This post is a part-review, part-advice written at the end of my undergrad at University of Waterloo in the Mechatronics Engineering program (colloquially referred to as Tron). My aim here is to give a holistic, realistic summary of my Tron experience. Note that everything is written based on my personal experience and anecdotes from people around me; thus, it is definitely not representative of other people’s experiences. Take everything with a grain of salt!
Who is this for? This is primarily aimed at prospective students (or parents of prospective students) thinking about going to Waterloo for engineering, though much of the content would likely be helpful for current students as well. Essentially, I tried to answer the questions that I had when I was an applicant and in my younger years. I assume that the reader has some basic knowledge of Waterloo engineering; if there’s some terminology you don’t understand, you may need to search it up elsewhere.
TLDR: would I recommend Tron? Yes. I believe that Waterloo Engineering degrees have the best return-on-investment for Canadians, and Tron is a overall a great, flexible program that opens up a ton of different paths. Obviously, there are flaws (covered below), but overall my experience and the experience of many around me seems to be overwhelmingly positive.
Overview
What exactly is Mechatronics? At Waterloo, the Tron program includes courses in mechanical, electrical, and software engineering to help you learn to build electromechanical systems. This ranges from autonomous vehicles to robots to 3D printers to smart thermostats; basically everything is an electromechanical system. Like all Waterloo Engineering degrees, Tron is part of the co-operative education program; we are required to complete at least 5 internships (“co-ops”), littered throughout the degree. Most people do 6. Because of the co-op structure, the degree is 4 and 8 months long (for example, I attended from September 2021 to April 2026). In contrast, the standard degree is typically a year shorter.
Academics
The Waterloo engineering program consists of 8 study terms where you take courses at school. Every term typically consists of 5 or 6 courses; typically, you will have five technical engineering courses every term, and maybe one non-engineering elective as your 6th course. In 4A and 4B you will get to pick some of the technical courses (known as technical electives or TEs); before that, everything is picked for you. Interestingly, Mechatronics is often grouped together with mechanical engineering at Waterloo due to being in the same Department of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering (MME). In actuality, the courses are administered by several departments in collaboration, with most of them being from ECE and some also from SYDE. If I recall correctly, we were told that the proportion for ECE/ME/SYDE/SE is 60/20/10/10.
Curriculum
The most unique aspect of Tron compared to Waterloo’s Engineering programs is its breadth – we learn foundational skills in a lot of areas. Looking at the course list, this starts with fundamentals of math/physics/engineering in 1A/1B, expands to more advanced topics ranging from thermodynamics to control systems in 2A/2B/3A/3B, and advanced technical electives in 4A/4B.
There are pros and cons to the breadth of Tron. The upside is that if you’re a high school student with a broad idea of “I want to be an engineer” but no specific idea of what you want with respect to mechanical vs. electrical vs. software, Tron offers exposure to everything. Similarly, it offers relatively more flexibility than other programs; people around me in Tron become successful mechanical, electrical, and software engineers. People even go into quantitative finance! I think this flexibility is rare in other programs; for example, a Software Engineering or CS major is much more locked in to a specific niche.
The downside is that you naturally have to trade depth for the breadth. Because we have to take more foundational classes covering several different areas, you get less courses that dive deeper into a topic. Thus, a common issue for Trons is that after a few co-ops, they find out that they really like one area (e.g., software), and don’t really like other areas (e.g., mechanical and electrical) as much. Then, when they come back to school, they want to just take more software courses, but are forced to keep taking mechanical and electrical courses, with no technical electives until the final year. It’s also not straightforward to just transfer to another program in Waterloo; the credit transfer process is messy so you might have to delay graduation. This is definitely a very real downside of Tron; if you are already sure that you like a specific area, try and get into that program first.
I specialized into software (robotics software specifically) very early, but decided to stick in Tron. The above sentiment of not enough breadth was not a huge concern for me; I felt that I could overcome the lack of depth, as I always learned a ton on the job during co-op. I also have fairly strong self-directed learning ability, spending a significant amount of time reading textbooks in topics I’m interested in. This has also been made easier by LLMs as one can access to a fairly good personal tutor at a low cost. Furthermore, I felt that it was good to not overspecialize this early on in my career, but instead establish a solid foundation in a broad variety of topics. This is partially for job prospects: despite my software-heavy resume and lack of knowledge compared to my mechanical- and electrical-focused friends, I don’t think it would be that difficult to pivot if I wanted to. On a more abstract philosophical, I just wanted to know more about the broader world and how it works instead of having tunnel vision. While I most likely won’t ever use something like fluid mechanics on the job, why not learn something interesting? And maybe it’ll show up in useful ways down the line!
The main downside of the Tron program, however, is definitely its lack of flexibility.
Courseload and Difficulty
One of the most common questions Is Waterloo engineering hard? Is it stressful? In my opinion, yes and no. Obviously this will vary from person to person, but my experience has been that it easy to do decently but hard to do well. My approximation of the GPA-to-effort curve is shown below.
Specifically, I have found it is fairly trivial to get an average around 80% with light studying (just cramming before exams); this is basically what I did in my 1B/2A terms. Much of the time, there are lab, assignment, or project components to your final grade that are relatively easy to do well on; then, you just have to not do catastrophically terrible on your exams and you’ll land somewhere around an 80%. However, I found that it’s quite a bit harder to do well, like getting an average above 90%. While certainly not impossible, the margin for error becomes much smaller. On a heavily weighted final exam (for example, my Calculus II final was worth 65% of the total course grade), just a couple wrong answers might immediately take your mark out of the 90-100% range. Thus, getting a higher average requires exponentially more time and effort to not make as few errors as possible.
Of course, all of this is dependent on the term-specific courseload and professors, etc. Certain professors or courses give out lots of high marks, while others like to throw in difficult test questions or have extremely time-consuming labs. UW Flow is a good resource to find info on things like this, although you often won’t get a choice anyway!
In terms of time commitment and stress, you’ll definitely be busy during school terms. Even if you are saving all the cramming for the night before an exam, there’s still a steady stream of deliverables to hand in. At the same time, it’s probably not all that bad, and certainly not as bad as the impression left by the scary-looking timetables (see an example below). Lecture attendance is not mandatory (though often helpful!), tutorial attendance is even less mandatory, and many labs are only bi-weekly. You can definitely have a social life, exercise, and party while still doing reasonably well in school.
One common criticism of Waterloo that relates to courseload difficulty and stress is the quality of instruction. Often, course content might not actually be super challenging, but doing well in the course is challenging due to the quality of instruction, whether that be the quality of the lectures, assignments/projects, exam preparation materials, and exams themselves. I strongly agree with this criticism; while there are certainly great professors, I felt that Waterloo could do a much better job encouraging higher quality of instruction. I’m not able to compare to other institutions, so it may be a broader issue in academia in general (maybe maybe professors are hired for research and not their teaching ability?), but I definitely feel that this is one of the most fair criticisms of Waterloo.
Do grades even matter? Should you care?
Most of the time, not really. Very few employers even ask for your GPA. There are only a few cases that I can think of:
- You want to go to grad school. Then, you probably want to maintain at least an 85%, and the higher the better.
- You are searching for your first few co-ops. GPA may factor more into your first few co-op searches because you don’t have much else on your resume to stand out.
- There are a few employers and opportunities that do ask for your GPA. The ones that I’m aware of are certain quant shops and academic research internships. Notably, doing a Waterloo Undergraduate Research Assistantships (URA) requires a GPA of 80% in the previous term.
Thus, I think a nice sweet spot for most people is in the 80-87% range. At this level, your GPA is good enough that you won’t ever get questioned about it or lose any opportunities, you don’t need to put in so much effort that you have no life outside of school; there’s plenty of time to look for co-op positions (this can be very time consuming!), and do all the other things you want to do. This is basically the same advice that Andrej Karpathy gave in his post: Andrej’s advice for success.
Exchange
In later terms, typically 3A or 3B, many students choose to go on exchange. I went on exchange during my 3B term to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). I highly highly recommend this.
Typically, you take equivalent courses at your exchange school, which are approved by an advisor. Oftentimes courses will no line up perfectly so you may have to make up courses before you go on exchange or after you come back; I took two of 3B courses during co-op before exchange. Notably, courses taken over exchange are taken as Credit/No Credit; as long as you pass they’ll just give you the credit on your transcript. This means you can slack off and travel as much as you want, and as long as you pass, it won’t affect your GPA negatively. (Although conversely, if you do really well it won’t positively impact your GPA either). During my 4-month exchange, I spent almost half the time traveling to 8 different countries and made great memories with new friends.
Transferring in or out
From what I’ve seen, transferring in and out of Tron is not very difficult but certainly not trivial. People who transferred in from other Engineering programs such as Mechanical Engineering and Environment Engineering had to make up missing courses. It depends on when you transfer, but sometimes you may have to take an extra year to graduate.
Make sure you have a good reason to transfer! I’ve seen some people transfer to programs like CS with the aim of getting better software co-ops, but end up getting worse software co-ops than Trons. There are certainly valid reasons to transfer (really don’t like the content, looking for a lighter workload), but differences in co-op opportunities should not be one of them in my opinion. I’ve seen Trons get jobs at almost every conceivable company one might want to work at. At least in terms of name/brand value, all of the major degrees at Waterloo (CS/SE/Math/ECE/MTE/SYDE/ME) have little difference. If you’re having trouble getting co-ops and in one of these programs, your program is probably not the main cause.
In more rare cases, I’ve also seen people transfer to other schools. Waterloo certainly might not be for everybody, so this is understandable. This is likely much more personal/school-dependent, so I don’t have much to comment on here.
Dropping out
Some people choose to drop out. This can be for a variety of reasons, from not being able to handle the coursework, to founding a startup or joining a company full-time. Once again, this is very circumstance-dependent so I don’t have much to say here. What I will say is, in general, having a degree is very useful; for example, it’s much harder to get a visa to work in another country without a degree. I think in most cases the upside of a degree and also experiencing college life for 5 years is worth the time investment. So think carefully before dropping out!
Co-op
Everyone knows that the co-operative education program is the most famed part of Waterloo. In general, we are given the opportunity to do 6 co-op terms, 4 months each for the chance to get 24 months of total experience. There is some flexibility to this: for example, it’s possible to graduate with only 5 co-op credits, or people taken 8-month positions that count for 2 credits. I personally did 6 co-op terms at 4 different companies for a total of 23 months of work experience (one of the co-ops was only 3 months long).
The Waterloo co-op is famous for good reason; I would go so far to say that it singlehandedly carries the value of the degree. Waterloo indisputably produces some of the best graduate it comes to employability. Many are able to get high-paying positions in the tech industry across the world. Why is this?
The first reason is the sheer volume of work experience. Internships are one of the most effective ways to become employable, but a typical four-year program realistically gives you three opportunities (one per summer) for a total of about twelve months. Waterloo effectively doubles that exposure, which is a huge resume boost. More work terms also means more chances to explore. Instead of committing early to a narrow path, you can rotate across roles, companies, and even industries, gradually refining preferences. This kind of iterative discovery is difficult to replicate in a traditional program. Just as importantly, repeated exposure to recruiting cycles builds interview skill, a form of experience that compounds quickly and is often undervalued.
There is also some structural advantage in terms of progression. Landing a highly competitive, well-paying role on a first attempt is unlikely with little or no experience. Most people begin with smaller companies or research roles, then leverage that experience to move into more recognized organizations, and eventually into top-tier positions (however you want to define this is up to you – it could be compensation, impact, or interest). Having six cycles instead of three effectively doubles the number of attempts to make that progression. It creates room for early missteps while still allowing time to recover, improve, and advance.
All of this can be taken together as a sort of compounding return or a positive feedback. More work terms lead to a stronger resume; a stronger resume increases the likelihood of securing better roles; better roles further strengthen the résumé. Each cycle builds on the last. By graduation, many students already have full-time offers from highly competitive employers; this would be significantly harder to reach, or at least far less predictable, without the additional iterations the Waterloo’s co-op structure provides.
One valid point is that you still start at the same position as other schools; as a first-year, everyone has basically nothing on their resumes. Waterloo tries to make this a bit easier through their internal job board, WaterlooWorks, such that you have less competition (don’t have to compete against other schools). I definitely found WaterlooWorks to be helpful in securing my first few positions, but it certainly does not “guarantee” you a job in any way; lots of people struggle with finding their first few co-ops. After the first few, people tend to move off of WaterlooWorks and just apply directly, to get access to a wider pool of jobs, taking advantage of the fact that their resume is now more likely to be strong enough to compete.
Advice
Streams
A popular question that shows up often on Reddit is “should I choose stream 4 or stream 8?” The
Return Offers
Other
Finances
Culture
Personal statistics
Below I’ve compiled some numbers and statistics from my time at Waterloo.
Academics
Grade averages per term:
| Term | Average |
|---|---|
| 1A | 89.64 |
| 1B | 79.18 |
| 2A | 81.00 |
| 2B | 88.20 |
| 3A | 89.40 |
| 3B | N/A – exchange term |
| 4A | 92.60 |
| 4B | 94.25 |
| Overall |
Lowest and highest grades: MTE 119 (64), MTE 241 (100) Favourite and least favourite courses:
Co-op
Co-op location and salary:
| Co-op term | Location | Hourly salary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Remote | $22.50 CAD |
| 2 | Remote | $26.00 CAD |
| 3 | San Francisco, CA | $50.00 USD |
| 4 | San Fransisco, CA | $50.00 USD |
| 5 | Remote | $41.00 CAD |
| 6 | Santa Clara, CA | $70.25 USD |
| Note that my hourly salary calculation here includes all compensation that lands in my bank account, such as housing stipends for my 6th co-op term. However, it excludes other perks such as plane tickets, free food, gym access, etc. |
FAQ
Why did I choose Waterloo?
Waterloo vs. Stanford vs. MIT vs. …
How does Waterloo compare to other schools? I can’t really say for sure because I’ve never attended other schools; I can only make an educated guess based on my experiences.