How demanding is engineering? (Electrical / Computer Engineering)

I can't imagine driving as train would be so hard that you'd need all that math, but I don't know for sure. 

 

Seriously, I'm probably not qualified to comment considering I scraped by college algebra and have never taken trigonometry, calculus, or physics but I will anyway. I would guess that if you did okay in physics, calculus, and trigonometry you would do well in the engineering. But I'm certain the real engineers on here could help more.

 

(We need a train smiley). 

I'm a converted EE from CE after my 2nd year in undergrad. I got into arguably the best research school in Canada, U of T as a CE student w/ 93 average. Hated the heavy programming aspects of CE w/ all my guts hence the switching occured. As far as the curriculums are concerned, the 1st 2 years were the same b/w CE and EE, so I didn't incur any disadvantage or penalty for switching over. Not sure about your school but it wouldn't surprise me if they have something very similar. I graduated w/ Honor's B.A.Sc. and also did a Master's at the same school after that...so I don't regret a moment for switching over. Workload especially in the 1st year was not fun...got my lowest AGPA in my 1st year due to those darn programming courses. I absolutely had no experience whatsoever w/ Java or C++, so I seriously had to grind up pretty darn hard in those courses. But worry not. Employers will not care about your 1st year grades but your relevant industry experience and your most recent grades. Even if you are not an A student, if you have experience, they will hire you over someone who has no experience w/ straight A+'s.

 

Calculus is a pretty straightforward subject in eng. From what I understand eng math is different from what math majors are taught and they are kept simple just enough so that engineers can use them as tools in solving real-life problems. They won't get metaphysical or anything like that. I loved doing triple integrations and still remember Green's Theorem to the back of my head but then I never got below 95 in math or math-related (Calculus 1, 2, 3, complex analysis, pde's, probability theory, convex optimization, discrete math, algebra, signal processing, analog circuit electronics, optimal control, stochastic processes etc) in high school or university, so whether you will do well or not depends on how much you enjoy doing those problems.

 

Again how worthy CE/EE's are depends on your experience prior to graduation. So cling onto co-op internships and summer jobs. Good luck.

Edited by joomongj - 3/29/11 at 4:55pm

So I graduated like 15 years ago (University of Toronto) with a bachelor's and master's degree (Chemical Engineering) and let me just say this...my wife was an artsie (that is basically ALL non-engineers....this includes science majors too) and she had between 12 - 14 hours of classes / tutorials a week. She did graduate with an A average from Trinity College at the University of Toronto (for the non-Canadian Head-fiers...this is as good as it gets here in the Great White North for an arts based undergraduate degree...along with a few other select schools).

I had 14 hours of lab a week alone. Total course load was like 40+ hours (lectures, labs, and tutorials)...then throw in 4 hours of homework almost every day (7 days a week)...I had no life...none.

Next to being a father ...that was the hardest thing I had to ever do. Throw in the fact that 2/3 of those in first year don't graduate (and effectively get thrown out as the number of engineers is heavily regulated by the provincial body...certainly adds to the stress!

Please don't let that scare you off...yes it is a lot of hard work (the calculus I took in one semester was a full year course for a math major, etc...), engineering has been a wonderful profession and I couldn't really see myself doing anything else for a living.

Oh...and ERTW.
Edited by MacedonianHero - 3/29/11 at 5:07pm

Yes and no. You form a group of friends and then it's like war...you all want to make it out in the end. As I stated, typically 2/3 won't survive and the workload is killer, so a good support / study group is highly recommended.

But then, they do publish rankings and that does get competitive if you let it.

But on Friday afternoons, our cafeteria (Suds) served beer and played movies and cards...so I have made some life long friendships that now 20 years later are still intact. It's what you make of it.
Edited by MacedonianHero - 3/29/11 at 5:32pm

I just graduated 2 years ago from Northeastern in Boston (close to BU) as a Mechanical engineer and it was a lot of work. I think back now and most of the good times stand out in my mind, but there was a lot of time spent reading, doing ridiculous homework, and being in labs and classes. If you think you are tough enough, it is definately worth the challenge. I graduated with a 3.0 in engineering, but was constantly challenged and learned many interesting things. I could have done something easier (political science or business, no offense to either of those majors), but it wouldn't have been as rewarding for me.

 

There is a lot of math, which I admittedly am not great at, but I was able to get by. CE should have less math and more programming, so if you can hack that, you will be fine.

 

I can't stress enough what others have said, get a good group of friends in major and stick with them. Even though I lived on an engineering floor my Freshman year, I didn't hang out with many engineers. My grades were okay, but when I formed a close group of friends my second year, my grades began to improve. You will find a close group of friends will support you in class and studying and just as much dealing with the other stuff outside. I made a lot of really good friends, a few of whom I still see all the time. It is sad but I haven't been up to Boston in a year and a half, need to get up there and reconnect with some people.

 

If you can deal with the stress most of the time and blow off steam (without going to crazy partying and whatnot) you should be fine. Do something that is challenging, not what is easy or others are doing. You won't regret it.

Edited by sharkz - 3/29/11 at 8:13pm

I am currently in my second semester of engineering at Marquette. They have a program where you go straight into engineering. I assume your college does too since you said you already got accepted to it. The first year is not to hard because your in your transition period. One of my friends is double majoring in computer and electrical and they have a lot of similar classes. It will obviously get harder, but right now it goes that there are weeks where i will be in the library until 3 am every night and then there are days in between where I only have about an hour of homework. I hope it is a great major for careers or else i am screwed 

Will I do okay given the knowledge I have right now?

Yes. Course loads are designed so that entering students should be able to complete the degree in a 4 year timespan. My advice would be to take classes during the summer to lessen the load during the school year if you're not coming in with a lot of credit hours.

Is it major even worth it with our current economy?

Future for the profession looks about as bright as anything that isn't healthcare. (Which is to say a bit dim on an absolute basis.)

Is it possible that American engineers will be outsourced by Indian and Chinese engineers?

Already happening to some extent and industry will likely continue trending in that direction.

How was the workload?

Engineering is relatively brutal compared to other majors. Lots of credit hours and almost zero non-field related electives. I'd say the only students with comparable workloads and course difficulty were the physics and math guys.

Can you describe the atmosphere in your engineering classes?

It was a pretty friendly bunch. Finance/business types have more fun, but it's quite a bit better than dealing with the bloodthirsty guys and gals from the pre-med infested fields.

Engineering is very rewarding if you're into it and get satisfaction from making something work.

College/University for it can be quite challenging, personally, I was spending 10-12 hours at school, sometimes 6 days a week during my last year of college, but I did a dual major and made sure to take all the courses I really wanted instead of just taking bird course electives.

There is TONS of outsourcing for engineering work, especially computer/software/QA.

 

Personally, I'd recommend it if you're into it, technically minded and like solving problems (pretty much a MUST or you'll get bored and want to switch careers).

 

Graduate school for it depends on the field.  Personally, I've interviewed hundreds of people and whether they have college, bachelors, masters or PhD never mattered to me much; in fact, I generally prefer to hire somebody with college or bachelors degrees over masters or doctorate for hands-on positions because they have likely been in the field longer instead of being incredibly academic and knowing the inner workings and theory of everything while drawing a blank at having to apply it (not at all to bash on anybody that has pursued higher education, this is simply speaking from my personal experience and yes, I've had people that were clueless in applying knowledge with masters degrees while I had a few that didn't finish college and were rock stars in their field).  Of course, I'm a minority in this sort of thinking and lots of people in positions to hire pay more to those with higher education.

 

Not straight out of undergrad if you can avoid it. It's a nice to have, but work experience is more critical. It's not too difficult to pick up a masters while employed and many larger employers will pay for it. A doctorate is a different matter as you generally will need to take significant chunks of time off from work, but as with a masters, some employers will provide assistance with this.

Hard to say...I've got a Master's degree (and foolishly spent a year working on a PhD before I got a life and joined to the workforce). Depends on what you want to do really. If you want a life in research or academia, then yes definitely.

If you want to practice as an engineer, it wouldn't hurt, but not sure to what extent it would help. I've hired engineers with and without graduate degrees and made my decisions mostly on work experiences than a graduate degree vs. undergraduate degree.

Not to hijack this thread but I am sort of in the same boat. I am a sophmore and thus have a couple more years to decide but I don't know what to do. I think I want to go into petrol engineering if that is still relevant but I think an ME degree would serve me better. Will ME still be relevant in the future? I do want to make money...so that is a rather large factor in my career choice. Another field that interests me is economics. Would it be suicide to double major in economics and ME?

@Mr.Alex: Yes, you would die, I think. There's not much room for non-major classes if you're doing engineering.

 

OP: I'm just a frosh in Aerospace Engineering at the U. of Minnesota, but I'm already dreading next year and junior year. I'll be taking 18-20 credits a semester both years, almost all of them being technical classes. It is undoubtedly going to be a very demanding stretch... Work just piles up extremely quickly already, it's very easy to get behind. The people are all really friendly though, the professors are pretty kind, and since all the eng. students have similar classes in the beginning it's very easy to band together. Plus we get to hate on all the colleges at the U that are less intense (basically all of them :p).

 

Marvin, I'm glad to hear that a graduate degree isn't a big deal right away, I was definitely planning on joining the work force right out of school if possible, but people are always talking about grad school like it's totally necessary.

 

Jeromis, great to see another dude in Milwaukee, an engineering student no less!