Evaluating Possible Career

Even if your career might change direction as you advance, your first steps are important ones. How do you know where to begin?

Do not ignore what is right under your nose: your own faculty adviser and, if you are a graduate student, your research or laboratory group. By watching the people around you, you can learn a great deal about the roles that a faculty member plays. Your adviser could be, at various times, a

teacher, a business manager, a mentor, an author, a committee member, a boss. Which of those roles is appealing to you?

If you are an undergraduate or beginning graduate student, you are probably not ready to choose a career. But you can start asking questions and watching people in their work. If you learn early what your options can be, you will be ready to ask the right questions when your time comes to find a position.

Evaluating jobs also means dealing with attitudes. Some faculty members and students assign a lower status to nonresearch jobs for people who have PhDs. As a result, PhD students who plan for such jobs might be told that they are wasting their education or letting their advisers down. That attitude is less prevalent in some professions, notably engineering and some biology-related fields, where nonacademic employment is the norm. Also, negative attitudes toward nonacademic employment are often less evident during times of job scarcity. But if you do encounter such an attitude remember that a wide variety of positions can be as challenging and gratifying for PhD scientists and engineers as traditional research positions. Back up your assertion with facts and figures, including the profiles presented in this guide and facts about the employment situation from the Academy's Internet career-planning center.

How Career In Science and technology is Changing

Most scientists and engineers find careers in three general sectors of society: colleges and universities, industries, and federal and state agencies. Their work includes an array of activities, from the conduct of basic and applied research to the design and application of new commercial products to the operation and maintenance of large engineering systems.

You can make your planning more effective by appreciating the direction in which professional careers are shifting within that larger picture. For example, for many students, a PhD will mean a career as an academic researcher. But more than half the students who receive PhDs in science and engineering obtain work outside academe—a proportion that has increased steadily for 2 decades. And full-time academic positions in general are more difficult to find than they were during the 1960s and 1970s, when the research enterprise was expanding more rapidly.

As our society changes, so too do the opportunities for careers in science and engineering. The end of the Cold War has removed some incentive for the federal government to fund defense-oriented basic research. Increased national and

global competition has forced many industries to reduce expenses and staff. That means that there are fewer research and development positions in universities, industries, and government laboratories than there are qualified scientists and engineers looking for them.

Powerful changes have swept through the universities. For example, there are strong public pressures for universities to shift their emphasis toward teaching and toward undergraduate education; the number of positions for permanent faculty has decreased; professors are no longer required to retire at a particular age; and more part-time and temporary faculty are being employed. All those trends affect the universities' ability to hire scientists and engineers.

At the same time, small and medium-sized companies in some fields are increasing their research and development activity as they develop new technologies. The natural advance of technology is creating new opportunities in information science, software design, biotechnology, data processing, environmental engineering, electronic networking, manufacturing and computational simulation, and forensic science. Government agencies are converting some of their defense-oriented efforts to research in environmental work, communication, information, and other fields. Recent graduates with skills in more than a single discipline are attractive to businesses in these and other multi-disciplinary fields, especially if they have dual master's degrees or strong minors

Scientists and engineers are learning to apply their expertise more broadly. Professionals in the physical sciences find employment not only in the discipline of their degree but also in a wide variety of related careers where their analytic and reasoning abilities are valued.

For example, increasing numbers of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers find their skills valued in the financial arena. More than 14% of the firms recruiting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995 were financial companies, nearly 3 times as many as in 1983. Graduates are being put to work writing software, using computers to capitalize on market inefficiencies, constructing financial models that predict fluctuations in securities prices, and designing complex mathematical tools to assess portfolio risk.

In engineering, careers are being transformed by several intersecting trends. International companies now draw employees from many nations, seeking out valued experts from a global pool of labor to work project by project. Companies value multilingual workers with a breadth of competencies—managerial as well as technical—and the ability to access and apply new scientific and technologic knowledge. The more flexible and mobile you can be, the more opportunities you will have and the greater will be your control over the shape of your career.

How To Meet Career Goals

Envisioning a Career

If you're considering a career in science or engineering, step back and imagine the shape of that career. Do you want to focus on "doing" science or engineering? Or a career that is not necessarily categorized as doing science or engineering but instead uses your science or engineering background to make your contribution to society in a different way? Where would you like to be in 5 years? In 20 years? Can you imagine getting there from where you are today?

If you are like most students, it is highly unlikely that you will find specific answers to career questions before graduating. But it is never too soon to find out as much as you can about yourself and the career you envision, alternatives to that career, and how best to match your own personality and desires with the shape of possible careers in science and engineering.

Planning a Career

Of course, there is a limit to how carefully students can—or should—try to plan for an unknowable future. You might have gained the impression that careers proceed in a more or less straight line that begins with an undergraduate degree and leads directly to the position you anticipated. But most career paths are neither straight nor predictable—nor, in the end, would people want them to be. Careers can have as many sudden turns and new directions as life itself. Even your earliest steps along this path will probably be guided by accidents of timing and opportunity as much as by intention. You will go to a particular school or take a particular position because of a conversation with a friend or adviser or a random bit of news. Or someone on a university admissions committee is attracted by a particular detail in your application. Or a postdoctoral position opens on the same day that you happen to call a friend in the same department. The more you have thought about your career, the better able you will be to take advantage of such unplanned events.

Career in science and tecnology

People seek careers in science or engineering for many reasons. Some have specific goals: they wish to cure diseases or combat hunger or reduce pollution; or they dream of developing the next laser, transistor, or vehicle for space travel; or they imagine building companies that capitalize on new engineering capabilities. Some choose careers in science or engineering because they are curious about the natural world. Others are motivated by the excitement and beauty of the intellectual world and hope to formulate theories that will lead to new ways of thinking about the world. Still others imagine educating people about science or engineering in schools or through the media; they want to provide counsel or shape public policies on issues of direct relevance to science or engineering. Each of these motivations is legitimate, each is valuable, and each flows naturally from an education in science and engineering.

Careers in science and engineering are essentially hope-filled endeavors that can improve people's lives and result in knowledge that all people can share. As the techniques and products of science and technology have become more central to modern society, a background in science and engineering has become essential to more and more careers. In fact, degrees in science and engineering are becoming as fundamental to modern life as the traditional liberal-arts degree. The contributions of scientists and engineers already extend beyond research and development and throughout the realms of teaching, business, industry, and government. People with bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in science or engineering are forming companies, managing businesses, practicing law, formulating policy, consulting, and running for political office. They are forming global communities of common interests that transcend the differences among individuals, corporate endeavors, or nations.

It is important to remember that science-oriented students are not all alike, any more than all artists or all politicians are alike. Your success will depend on going where your particular interests lead you. Are you exhilarated by the challenge of a new problem or puzzle or need? Does the complexity of the natural world prompt a desire to understand it? If so, science and engineering study—rigorous though it is—will provide you with the tools and concepts that you need to achieve your goals.

Your own goals will determine which academic degree is most appropriate for you. Many people find satisfying careers in a variety of positions after the bachelor's degree. Others, notably engineers, find that a master's degree equips them well for professional careers. For those who hope for careers conducting research and/or teaching at the university level, a PhD will probably be required.

No degree guarantees lifetime employment. Like professionals in other fields, you might still have to change jobs and even careers during your life—perhaps more than once. It is the purpose of this guide to help you lay the foundation for your journey, no matter how many turns your path takes.

Just how rigorous is the path to a scientific or engineering career? Graduate study, in particular, is demanding mentally, physically, and emotionally. Not everyone has the perseverance to complete years of concentrated study. But the experience of doing scientific or technical work is supremely exhilarating for those with sufficient interest and determination. And many people will be willing to help you along the way and assist you over difficult hurdles as you gain the confidence to think and work independently.

Are you bright enough to become a scientist or engineer? Again, there is no standard against which to measure yourself; no kind of intelligence applies across all the many fields of science and engineering. But you can do no better than to trust in your deepest feeling. If your enjoyment of mathematics and science is real, you will probably want to understand, use, and explore them on a deeper level.

ACTIONS POINTS:

• Make a list of reasons why you like to study science and engineering and a list of reasons why you don't. Compare the two lists.
• Make a list of the positive and negative aspects of various careers in which you are interested.
• Seek out people with science and engineering backgrounds who work in careers in which you are interested and ask them to have lunch with you so that you can ask them about their work and how they got where they are today. How do they spend their time? What do they find most satisfying and most disagreeable? Does the life that they describe appeal to you?
• If you're an undergraduate, talk with several graduate students; if you're a beginning graduate student, talk with several advanced students or postdoctoral students. Ask them what they have learned that they wish they had known early in their careers.

Impact of recession on prospective engineering students

Despite the slowdown in 2008, engineering still remains as one of the most popular career options for today’s young generation. Graduates from top engineering colleges in India command a lot of respect not only in the country, but globally.

Presently due to the global recession and Satyam scandal, most of the people are in dilemma about Computer Engineering. Students prefer core branches of engineering due to the recession. Trades such as mechanical and civil engineering, which had seen a slump in demand post the boom in the Information Technology sector, are gaining more popularity with more students opting for seats in each branch.

However, Electronics and Communication stream is the most sought-after course with maximum students opting for it. The once highly sought-after Information Technology has taken a backseat.

Parents, who are behind most of these decisions, are weary of pure-IT courses after seeing the impact of the recession on the IT sector and feel that job security is more in these core branches of engineering.

Breaking News

n a significant development, Punjab Technical University (PTU) has initiated a move to scrap the Common Entrance Test (CET) from the next academic session (2010-2011) for admission to B.Tech courses in its affiliated colleges for approximately 26,000 seats for the Bachelor of Technology courses in approximately 76 affiliated colleges.

Talking to The Tribune, Dr Rajneesh Arora, Vice-Chancellor, PTU, confirmed that the university move to scrap the entrance examination from the coming academic session. “We envisage filling the seats only through the AIEEE examination. The move will save time and money for hundreds of students in addition to helping the university in streamlining the admission work.

The issue will be taken up at the meeting of the academic council, followed by a special meeting of the Board of Governors, later this month. A decision in this regard needs to be formally ratified by the Punjab government,” Dr Arora said.

Despite thousands of seat remaining vacant every year and the university allowing plus II students to seek regular admissions later on, each year the university continued to make money at the cost of hundreds who appeared for the entrance examination.

With one more week to go before the last date of counselling, August 17, for admissions in the new academic session, the university is prepared for at least 8,000 seats being left vacant.

The number of vacant seats has continued to grow over the past few years. The data supplied by the Public Cause Society reveals 3,129 seats remaining vacant in 2005, 4,400 in 2006, 3,859 in 2007 and 6,000 in 2008. This year the number of vacant seats is expected to cross 8,000.

“When in a normal class high merit in the entrance examination means nothing when admitting a plus II student later on, why should students waste their time and effort in preparing and appearing for the entrance examination? The CET appears to be nothing more than a money-making machine for the authorities,” said an engineering student from a college near Nawanshahr, affiliated to the university.

The Public Cause Society is demanding scrapping of the CET since 2005.

AK Bhandari, general secretary of the society, said, “We also object to advertisements appearing in newspapers, inviting plus two students for direct admissions. Certain states, including Haryana and Tamil Nadu, have successfully banned state-level CETs and replaced these with the national-level AIEEE. However, our government is holding the CET just to make money”.

Professor Arora said in case “the seats remained vacant after the final counselling, we might invite students from outside states”.

Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, a former Technical Education Minister, had admitted that there were no takers for 37 per cent seats in March 2007.

What to read for AIEEE!

PHYSICS:
Concepts in Physics (Vols I and II ) by HC Verma : A must read book.Read the concepts and do the problems for your own benefit.
Arihant Series : The best books to strengthen your concepts especially for Electricity and Magnetism.
Then go for books with objective questions for AIEEE (preferably Arihant)

MATHS
For Trigonometry and Coordinate Geometry follow S L Loney without any second thought .Its the best.
For Calculus follow Piskanov( I doubt the spelling ) for the rest I think coaching class material should be enough.
Then do the Objective problems for AIEEE( Arihant has a good collection)

Chemistry:
Basic books are NCERT and 12th textbooks.
Then you can go for Morrison and Boyd for Organic,J D Lee for Inorganic