<p>My S called today (college freshman) and said that he was planning to take so many math electives that he could probably easily do a second major in math. I am wondering if this will be very helpful to him in years to come? He does plan to obtain at least a master's degree in EE. Sometimes he even mentions an interest in some kind of combo EE/law. I am letting him check all this out, but was wondering if anyone had experience w this sort of thing. Thanks!</p>
<p>I doubled majored in Computer Engineering (which is effectively the same as EE but with more structured advanced electives) and Math at UIUC and have an MS in EE from Stanford. In my experience, getting the second major in Math has not helped much in my courses, because they tend to emphasize applications of formulas and not proofs. As far as I can tell, the only way a math background might be handy is for a PhD student specializing in a math-heavy area of EE such as signal processing or control theory, because you'll be expected to come up with new algorithms or theorems and prove them in your research and thesis. Otherwise, the other areas such as circuits, electromagnetics, semiconductor devices, computer architecture, logic design, etc. don't involve much theoretical math. I already figured as much when I chose the math major; I only did it because of personal interests. Also, I would caution your son, as a college freshman, against planning on a second major until at least the middle of his second year. Because Engineering is a very demanding major, very few students choose to spend the effort to get a second degree. I believe around 5 students out of 300 did so at UIUC.</p>
<p>The "combo EE/law" that he mentioned is patent law, which is a very lucrative segment of law that covets majors like EE and Biomedical Engineering. Basically you help companies file patents and are required to read large amounts of very technical and dense papers, so that's why a technical background is required. The actual EE and/or math knowledge will rarely be used.</p>
<p>Thanks for such an informative answer, imblue. S does have a great interest in signal processing, so perhaps down the line the math might be useful (?) My H (also an engineer, albeit petroleum) suggested maybe a minor in it, and also suggested waiting a bit to think of these things, as you recommended. Thanks again for your helpfulness!</p>