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Electrical Engineering Colleges in the US

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Carbon_Rod

Tue May 20 2008, 08:18AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

Few care about college degrees as they are considered a stepping stone. Save the extra year, some money. and enter university early with a stronger GPA (most people are annoyed to find their GPA will go back to Zero upon transfer.) Make sure that the courses you take are transferable and assigned credits at the desired institution. Some institutions will also limit transfer credits.

Make sure to start early on the studies of Calculus, Statistics, and Linear algebra. It will affect your grade no matter what field of engineering, or physics you enter.

Don't declare a major until absolutely necessary to leave the most options open (may not be an option for some engineering programs.)

Also, don't leave undergraduate status early as you will qualify for more grants, and paid research positions.

Cheers,

WaveRider

Tue May 20 2008, 08:19PM

Registered Member #29 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500

Dear B. Skunkworks,
I partially concur with the previous statements. I have found that you will get out of a university education whatever you are prepared to put into it.

Most undergraduate university engineering programs that are certified in the USA by ABET follow a similar course in the first two or three years. Where the choice of university might help is in what you plan to do after the BSEE. If you attend Cal Tech and take lots of solid state and IC design classes, you could catch the eye of professors seeking postgrads in IC design, etc. If you go to UC Illinois at Champaign Urbana and show yourself adept in a numerical modelling project, you could possibly end up with a PhD working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications... I think you get the idea. These are the places to go to do bleeding-edge stuff..

If, on the other hand, you want to work at a big company somewhere, less rigorous baccalaureates are more than suitable..

If you just want the piece of paper to get you the job, you may be disappointed..EE is either a labor of love, or it is a drudge...

If you really want to know how things work, be prepared to absorb everything you can from anyone who will teach it to you!...as well as digging for as much information as you can about what you are studying. Passion and discipline are the keys! Discovering how things work can, in some ways, resemble religious experience!

Oh... and a last suggestion: DO YOUR HOMEWORK! (Homework problem sets have ways of appearing on exams! I know, I was once a student as well as an engineering lecturer! )

Backyard Skunkworks

Tue May 20 2008, 10:29PM

Registered Member #1262 Joined: Fri Jan 25 2008, 05:22AM
Location: Maryland, USA
Posts: 451

For me EE is definatly a labor of love, I will greatly enjoy learning about and applying it. I'm still not exactly sure what field of EE I want to go into, I am darn sure I wanna go for EE though. I've already been planning to get the most out of college, I know a lot of students try to cruise through the whole experiance with ethanol poisoning.

My main interest in EE is to apply science in a fun way for a good living.

I'll be making a lot more visits to various colleges this summer. I'll really try and look for places that seem to be a good fit and have good profs, my stats should be good enough to make most of the top 30 in EE. Phew!

I guess I should still try for something kinda highly ranked unless its a bank breaker or impossible to get into? I understand it shouldn't make too much difference but it can't hurt, right...?

I'm gonna take a few APs my senior year, also some courses at the community college, I wanna try and lighten my load a bit later on.

Thanks for all this input so far!

ea6b607

Sat May 24 2008, 05:22AM

Registered Member #1320 Joined: Sat Feb 16 2008, 01:31AM
Location:
Posts: 67

"bleeding-edge"
i hope that was a typo waverider

If no one finds this too personal, what is about the starting wage for someone with a EE degree?

Carbon_Rod

Sat May 24 2008, 07:21AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

Bad way to choose a career ea6b607... ;)

In this area $/h are as follows (would suggest these figures are low):

Engineering Managers 25.38 to 67.50
Electrical and Electronics Engineers 23.35 to 63.27
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technologists and Technicians 14.44 to 32.02
Electricians (Except Industrial and Power System) 13.57 to 27.50
Industrial Electricians 16.20 to 32.97
Electrical Power Line and Cable Workers 21.51 to 41.06
Electronics Assemblers, Fabricators, Inspectors and Testers 10.00 to 17.69

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Sat May 24 2008, 07:29PM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

I'm gonna add one more thing. If you go to a highly competitive school like my brother is, (Going to Cal. Poly Pomona) and you think you can get somewhere, don't be surprised if you're wrong. He transfered to Cal. Poly before he had even started Calculus, and you absolutely cannot start any engineering courses before Calculus.
Unfortunately you cannot enroll in a Calculus class there because EVERYONE needs the Calculus class, so what do you have? You have a situation where you have to take classes that don't count toward your major to bump up your class ranking so you can enroll in the Calculus class, meantime you are loosing semesters and $$$$$$.

Which is why I advise taking Calculus, Physics and Chemistry at JC. Don't bother taking them at a University, you'll be wasting a lot of time trying to get into the class, or having to repeat classes.

Dr Who

Fri Jun 13 2008, 10:04PM

Registered Member #1540 Joined: Fri Jun 13 2008, 08:49PM
Location: Chicago
Posts: 3

If you go to a JC, then make sure your credits will transfer properly into the degree you hope to achieve.

I got screwed by an advisor that thought he was helping me out and so I ended up taking an extra 30-some credits ($$$).

But despite that, I found that I learned a lot more at JC than I did at the University - it's just a totally different learning environment.

Another thing to look for is extra-curricular activities that you will get involved with. The networking and experience gained are more valuable than the textbooks (or so I'm told - I only just gradufercated).

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