For Parents & Teachers
A straight answer to the two questions you probably have: what is this, and what does it collect from the kid or student using it?
What this is
Engineering Exploration is a free, static website (see About) built by a college student to give middle school, high school, and college students an honest look at what engineers in different fields actually do — not a recruiting pitch, not a list of job titles. Every field page includes the unglamorous parts on purpose: common misconceptions, what people actually dislike about the work, and how competitive the job market really is, alongside a full course roadmap (AP, IB, and international equivalents) for students trying to plan ahead.
It is not a curriculum, not affiliated with any school or university, and not a substitute for talking to a school counselor or an actual working engineer. See Sources & Methodology for exactly how the content was researched and what's cited versus editorial judgment.
What it stores, and what it doesn't
There are no accounts, no sign-up, and no ads. As of September 2026, this site also uses a small amount of anonymous traffic analytics (the fifth item below) — beyond that, nothing about what a student clicks on or answers is tracked or sent anywhere. Specifically:
- Bookmarking a field and the day-streak counter ("You've explored 3 of 16 fields") are saved using the browser's local storage — a small file that lives only on that device, in that browser. It's never sent to us or anyone else, there's no account attached to it, and it disappears if the browser's data is cleared. Nobody but the person using that browser can see it.
- The interest quiz's answers and results exist only in the browser while it's open, and disappear the moment the page is closed or reloaded — nothing is sent anywhere or saved.
- Every reflection prompt (on challenge pages and the Day in the Life feature) is a plain text box that is never saved, submitted, or sent anywhere — it's there for the student's own thinking, not for anyone else to read.
- The optional "remember my grade level" feature only ever lives in the browser's memory for that one visit, never in a cookie, local storage, or on a server — closing the tab erases it completely.
- This site uses Vercel Web Analytics to see anonymous, aggregate traffic — total visits and which pages are popular. It doesn't use cookies, and per Vercel's own privacy documentation, it's not designed to identify or re-identify an individual visitor — visit data is automatically discarded after 24 hours, not kept permanently.
- There is no login, no profile, and no way for this site to identify who is using it.
In practice, that means it's safe to hand to a student without setting anything up first. The bookmarks and streak counter save a little information, but only inside that one browser — there's no record anywhere we, or anyone else, could look at afterward, and the anonymous traffic analytics above can't be tied back to any one student. (The site is hosted on Vercel, which — like any web host — may keep standard server-level access logs as part of normal infrastructure, separate from the Web Analytics described above.)
How it might actually be useful
- As a discussion starter: the interest quiz gives a student a low-stakes way to react to "what sounds interesting?" instead of "what do you want to be?"
- As a classroom or club activity: the hands-on challenges list real materials, step-by-step instructions, and a way to measure whether it actually worked — usable with what most classrooms already have.
- As a course-planning conversation: the math roadmap breaks down what AP, IB, and equivalent courses actually map to which engineering interests, which can help when a student is choosing electives.
- As a reality check: the comparisons page and the misconceptions on every field page exist specifically to correct assumptions before a student builds a whole plan around one.