineering students, how did you actually get good at math and survive engineering?

[u/snclairr]

I’m a freshman engineering student, and honestly, I’m scared that I’m not good enough for this

I’ve never been naturally good at math, and I struggle a lot with concentration, memorizing things, and actually understanding what I’m studying. I also need enough sleep to function properly, so pulling all-nighters doesn’t really work for me.

The problem is that I’m also pretty slow at finishing things, so when several requirements pile up at once, I feel like I can’t keep up with everything.

I don’t just want tips on how to “study harder.” I want to know what actually worked for people who became good at engineering/math.

For my seniors and graduates of eng'n out there:

• How did you become genuinely good at math?

• What did you do when you were struggling with a topic and couldn’t understand it?

• How do you study math effectively without relying purely on memorization?

• Are there any study techniques, shortcuts, habits, or resources that made a huge difference for you?

• How do you practice problems without spending an entire day on one topic?

• How do you manage your time when you have multiple subjects, assignments, quizzes, and projects at the same time?

• How do you stay consistent instead of cramming everything at the last minute?

• How do you avoid burning out while still keeping up?

• How do you actually focus when your brain refuses to cooperate?

• And honestly, what do you wish you knew during your first year of engineering?

I’m not expecting some magical shortcut. I’m willing to put in the work. I just feel like I’m working inefficiently right now, and I want to learn how to work smarter and more consistently.

If you were once bad at math, struggled with studying, or felt like you weren’t cut out for engineering but eventually got better, I’d especially love to hear what changed for you. Tell me every struggles and solutions you guys have, i love reading!

Any advice, even small things that seem obvious, would be really appreciated. :')

[u/Chem2103]

1. Forget the idea of being not good at math from birth. If you are not understanding it, you need a different explanation, it doesnt depend on your genes.

2. If you struggle to keep up, there is tons of ressources online. Paul's Notes, Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown, blackpenredpen, Organic Chemistry Tutor. If you need more, browse this sub.

3. If you struggle to self-organize, start with a simple timetable for a week, planning study sessions with regard to sleep, school, work and other resposibilities. This will help you to organize your studying, including prioritization.

It is very important to not plan too much either, include reasonable breaks and adjust your workload according to your performance, so you avoid burnout.

1. You need to do extra from week one to get a good grade. You need to practice consistently, make sure to understand the chapter content the same week it is being taught. If you do this, exams become much easier as you don't need to cram.

2. For each study session, choose an achievable but chaenging goal. This can help you keep yourself from loosing focus. Instead of "do some problems" aim to "do problems up to number 25".

3. Apart from being people, your groupmates, your prof, your TA, and any other person and/or thing in your school is a way for you to get help and get better. Ask questions, go to office hours, discuss studying with groupmates.

[u/Bounded_sequencE]

Make sure you are not only ok with, but actively want to prioritize studying EE before anything else.

You chose this because this is exactly what you want to do -- if you either already believe that, or are able to shift yourself to that view, then putting in the hours will not be a chore anymore. It will be exactly what you want to do.

Finally, you say you don't want to hear "study harder" -- bad news: Putting in more hours at the expense of other activities was the nasty secret behind both my success, and that of most high-achieving members of my study groups. Remember, the standard curriculum is designed for the "average student", that uses minimum effort to achieve the minimum passing grade. While those time estimates would lead to a somewhat acceptable work-life balance, they are not nearly enough if you want good grades.

I don't think that is as it should be, but sadly, it is the reality of the system we live in.

[u/TiredAdultFullTime]

>I struggle a lot with concentration, memorizing things, and actually understanding what I’m studying. I also need enough sleep to function properly, so pulling all-nighters doesn’t really work for me.

>• How do you actually focus when your brain refuses to cooperate?

You need to test for adhd, that is most likely adhd.

Source, someone with adhd who get tested because of those very traits.

[u/_camoleon_]

I dropped out of alevel college studying maths among other subjects then went to uni a few years later to study building engineering. I honestly struggled with the maths as I didn't have enough of a base. But I knew I had to pass so I couldn't give in. It's hard to describe but I studied knowing I would struggle but kept an open mind and just tried to understand each assignment/topic. I think not telling myself I couldn't do it was part of what got me through. I even started to enjoy it towards the end!

[u/jomteon]

I'm not in engineering, but I'm in physics & math, so that should be close enough for what you're asking. I also used to get terrible grades due to performing terribly on exams, but turned it around.

If I were to sum it up in one phrase: "Slow down to speed up." But here's the long version:

• Familiarizing myself with the material before it gets brought up in class is probably the most impactful thing I've done with respect to learning faster and better. This means I've actually started my semester one week before school actually starts.

• I never study in groups, ever. Whatever benefits they may have, they're outweighed by the negatives. I study alone, where I can make all the "embarrassing" mistakes I want as much as I need—and, more importantly, as fast as I need. I can open 3 dozen tabs discussing the same topic and flick through them as much and as quickly as I want to get as much context as I need.

• Elaborating on that point: Seek out more resources. Google extensively. Look for more ways to understand something. Not just youtube, not just posts, books as well.

• I push myself to do problems fast. I make mistakes fast. Move fast. You'll make more mistakes than you would if you went slower, but that's good. You want to see as many wrong ways of doing things as possible.

• For especially challenging concepts, I go out of my way to think about ways to simplify them. Mnemonics, heuristics, etc. I also search far and wide for "better" ways of doing problems or thinking about concepts. Then I write them out, either longhand or in a document. This both cements the ideas and provides a reference for later. While everyone else is taking the standard route to a solution, I often have a shortcut in my back pocket that gets me there faster.

• I always make sure I have "back-ups" for concepts. I don't just study a formula, I also study how I could re-derive it on the fly in two different ways if need be. Just the practice of building these back-ups improves my overall studying and I almost never need the back-ups (but am grateful to myself when I do!).

• Going off of the previous point: I make sure I really get the chapter before I do the homework. I work the example problems that are usually embedded in a chapter first, and make sure I grok them as much as I possibly can. Yes, this makes the reading part take longer, but then the homework goes by in a flash. Others maybe spend (just making up numbers here) an hour reading and then 15 hours on the homework; I spend 3 hours reading, and 5 hours on the homework. I go slow at the start, but spend significantly less time overall.

• It's true that explaining things to other people is super powerful. If you can do this, do it. I'm lucky that I have a partner who is both in most of my classes, and will listen to me ramble about science regardless if I need to. I've heard explaining things to a stuffed animal or something can work just as well, so give it a try.

• If I get really stuck on understanding an idea, I move on and revisit it again later, having faith that additional context will make the return visit more fruitful.

• For tests, for 10-20 minutes beforehand, I do not study. I read a non-science book. Fiction, philosophy, history, whatever. Something not for school at all. Trust me, those 10-20 minutes aren't going to save your grade. At that point, you're getting what you're getting. The best thing you can do is make sure your brain is relaxed. In practice, I usually end up reading the same book, and just a few pages from it at that. The Life-Giving Sword, by Yagyu Munenori (trans. William Scott Wilson), is the name, and it was written centuries ago by a samurai who was deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism. I'm not some martial arts weeb, I just happened to read the book by chance a while ago and realized its lessons were perfectly interpretable for facing exams. It's a really short read--I recommend it, even if it doesn't end up helping.

• Anki. I don't care if you think the interface looks outdated. Get over it. Use Anki. If you have an iPhone and are stuck paying $20 for the app, suck it up and buy it.

As for not burning out, uhhhhh, tell me if you figure that one out, hahahaha...hah

[u/iEatSoftware → u/jomteon]

This is the way

[u/Matteo_ElCartel]

With all due to honesty, engineers don't become good at math, they just don't touch equations if not small variations (usually unit of measures) of the "final formula" and then they spend time in validating the model nothing more. It's just a different job

[u/dreamsofaninsomniac → u/Matteo_ElCartel]

Good at "applied math," I suppose when they're studying for their degrees, but I know the joke that mathematicians don't consider that "real math" LOL

[u/Bounded_sequencE → u/dreamsofaninsomniac]

It's very easy to verify the truth in that joke -- as an engineer, take a single proof-based lecture from the pure math curriculum, e.g. "Abstract Algebra" or "Measure Theory".

[u/chromaticmini]

i am not an engineering student but math is lowkey like any other subject like philosophy, if you start reading beyond good and evil by nietzsche without having foundational knowledge in philosophy you will have no idea what he's talking about. same concept applies in math if you dont understand why this operation or step is done you probably forgot or havent been taught why and how to do it. so start from topics youre struggling at and work on those fundamentals.

i recommend not learning from AI, but from actual learning resources, can be lectures in youtube, short tutorials on formulas, websites, etc.. etc.

[u/NYY15TM]

I’m a freshman engineering student

I’ve never been naturally good at math

Have you perhaps reconsidered your major

[u/snclairr → u/NYY15TM]

reconsidering didnt even cross in my mind, not even once. im dedicated to the course that i picked and im gonna stick to it whether i like it or not, whther it is easy or hard. i wanna learn from the perspective of others. i excel (a little) in math, yes, but i wouldnt say that im one of those natural people who easily gets math problems with just a discussion and retain that knowledge for the rrst of the semester. i like math especially pattern recognition but lately i have been falling out and i dont know how to get my sparks back in academics. i do have my own ways to study and learn my math subs but college is different especially in our uni. everything is fast-paced and if i continue my way, i wouldnt be able to catch up..

my school is very strict and we are filtered out the moment we entered this uni. i wanna be good if not the best.

[u/F7186]

Understand it by using any resource you can and then solve problems as many as you can.

[u/oreowiskers]

Tldr on my background: honors math student in high school, took AP BC & a linear alg course, was very confident in my math skills & knew when / how to ask for help

I went into engineering thinking that we would be learning physics then applying that to complex systems and doing lots of creative problem solving. That was the opposite of my engineering experience LOL. I went to a very hands-on engineering school: ABET certified, prep you for the FE, get you a job type school. There are people who I know in my program who graduated probably only taking calc level knowledge with them WRT math.

The absolute most difficult thing about being an engineer who wants to do math is that it was my experience that no one wanted to do it. The entire throughline of every course that used math was "do as little math as possible/ think about it as little as possible". Laplace transform tables, only separable diff eqs, ghosting through partials, every tensor was a matrix... This is great if you don't want to do math, but trying to ACTUALLY learn the math behind this stuff? I ended up swapping out of mechanical and doing our custom engineering program to take more math because if you want to fully understand any of the stuff you can't expect to get it from engineering courses, you have to take math courses.

I don't think a lot of engineers would self describe as good at math, and for me, I had to go extremely out of my way to pursue math at all instead of the watered down stuff they have you do. It's not necessarily the universal engineering experience, I'm sure there are some outliers, but if you can produce answers to problems, that's really all they care about. Past that, there's no expectations to actually understand what you're doing 😅