<p>-Getting help in courses is easy. While professors will not always have convinient office hours, there will always be TA’s that can help you. I’m not sure about the ECE TAs, but my TAs for the science GenEds I took have been good.</p>
<p>-Professors here are generally open to questions, even in a 200 person lecture. However, the ability of a professor to answer questions varies.</p>
<p>-For CompE’s, weedout courses tend to be the first two ECE courses, ECE 110, and ECE 190.</p>
<p>-As far as I know,placement tests are mainly for science/math gen-eds such as Calculus.</p>
<p>“why the anger in GDI (what’s the big deal )?”</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s anger. when I was at UIUC, I was a “GDI” and d*** proud of it!! My son is greek, and loving that too. To each his own.</p>
<p>“what type of engineering is your son in? how has he found the teachers and the classroom experience to be ? are there courses to watch out for? has your son been able to find support somewhere at the univ if he ever needed any help with questions - prof, TA, tutoring? or did your son just get it all w/o any need for help?” </p>
<p>He is in Bioengineering. I’m not going to lie…it’s hard!! But he describes his classmates and teachers as brilliant, although he has nothing good to say about mcb 150. (which he took freshman year). Unfortunately, he hasn’t learned about asking for help. Life would be easier for him if he was better at taking notes in class and going to TA’s or professors. That being said, he still has better than a 3.5 after 3 semesters. </p>
<p>"in what are weed outs? that does not seem to be a nice way to run a teaching institution - to ‘weed’ the students that have applied and went thru heck in high school and everywhere else to get into UIUC engineering. " </p>
<p>Agree, but I do not know if it is true that there are weedouts. Personally do not know a single person who “flunked” out of engineering. Instead, some kids decide they don’t want to put in the effort and switch out…Remember, as an engineer, you will have friends in easier majors that can go out every night. Engineering is a harder major than any other at UIUC, and requires more work. However, I believe that the help is there if you want/need it.</p>
<p>thanks, this helps alot. if anyone has any other responses , I’d appreciate it.</p>
<p>lest ye all think that all I think are negative thoughts, here is a random couple of pluses or good points on UIUC that I found along the way…</p>
<p>here is something I also discovered re UIUC engineering…</p>
<ul>
<li>reputation is real not bs, mostly due to an incredible build out of courses with brilliant profs (d101’s word) who actually might be the authors of the textbooks (I randomly looked at an ECE class and confirmed this statement that I saw in a blogging site) AND AND - important, lots of opps for hands on experiential learning, more than even MIT (per a UIUC ECE advisorr I met at an admitted students day).</li>
</ul>
<p>
</code></pre>
<p>*there is a roughly 50 - 50 mix of male - female on the campus in a wild variety of studies that makes for diversity. speaking of diversity UIUC has a rather high pctge of international students , somewhere in the top 5 maybe the top for big schools?</p>
<p>*only a couple hours-ish to chicago, one of the great cities of the world, with three convenient and cheap ways to get there, car, train, and bus.</p>
<p>*lots of stuff to do on campus plus around campus if you want to escape.</p>
<p>*the wide variety of classes available to consume is tons better than a RPI.</p>
<p>*being in the center of the country, adn coupled with the reputation of UIUC engineering, there is an optimum number of places for internships and coop opps. </p>
<p>this is the best way to learn -by doing. it also gives confidence of achievement as well as reall resume lines.</p>
<p>*there is a culture of entreprenieurial / start up - implying a thinking, a thinking out of the box culture .</p>
<p>*the summer session dean said that UIUC attempts to inculcate the valuer of critical thinking and problem solving in its engineering pgm.
(to what extent is this true, ye defenders of UIUC?)</p>
<p>idic - congrats on your decision. Check out “Dr. Everitt’s Neighborhood by Eta Kappa Nu”. It is a web site run by ECE students that describes all the courses for your major and has some other interesting interviews. Make sure you read the Spring 2011 newsletter, because it talks about a new program for educating freshman engineers called iFoundry.</p>
<p>you had previously said that your son is moving into ECE. What is it about ECE that your son likes? what was his thought process? </p>
<p>also , I saw that you asked what was my other choice. It was/is Grinnell College, an LAC, where I might have majored in econ, physics, and / or compsci. I brought up NU 's degree req’s since, unlike GC, it is in the same league, literally, as UIUC, and therefore more comparable.</p>
<p>So your point about NU being in a qrtr system vs UIUC’s semester system will tend to even out the 14 classes at NU vs 10 classes at UIUC for non engineering type of classes required for the compE degree?</p>
<p>GC would have handled the class size issue, the support/mentor/advisor issue, the well rounded education issue, and probably the party issue in the subject thread - but it would not have the post grad options that UIUC wd promise in computers - (assuming one does not flunk out/ transfer due to the large class sizes, poor support/advising/teaching.)</p>
<p>another question (to anyone): </p>
<p>I think I saw it said in these pages somewhere that the flunk out / failure / transfer out rate in ECE is something like 50 pct. Is this true (I believe it was said by a student and there was no backup)? If not, can someone tell me what it is?</p>
<p>Just my two cents… we are from a rural small town, I thought my son (and we) would find UIUC too big for him. After visiting the campus and touring the engineering area, both he, and we, were pleasantly surprised at how much we all liked it. He did not get that same sense at Northwestern (though, we would have been fine with him going there). The above comments are true… no guarantees, and it’s what you make of it. Good luck!</p>
<p>Idic,sorry to be so late to respond. Son is finishing ECE 110 now and loved it. They built a car and had to program the signals. He sent me a video of his car going down the track. I don’t think I know his thought process, but most of the other general engineering majors talked about going into management consulting, and for some reason he just didn’t see himself doing that.
I think he talked to lots of other students second semester as he was really casting about for an alternative to general eng. He is taking the other weed out class mentioned above in the fall, so we will see how it works out, fingers crossed.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if there is a similar “Dr. Everitt’s Neighborhood by Eta Kappa Nu” site but for business students? I love if there is a review guide for business classes :D</p>