Do I really want to be an electrical engineer?

[QueHuong]

I'm gonna be an incoming EE major at UCincinnati. I'll just echo some of the more important tips my uncle gave me, who originally majored in EE but switched to CS at the very last moment (4th year or something like that).

- My uncle switched because he found EE to be too tedious; and it was during this time that he started getting interested in computers and was drawn to programming.

- According to him, EE gave him a really good background in programming - he only had to take a few additional courses to get a CS degree. He likes EE because it developed a kind of dominating attitude about problems: "There is always a solution, you just have to find it." And that attitude carried over to his programming job. He's now an Oracle database administrator making close to a 6 digit salary.

- Engineers have high pay at first, but the increase is not as good as someone in the IT or programming industry since you don't interact with the business people in the company as much. Whereas engineers make more than programmers at first, but in 10 years, the latter will make more.

My uncle made me realize I probably find EE to be too tedious too. After the first year or so, I'm probably gonna switch my major to computer engineering to see how far I can go from there - I'll be exposed to both engineering and programming. From there, I'll pick a career course (engineer or programmer) after being exposed to both fields.

 

[Stojakapimp]

Even if computer programming were the way for me to go, it is a closed major for me and I won't be able to major in it unless I switch schools. But i really think I would like engineering better. But then again, the two are somewhat related and I will be taking programming classes so who knows, even with an EE degree I may also be able to get a programming job

 

[TLfromAI]

One more year left for my EE degree at Kansas State. Every year my class gets smaller and smaller...
Just make sure it is what you want to do and remember, everyone changes majors once in college. I used to be a business major until I realized I was smarter than everyone in my honors classes. Thinking that they are better than everyone else is what engineers do best.

 

[Mday]

I am going for an EE degree. Chances are I will not be practicing my degree. But then, when I graduate with that EE degree, I will also have a degree in Math.

 

[QueHuong]

One more year left for my EE degree at Kansas State. Every year my class gets smaller and smaller...
Just make sure it is what you want to do and remember, everyone changes majors once in college.

That reminds me...I forgot to add that if you want to do something with math, go ahead and major in engineering. If you find it too difficult or whatever, it'll be easier to switch to an easier major, rather than majoring in something easy and then switching to something harder like EE. Because EE is so math intensive, I'm sure you'll be as well prepared in the math areas if you switch to a different engineering discipline or to programming.

 

[The_Dude8]

for all the Electrical engineerbeers that are working right now, what % of the stuff u learned in school apply to your job, i.e. convolution, laplace, signals and system, VLSI, matlab, DSP, circuit design, Current Mirror, RF, Magnectics,etc.

i m a recent graduate EE from SDSU (class of 2002), searching for a job, any recommedation?? the thing i regret most is that during my schooling, i did not apply for internship, now finding a EE job w/o any xperience is difficult.

 

[jteef]

you found EE too tedious, but not programming?

are you nuts?

I graduated from georgia tech a year ago with a degree in electrical engineering. Specifically in EDA, which is probably the broadest area of EE, covering analog and basic digital electronics, RF, microwave, audio, IC design, etc. If you like programming, you might consider an EE degree with a focus in Digital Signal Processing. I dunno if that falls under the EE or CmpE school at UCSD tho. It is a lot of programming and all my friends who went that route have jobs right now while I do not!.

I hated programming, even though I was pretty good at it. somehow i became the designated 'stay up all night and teach friends how to program the day before a big project was due' person. always pissed me off when they got higher grades on stuff 🙂

I dont have a job yet and I am not exactly sure why. A lot of it is because I have been somewhat lazy about it recently and had a crumby GPA. But a lot of it is not. I had an onsite interview with panasonic for an OEM car audio thing all scheduled, until at the last minute the lady asked for my gpa, so I acted counter to the GT tradition made famous by George O'Leary and didn't lie... That really pissed me off. I go to the GT career things and talk with 100 companies and hear back from 2 of them. My resume is pretty good except for lack of experience and I'm pretty sure I'm not a displeasing guy to talk to or anything like that so I haven't really figured that out yet.

everyone keeps telling me to join the military now...not sure about that one yet.

jt

 

[Stojakapimp]

I doubt you will have to join the military when you have a degree in EE. You'll find something. But I heard that having experience pays off big time. One of my friends had a brother who had like a 1.something as an undergrad and went to MIT simply because he had a lot of experience under his belt. Pretty soon I plan on trying to get an internship somewhere or perhaps get a low level position at an engineering lab...hopefully it'll pay off and get me into MIT too. 🙂

 

[quirky]

Originally posted by: Stojakapimp

Originally posted by: Chau
hey, i go to uc san diego also..right now i'm undeclared though...before i applied i was choosing between computer science or comp engineering and i coudlnt decide so i chose undeclared thinking that after i got in, i'd choose then..but once i got in, they told me that both CS and comptuer engineering were full and almost impossible to switch into it...so my alternative was going into electrical engineering...still havent declared it as a major yet, not even pre-electrical engineering, but planning on doing so soon...

which college are u at? marshall here..

did u take ece 20a?? a lot of my friends took it and told me it was very hard and like the average on one of the tests was 40/200 lol...what about physics 2a?? have u taken that yet?? i did so horrible in there, failed it last quarter, so i gotta retake it next year..

Yeah, it sucks about CS and CE being closed courses.
I'm at Muir, so Marshalls not all that far.
And yeah, I took ece 20a. It was a pain in the butt. I scored a 30 on that test you mentioned...and it was out of 280 points. But I stuck with it because i knew the curve would be good...plus I knew they just made it hard to try to weed people out. Anyways, I ended up with a C which isn't as good as I hoped for, but I least I got the class out of the way now. And I'm going to be taking Physics 2a next quarter, so hopefully that'll go well...I'll be living in an apt next quarter so that should help.

30/ 280!?!? dammit im screwed 😛

 

[Stojakapimp]

nah...don't sweat it. I actually heard that that midterm was the hardest test they had ever given that class since the department opened. But even if you fail a midterm, just look how you are doing compared to everyone else. A lot of people dropped out after that midterm, but I stuck with it and teacher told the rest of us that it would be pretty hard for us to fail the class. He was pretty cool about it. So I'm glad I stuck with it. Just remember they try to weed people out fast

 

[XFreebie]

UCSD fo sheezy

ECE = EKE! :Q

i took ece20a, it was with that french boris guy for lecture and that russian guy for lab. ugh, i scored 50/200 for the midterm (avg WAS 40/200). but i think i failed the final and ended up getting a D in the class

should i take ece20b next quarter or retake 20a?

oh, and PHY2B is hard as @!#$, i didnt know how to do a single problem on the final and ended guessing on every question. i ended up getting a C though

but should i retake ece20a?

 

[Stojakapimp]

Yeah, I had the same class with Boris and then that mean Russian guy. But I thought the midterm was worth 280 points? and 50's pretty good. Sucks that you ended up with a D though. All those lab write ups are what saved me in that class. Those were about the only thing I got good scores on. Just out of curiousity, when did you have lab? And about ECE20A, I know that for me, because I'm a pre-electrical engineer, I have to get a C or better in all the prerequisite classes to be able to actually declare the major. So you should look into and make sure that you can even continue with the major. I'm sure you can though if you are already declared. So if you can, it's really up to how to think you know the material that was covered. Like do you think you have a good grasp of it or were you just totally lost?

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: Stojakapimp
So i'm declared as a pre-electrical engineer (I have to fulfill some requirements before i'm actually declared) and I've been wondering if this is what I really want to do. I had no knowledge of anything electrically engineeringish before my freshman year of college, so it is pretty interesting to learn some new things. Of course it was pretty basic so i'm kinda hoping that things get even cooler. But my main question here is what kind of job oppurtunities are there out there? I feel like I want to work with a lot of people, use a lot of math, dress up in a suit every day (or perhaps just often), and not sit in a cubicle 24/7. so is this type of job possible with electrical engineering? I just want to make sure that i'll still have a social life and not become some nerd who works in his basement refusing to make contact with the outside world.

I had the same feeling. I originally was majoring in CSE , computersciene and computer engineering here. the engineering part is mostly ee stuff that has to do with computers. i've taken like 2 ee classes, and wow i hated them. those people work like 12 hours a day too, one of my cousins graduated ee, and its like that. thereis no sleep in ee. i'm a straight cs now, and hell i dont really even wanna be a programmer either. give it like a semester, and well switch out after you got a taste. i am really bad at physics that is non mechanical in nature, such as wave functions. if youa re too get out of it now.

 

[XFreebie]

i did well on the labs too and such, the quizzes were a bit spotty. i can understand the hw problems he had on his website from the book, but the problems he creates... are way different from the book.

anyway, UCSD lets u retake upto 4 classes to replace the *grade* to improve gpa, but do u have to retake it right away of anytime? cuz i already signed up for ece20b and it didnt restrict me, but will they yank me out later? or could i finish thru all the required stuff and in my 4th year retake 4 courses i did poor on (such as ece20a) to replace the grades and bump up my GPA.

my friend who failed PHY2b is retaking it next fall, while he got a C in ece20a, im supposed to be his lab partner for 20b


dam, where's that lotto when u need it

 

[Stojakapimp]

Originally posted by: XFreebie
i did well on the labs too and such, the quizzes were a bit spotty. i can understand the hw problems he had on his website from the book, but the problems he creates... are way different from the book.

anyway, UCSD lets u retake upto 4 classes to replace the *grade* to improve gpa, but do u have to retake it right away of anytime? cuz i already signed up for ece20b and it didnt restrict me, but will they yank me out later? or could i finish thru all the required stuff and in my 4th year retake 4 courses i did poor on (such as ece20a) to replace the grades and bump up my GPA.

my friend who failed PHY2b is retaking it next fall, while he got a C in ece20a, im supposed to be his lab partner for 20b


dam, where's that lotto when u need it

i'm not too sure what your options are about taking 20b. IMHO, I think you would probably need to take 20A over again before you can take 20B. I mean it is a sequence so it doesn't seem like you can take them out of order. But hopefully you'll get into 20B just fine. And about your lab partner, it isn't too necessary for you to have the same partner so don't worry about that too much. Like it would suck to have another lab partner, but you wouldn't really be screwing him over