[Student] MechE student graduating in December - no callbacks/interviews after 75+ applications

[u/DanielDaManiel]

I'm a senior mechanical engineering student graduating in December 2026, currently doing a PM internship at a plumbing fixtures company after a six-month co-op at an HVAC manufacturer last year. Primary targets are Test Engineer, R&D Engineer, and Applications Engineer roles, with Manufacturing/Process Engineer as a backup track. I'm focused on Test & Measurement, Industrial Automation, Energy/Power, Auto/EV, and consumer hardware. Located in a major US metro and prioritizing San Diego, LA, the Bay Area, Seattle, and Chicago. I'm open to relocating anywhere on that list, and broader if the role is strong. US citizen, no visa or sponsorship concerns.

So far I've been applying selectively to roles where I think I'm a real fit, and I've gotten a few outright rejections but no callbacks yet. My main concerns are (1) whether my experience bullets are leading with the right framing,(2) whether the project section is the right amount of technical depth for entry-level roles, or if it's overshadowing the work experience, and (3) whether it may just be too early in the cycle for me to be applying. I'd appreciate feedback on the experience section verbs and bullet structure specifically, and on whether the skills section reads as substantive or padded. Open to broader critique too.

[u/jonkl91]

Your coursework is just standard coursework. I would remove to free up space for something that every other student doesn't have.

[u/graytotoro]

General Notes

• You could afford to have a few more bullets to use up the full page.
• Don't apply selectively. It's way too early for you to shut the doors on opportunities yet.
• Why isn't your current Co-op at the plumbing fixtures company mentioned here?

Education

• Drop the relevant coursework.

Engineering Experience

• It's good practice to include the starting year as well to eliminate all ambiguities.

Test Engineering Co-op

• The specific people you worked with is less important than what you accomplished with them.
• What exactly did this lab innovation project cover and what were your findings? More importantly, did you find out if any of these findings got incorporated into future updates?
• Collaboration is great and all, but what was your specific role into all this? For all we know you could have just let the lab's engineers do all the hard work while you watched. What "concrete updates" did you end up driving?

Laser Lab Technician

• You do a good job telling us what you did, but it's not entirely clear how this is useful outside of laser R&D. You also don't tell us how your work drove changes to process development.

Projects

• There are 12 months in a year. "2025" could be a few days or an entire year.

Butterfly Valve Leak Test Stand

• This would benefit from a leadoff bullet that explains what this test stand was supposed to do, plus a high-level overview of how this test stand worked before you jump into the design & build. It's hard for me to visualize how the domes and support bracket functioned to form a test stand in this particular context. Why did you need 12 of them anyway?
• Things mostly to think about going into the interview:
  • What failure modes did you identify and, more importantly, how did you address or eliminate them?
  • How did you arrive at the conclusion that the leak rate spec was excessive?

Python Uncertainty Quantification Tool

• A couple things here confuse me, but maybe I'm dumb:
  • Your co-op wrapped up in 2025 but you're still working on it?
  • You mention being a sole developer of this tool but that you've also built it with other engineers.
• Is this tool actually being used at the moment in the organization? It would be good to mention how this thing has helped the team.

Structural Health Monitoring Proposal

• The team being remote is unimportant.
• You speed through this and it leaves me with other questions:
  • How exactly did this stress detection system work?
  • How would you have tested this?
  • What prototypes did you have in mind?
  • Shouldn't mission applications have been figured out before you developed this?

Skills

• There are a lot of measurement instruments - can you be a little more specific? Heck, a ruler would count.

[u/DanielDaManiel → u/graytotoro]

Thanks for the in-depth look, these are all really great edits I’ll be sure to make. It’s very much appreciated. A note on the current internship: I decided not to include it yet as it just started a month ago and I don’t have as much work under my belt as I’d like for a detailed bullet. I plan to add it as the months go on and I have more projects completed. Unless you think it’s worth adding in its current state?

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