Hey guys, Im gonna enter my third year of civil engineering this September, I was hoping if anyone could tell me how the courses are ( in terms of profs, the way theyre laid out).

Is it much harder than second year? I've been hearing mixed things, some people say its easier than second year, some say its fucked. If someone could give me a proper answer I'd appreciate it.. I need to aim for a 8-9 Average next year, im gonna end up at a 6.7-7 this year so i definitely need to step it up.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by ElvisMoses

Hey guys, Im gonna enter my third year of civil engineering this September, I was hoping if anyone could tell me how the courses are ( in terms of profs, the way theyre laid out).

Is it much harder than second year? I've been hearing mixed things, some people say its easier than second year, some say its fucked. If someone could give me a proper answer I'd appreciate it.. I need to aim for a 8-9 Average next year, im gonna end up at a 6.7-7 this year so i definitely need to step it up.

Thanks!

The reason you're getting different answers is probably because people are different. There's not really any such thing as a "proper" answer when it comes to easiness.

You would probably get much more valuable information if you specified what exactly you mean by "how the courses are". Just wanting to know how easy they are won't really mean anything.

Its civil, so this year you had a lab on water and a lab on dirt.. next year is going to be very confusing for you. as you will be doing labs on what happens when you combine water and dirt. spoiler alert** it makes mud Civil is by far the easiest eng.
But as previously stated, you can never gauge the difficulty of different years based on other's opinions. I heard coming through eng that second year was hardest, third was comparable, and then 4th year the profs go easy on you. NOT THE CASE! this year has been the most stressful of my time at mac, goes to show everyone handles the workloads differently

3rd year tends to be the most difficult for every eng.

Originally Posted by Chris23

Its civil, so this year you had a lab on water and a lab on dirt.. next year is going to be very confusing for you. as you will be doing labs on what happens when you combine water and dirt. spoiler alert** it makes mud Civil is by far the easiest eng.

Well, to the OP: This is all untrue, so don't apply that logic to anything.

You will have your first "dirt" course next year. It's much more focused theory than "Statics' or "mechanics". You talk about the stresses that develop; if water is added, that messes things up too because water under pressure creates even more stress situations; Slope stability, short-term vs. long-term stability; Soils is not an easy topic... (3A and 3B03)

Concrete 3P and 3J is also much more specialized: You will learn about concrete in depth, and perform a few useful labs. They all require more thought. Given that you didn't have John Wilson to "ease" you into the idea of doing Civil Engineering labs, I will not tell you this will be easy.

But realistically, you will get through if you want to get a Civil Engineering degree.

Good luck, and enjoy your time here.

Originally Posted by Chris23

Its civil, so this year you had a lab on water and a lab on dirt.. next year is going to be very confusing for you. as you will be doing labs on what happens when you combine water and dirt. spoiler alert** it makes mud Civil is by far the easiest eng.
But as previously stated, you can never gauge the difficulty of different years based on other's opinions. I heard coming through eng that second year was hardest, third was comparable, and then 4th year the profs go easy on you. NOT THE CASE! this year has been the most stressful of my time at mac, goes to show everyone handles the workloads differently

LOL. 4th year profs do not go easy on you. Tech electives have more work than any of your courses (with the exception to 4CM4), and is more concentrated on individual learning than profs and TAs holding your hand telling you how to do something. You all learned the mechanics and stuff at this phase - now it's time to apply them.

The capstone course combines all of your tech electives (that you haven't learned at that point yet) and everything you learned into 7 months of pure hell. There's little guidance, you work consistently through all of the holidays, and since the classes are large you won't get much in-depth assistance that is required. Expect your final report to be +300 pages total. That was my graduating class' capstone...but maybe next year or the year after will be better as they are still doing adjustments on how the capstone is structured.

Either way, have fun.

Originally Posted by ElvisMoses

Hey guys, Im gonna enter my third year of civil engineering this September, I was hoping if anyone could tell me how the courses are ( in terms of profs, the way theyre laid out).

Is it much harder than second year? I've been hearing mixed things, some people say its easier than second year, some say its fucked. If someone could give me a proper answer I'd appreciate it.. I need to aim for a 8-9 Average next year, im gonna end up at a 6.7-7 this year so i definitely need to step it up.

Thanks!

There's some courses I forget about, but I'll try to help out the best I can for you. To give a perspective on my easiness scores, I tried to think about how well the overall class did because I have an 11.3 GPA so I can't say if it was easy or not for others.

CIV ENG 3A03 / 3B03
Easiness = 3.5 / 5
- Soils courses. You'll just learn how to calculate different ratios, classify soils, do strength tests on them, etc. Not too bad just a lot of equations. Normally taught by Dr. "happy" Guo who is sometimes hard to follow or goes really quickly and makes random notes on his slides.

CIV ENG 3C03
Easiness = 4 / 5
-Programming systems for optimization mostly. You'll need to be pretty familiar with Excel, Excel solver, and I believe Matlab. Also taught by Dr. "happy" Guo (normally)

CIV ENG 3G03
Easiness = 3 / 5 for most
- If you didn't do so hot in CIV ENG 2J04, you'll have a hard time as this course introduces some advanced structural engineering theories. You'll be using matrices, integrals, and system of equations mostly. This was taught by Dr. Wilson, but since he retired I'm not sure how difficult this course will be now.

CIV ENG 3J04
Easiness = 3.5 / 5 for most
- Taken in second semester. you need 3P04 for this course, and if you had a hard time in that then oh boy you're in for a treat. This is the reinforced concrete design course. You'll be using the CSA A23.3-04 design codes to design beams, columns, beam-columns, etc. You'll learn the elastic and ultimate strengths of concrete. This is really the introduction course to limit states design for structural engineering. I'm structural eng so this was one of my favourites haha.

CIV ENG 3K03
Easiness = 4.5 / 5
- Transportation course. Guy that taught this was pretty relaxed and from the MTO, however our class average was way too high so it might of gotten harder. You'll learn mostly how to calculate vehicle flows, traffic information, and lane performances. Also has a big transportation project that takes up a considerable amount of time (has a lot of data and design to calculate/do).

CIV ENG 3M03
Easiness = 3 / 5
-If you did well in 2O04, you should be okay in this one. You're mostly learning about municipal water systems, gradients, and different types of pipe resistances. It's okay, but the course is taught by the other Dr. Guo. Course gets really boring at times so bring coffee.

CIV ENG 3P04
Easiness = 2 / 5
-Welcome to concrete, Dr. Chidiac's domain. He is going to work you like dogs. As this course is mandatory, he typically isn't very nice and can be rude or too harsh sometimes. He's an excellent prof once you get to know him, but people that don't want to be there gets under his skin at times. If you work hard and ask him questions when you don't understand, he will 100% help you without hesitation. You'll learn how concrete is made and how different components affect the overall performance of the material.

CIV ENG 3RR3
- I'm in mangement so I had to take like +3 economic courses already so we didn't have to do this course. Since you're learning a portion what management students learn, I heard it is difficult at times because they add in some difficult engineering problems as well.

STATS 3J04
Easiness = 3.5 / 5 (for most)
-Oh boy, everyone's "favourite" course. Unless you've taken stats before this course can get difficult. Just do practice problems and always ask the TAs and prof questions if you do not understand anything. Normally taught in conjunction with 3N03 which is a non-engineering course, but they do less work =P (not sure if this changed).