Firstly, congratulations on your degree.
Secondly, me.... gripe !.... surely not?
Third, the RAeS.
In my opinion, the RAeS is, for graduate (and many other) Engineers, the best club in town. You want to be in the system for many good reasons, but to coin a few...
- Access to the library
- Access to meetings
- Discounted attendance at conferences
- Access to careers advice
- Networking
- The ability to consult, or even sit on, the specialist committees that shape where our profession is going.
- Prestige. MRAeS means something anywhere in the world aerospace industry.
So, as an absolute minimum, you should join as an Affiliate. However assuming that you are under 31, the rate as an Associate (equivalent to the older Grad.RAeS, and which entitles you to use ARAeS after your name) is the same at
£58. If you use it, it does help in job-hunting, moving forward to CEng later, and so on.
Most (graduate) employers by the way will usually re-imburse your professional institution membership anyhow, but if they don't you can put it down on your tax return as a legitimate expense, which means that you get 25% of it back. So, as an employed under-31 YO the most you should really be out of pocket is £43.50.
G