Student Highlights
Dheeraj's proactive path to engineering success

Dheeraj, who journeyed from India, chose to study a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) at the University of Newcastle for two main reasons. The first was the quality of the curriculum compared to other universities in Australia, and the second was the location.

“I always wanted to live in the quiet city, far away from the metropolitan cities like Sydney and Melbourne so I found Newcastle to be the best location for myself.”

Dheeraj always wanted to pursue engineering as he believes “engineering teaches you problem solving skills. More specifically, it helps you grow your conceptual and mathematical understanding towards the complex real-life design problems.”  More importantly, his biggest influence in perusing Civil engineering was his father, Mr Arjun Shah.

“He is a Building Contractor back in India and he is in this industry for last 25 years. He builds, design houses, commercial buildings and many more, so this used to motivate me as well to adopt my father’s career path and study Civil Engineering.”

The degree offered Dheeraj many opportunities to increase his employability, such as practical, hands-on experiences and guest lectures from industry leaders from sectors like CIA Institute of Australia and Engineering Australia, forming connections with leading companies in Australia.

“This degree offered me hands-on, practical experience in typical civil engineering problems by providing opportunities to perform experiments in the university civil labs. The experience I gained at UON made me confident enough to solve and understand the real-life design problems by myself today.”

Initially, Dheeraj did not have any specific career goals at the start of his degree, but as he began to complete his degree, he started to build his career goals, which included attaining an internship.

“As I was going through my degree I started building my career goals. Therefore, as soon as I was in 4th year of the university, I had a target to get an internship in one of the civil engineering fields and I was able to achieve that in no time.”

Later, Dheeraj’s goal was to secure a full-time job as a graduate structural engineer in Newcastle. He proactively provided his resume to numerous local engineering companies and attended countless interviews. All his hard work paid off when Dheeraj secured a full-time graduate position as a Graduate Structural Engineer at Northrop Consulting Engineers, a leading Australian engineering firm.

“Now, I have a goal to gain experience in my field and become a successful chattered engineer.”

Dheeraj’s advice to future international students wanting to study at the University of Newcastle is to take advantage of the University’s immense number of opportunities tailored to your degree, such as industry-related events or lectures from professionals and public events.

“To achieve your goals, an individual must go through many obstacles like language barriers, socialising in groups and gaining confidence in themselves. This is only achievable if an individual starts taking initiatives towards their weaknesses in the university period, so that as soon as graduation comes, they are fully prepared for the real-world industry problems.”

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Dheeraj Kumar

Dheeraj Kumar chose The University of Newcastle for quality education, to follow in his father's footsteps in Civil Engineering and ultimately secure an internship and full-time job.

This degree offered me hands-on, practical experience in typical civil engineering problems by providing opportunities to perform experiments in the university civil labs.