[srdeveng]

Plenty of engineering students at top universities have jobs (not just internships).

Time management is key.

As someone who hires their own interns and Jr eningeers, it's shocking how few applicants have ANY prior work experience.

I had a 15-20hr/wk internship, and worked retail on weekends.

However, I often turned in homework that only outlined the knowns, unknowns, drew a diagram, listed equations that were applicable, and that was it. 50% credit for 30min of work.

[purplelobster]

> 50% credit for 30min of work.

That speaks more for the simplicity of the courses of your university more than against my position. Are you really Swedish? I'm going to assume not. Engineering classes at Swedish universities typically don't give points that add up to a grade cutoff point. You might get an average grade of all projects and finals. The final exam is typically 5 hours long with 5-10 very difficult questions. In my CS program we had to work 60+ hours minimum a week, and classes often had 70%+ failure rates. This is not an environment where you can get a second job, and to my knowledge, none of my classmates or anyone I knew did so, except during summers.

[srdeveng]

Heavily impacted engineering program at one of the top University of California campuses.

It spoke for the grading structure of the homework and did not apply to all courses.

Exams and projects were graded much more rigorously and there was a similar drop out/fail rate as you describe.

Not all engineering courses required homework for a grade. Often homework was only worth 5%, exams and projects the remainder. However, weekly problem sets easily consumed 10-15hrs per course, 3-4 courses per quarter.

Professors left it to the student to prove their understanding of coursework through exams. I often suspected due to the high rate of plagerism on homework (copying peers or access to solution guides).

Edit: don't get me wrong, I never had free time as a student. Every free moment outside of class was consumed by studying, working, eating or sleeping. I occasionally skipped lectures to buy free time.

It all came down to risk assessment which is a valuable skill to be learned for industry.

Time management I learned in school has paid off tremendously in my career and is something I seek more than a minimum GPA threshold in my interns and Jr. Eng's.