How Engineering Students can Earn Money while Studying?

Doing an engineering course in India is very pricey. On average, a four-year engineering course costs anything between Rs.500,000 to Rs.1 million per year, depending upon the institute, its popularity and location. Parents have also to spend on living expenses such as hostel accommodation, food and other essentials of their daughter or son studying engineering.

Education Loans are Common

Majority of parents are unable to bear these expenses out of pocket, unless they’re fairly affluent or wealthy.

Therefore, students avail education loans from bank and Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) to finance their engineering studies. Unless you get an excellent, high-paying job immediately upon graduation, repaying an education loan can prove extremely difficult.

The Cascade Effect of Loan

• Taking an education loan isn’t bad. It enables students to follow a career of their choice.
• But if you’ve chosen a third grade engineering college and graduated without skills, you won’t get a high paying job.
• In fact, you might not get any engineering job at all.
• Inability to repay student loan has cascade or long-term effect on your life.
• Your parents or relatives will have to repay on your behalf. And worse, you might have to default on the loan.
• Loan default or delays in repayments adversely affect your credit scores. In India, the ideal credit score is 900.
• However, to get a loan or credit card, a bank or NBFC requires a credit score of 750.
• If your student loan remains unpaid or repayment is late, your credit score takes a nosedive.
• This means, you might not be able to get loans for more important purposes such as buying a house.

Escaping the Debt Trap

However, engineering students can easily save themselves from this vicious debt trap. And that’s by working part-time as engineering student and earning some money. You can use the income to pay off the loan earlier and get debt free.

Understandably, as engineering student, your prime focus would be on studying. However, there’re excellent part-time and freelance work too that you can easily perform during free time and earn decent income.

How Engineering Students can Earn Money

There’re countless ways any engineering student can earn money while studying. In this article, we’ll discuss the best and highest paying work that any engineering student can perform. And that too without disturbing your studies or course timings.

Technical Transcriptions

• Doing technical transcriptions is one of the ways how engineering students can earn money while studying.
• There’re two ways that you can work as part-time technical transcriber.
• The first one is by joining a company that provides technical transcriptions to engineering companies and industries.
• The second, by working from your hostel dorm or home as technical transcriber for a transcriptions company or even an engineering firm.
• That brings us to the question, what are technical transcriptions? In simple words, technical transcriptions means listening to discussions or chat between two or more engineers regarding a design, situation or solution, among others.
• And you’ll write a short yet accurate summary of what was spoken. It should include all relevant and important details of the conversation.
• The second type of technical transcription is writing complex engineering designs in simple words that even a layperson can understand easily.
• That’s useful when creating user manuals for people that don’t have engineering background. This is a well-paying part-time job.

Blogging

• Any engineering student that has a flair for writing can earn lot of money while studying by becoming a blogger.
• Obviously, you might wonder, why blogger of all the things? The answer is simple, blogging allows you to earn infinite amount of money in your spare time, if you get things right.
• The first thing you can do is read how can you start your own blog & what are the things needed to become a successful blogger.
• It would provide vital insights into what blogging exactly involves.
• Furthermore, blogging needn’t be only about engineering or your profession or something like that.
• It could be about your hobbies, your city, town or village or just about anything.
• Blogging doesn’t require much skills, except good writing skills. If you can do an excellent digital marketing course on the sidelines of your engineering studies, you’ll be in a win-win situation.
• Blogging can prove to be a very relaxing and recreational activity.
• Furthermore, you also develop an extra skill that can provide passive income throughout your life.

Online Tutoring

Online tutoring is big business nowadays. As engineering student, you too can become an online tutor. For this, you’ll require excellent knowledge about some subjects of your engineering curriculum. Or, you can teach about subjects you had at school or college too. For example, you can become an online tutor simply by teaching engineering aspirants how to crack tough entrance exams too.

There’re several websites where you can register to work as online tutor. These websites are in India and abroad. You’ll have to create own tutorials and lessons. You needn’t have any previous teaching experience. However, if you have that special manner and style in presenting lessons, you can work as online tutor. Depending upon which website you’re registering, it’s possible to earn money as engineering student in foreign currency too. Because foreign websites will pay you in US Dollars.

Working as Apprentice

Engineering is all about skills. Generally, topnotch engineering colleges will equip you with all skills that are typical to your degree. Unfortunately, you may be studying at an engineering college that lacks such facilities.

Hence, you’ll join the ranks of that large population of unemployed engineers. However, you can prevent this predicament. And as engineering student, you can make money while studying too. Work as an apprentice for any nearby company that deals with your field of engineering. As apprentice, you’ll acquire amazing practical knowledge and skills that equip you for a great career.

Lots of companies hire engineering students as apprentices and pay them some salary too. This means, you have two benefits: the income and the work experience. An experience certificate goes long way in securing you that dream job upon completion of your course. You’ll be able to prove your skills.

Search Engine Evaluation

Search engine evaluation might sound off the track for most engineering students. However, there’s nothing to worry about. Indeed, this work isn’t as complicated as you might think and nor does it require you to be a computer or software engineering student.

Instead, search engine owners look for ordinary persons to work as search engine evaluators. That’s because they’re looking for first hand reviews from laypersons rather than IT experts and software engineers.

Basically, search engine evaluators check the user friendliness of various search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and others.

You can find such search engine evaluator jobs on any freelancing website such as Upwork.com or Flexjobs.com. Some can also be found on Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com, among others. Your work is to test the search engine with specific keywords and match the results.

Search engines work on something known as algorithms. If these algorithms are faulty, a user will get wrong search results.

Therefore, each search engine owner tries to fine-tune their algorithms to give the best user experience. And they do so by seeking reviews from common people that use search engines.

Mystery Shopping

• For women engineering students, mystery shopping is a fantastic way to earn money while studying.
• Understandably, the term mystery shopping can sound eerie or even scary to you. Actually, this job hasn’t anything to do with scary mysteries. Instead, you’ll be shopping on behalf of someone, while keeping your purpose for making purchases a top secret.
• Mystery shopping is an integral part of market research and surveys. It’s a very enjoyable side gig that can earn you lots of money and often get you free stuff too.
• You’ll have to register online at any major mystery shopping website. Once your application is accepted, you can expect assignments. These employer will provide you a list of stuff to buy from your neighborhood supermarket or a megastore in your city or even an online store.
• Sometimes, you might have to visit high-end boutiques, beauty parlors or star-rated restaurants and hotels.
• As mystery shopper you have to observe certain things such as quality of customer service, taste, pricing and other details that the employer wants.
• The employer pays for your mystery shopping sprees and the local commute. Once you’ve finished shopping, you’ve to write an in-depth review about your observation and experience for the employer.
• The company that has indirectly hired you uses your reviews to upgrade its customer service to bag more customers. In brief, mystery shopping is a legitimate form of market research.

In Conclusion

There’re many other ways how engineering students can earn money while studying. One example is by completing paid online surveys. However, these will not pay you as much money as the six part-time work I mention above. Furthermore, as engineering student you wouldn’t have so much time free to take up some really serious side gig. Therefore, these high-paying yet simpler tasks are much better to earn money while studying.