How to Choose Acedemic Project topics for B.E/M.tech.
Hey there!
I usually get lot of requests on how to choose project or thesis topic for academic project of B.E or Master’s. So thought it would be good if I share this one with everyone so that they can get benefitted by this and be in right direction after they complete their graduation or post-graduation.
Now you might be thinking why I’m talking about right professional career direction here in this blog where I said I will be sharing my views on how to choose a project topic? Both of these things are linked to each other. Read along to understand how choosing your project topic will help you be in right direction for your professional career.
I have seen many people, while choosing their project topic, they just choose something that’s easy or data for that particular project is available easily or there should not be any challenges while doing it. A general trend is most of the people choose projects on CONCRETE. Simple reasons for that is Concrete projects are relatively easy and most importantly, loads of project data is available as many people have their project being done on CONCRETE. Now essentially most of the projects on concrete involve replacing the ingredients of concrete with re-usable materials or with materials that are relatively cheaper than the basic ingredients of concrete viz cement, sand (which are costlier). Else projects on concrete would involve adding something like sugar to concrete & seeing how it effects the setting time of concrete or any other properties of concrete under study. Again in any of the above mentioned project topics on concrete, for students, the expected results are already available (I.e. students know beforehand that by adding sugar to concrete what results or trends are got & they have this information from tons of previous thesis reports that are being done on concrete. Hence the reason for its choosing.
Also few of students would be choosing such advanced topics which they don’t understand thoroughly and do for Simple name sake.
Now what Students don’t realise is this! They just choose their academic project (which as per me is most important part of the course) based on ease or availability of data/results. So Students should wisely choose their project topics. Here are the factors based on which one should be choosing their project topics.
Simple thumb rule is choose projects to be done on things which you will be exposed to, once you land into a Job!
If After graduation, you are interested to work in say design field or structural engineering, then you should be choosing your project topic related to design. It could be analysis and design of a simple 2-4 story residential building or it could be on say anything related to tall buildings like wind analysis, Wind tunnel testing, Construction sequence analysis, P-delta, pushover analysis etc. using suitable software’s. Or it could be relating to bridges (if you are interested in bridge designing).
Else if you are interested to work on Site/Field, you can have your project done on things which you will be actually doing in a site engineer’s job role. It could be on Scheduling of projects, rate analysis, preparation of bar bending schedules (BBS), important checklists that are used on site monitoring the projects etc.
If you are someone interested in studying the behaviour of structures in depth from Micro-level to a Macro Level, then you can choose to do projects on Finite Element Analysis.
Projects on Concrete can also be chosen. It’s not that projects on concrete are bad. But the idea should be clear. If you wish to do the job in Profiles like Quality Assurance/Quality Control, then doing Projects on Concrete will largely help as you will be studying the behaviour of concrete in such projects.
"Isn’t it such a good boost that you get to know the works in your academic project itself that you are supposed to be doing in the job?" A big YES! It will boost your Confidence as well as you will be on a right career path before you even graduate.
Now few of you might having few questions in mind that how do we get to know in which domain we will be getting a job after graduation?, would it be Site Engineering, would it be design or anything else?, or how do we get to know in which field we should be doing job after we graduate?
I have Solution for that too. I will be giving a link here to my post where I have talked on what are the different domains in civil engineering where you can find job, and what skillsets are required for that particular domain along with relating software’s that you need to know in each of those mentioned fields. Here’s the link to that post.
Academic Projects are neglected by many students as a general tendency. Little do they know what impacts it has on their career? Never copy your projects from seniors/past students or do it for mere formalities as it as part of curriculum. Do it with honesty with an intent to learn things.
I too didn’t knew these insights while I was doing my academic Project 5 years ago. At least you (readers of this post) are getting some beforehand knowledge on this critical topic.
So, yeah! See you all in my next blog on some other similar never talked–on topic, which is the motto of me starting this blog and sharing my experiences.
It is a fact that students generally opt for easy going type projects while they do projects in colleges. By the time they realizes this it is too far. What I found is that students often show no interest to undertake experimental projects due to the extra work they need to do procuring materials, testing and analyzing the data collected. So they undertake some simulations type projects without even understanding the concepts or the ability to interpret the results. Ends up thinking that they have done some really worthless projects at a later stage of their life.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Interpretation of results got in the Project is not done by many students. Many just blindly write the results in report.
DeleteAnd yes have heard from many people when they repent about doing such Project without Understanding at later stage in life.
Another part is when students take up topics of their interest that will be useful in Job. College says there is no research scope there, which is kinda true , but still it is better than projects topics that are Researchable but are of no use, and just add to endless dump of topics online.
ReplyDelete