The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Are there any Civil Engineering majors (undergrad) that have received the award? If so, for which SF and do you have any advice on the application? This year will be my second application. Thank you.

Hey, I am a civil engineering major and I got the award this year, first try. I think some other things influenced the decision such as the fact that I am already interning with DoD with a clearance, but I can give you a few pointers in terms of what civil engineers do within the DoD. I used my knowledge of this to write my essays for the application.

There are two main jobs civil engineers have within the DoD, from what I have gathered. 1) Facilities engineering, and 2) "Actual" civil engineering. As far as I can tell, the only SFs that fall into the 2nd category are military(ie. Navy, Army). The do hydraulics, earthwork, and other construction projects. My SF is NGA, which is non-military, so I am doing facilities engineering. It is basically the upkeep of a facility(think renovations, updating, etc.). I don't mean to put it down, it is good stuff, and is already giving me great experience as a project manager in general, but I don't know if it will count toward experience for my PE exam after college.

In my essay, I was drawing from what I knew about facilities engineering and talked about how I would love to be a part of the Defense mission, even in a small way in keeping up the places where the defense agents work. It's all important, since we are civil servants.

I would advise being open to this option as there is a greater need for it than stereotypical civil eng. work in the DoD, since there are more buildings being maintained than being built.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for your feedback. I was in the Navy and my original plan was to get out, finish my degree, then go back in. But that would put a focus on "real" civil engineering. I think I spoke too much about that in my essay. I've struggled to figure out what the DoD would need with CEs. Thanks for your insight.