<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I recently graduated from the ECE program at UIUC and would be more than glad to answer any questions about ECE (or even other programs) at UIUC. Feel free to post questions or PM me and I will respond as promptly as I can. </p>
<p>Regards,
J.C.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What did you love about it?</p></li>
<li><p>What did you hate about it?</p></li>
<li><p>What kind of research/development/project opportunities did you get involved in?</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>Overall, UIUC was a great place to get a top quality education and have fun at the same time. You have stellar academics (especially in engineering) from a program that attracts the big-name companies and a campus town that is very accessible and close to campus. Some might dislike it, but I enjoyed the UIUC party scene: campustown bars (Clys, Firehaus, Murphys, Joes, etc), frat parties (though they got old fast), apartment parties, and house (more indie-oriented) parties in Urbana. If partying isn’t your thing, though, there are hundreds of student organizations. </p></li>
<li><p>WINTER WEATHER. Walking to an 8am lecture class in February when it is -16 F is quite the experience. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>As an out-of-state student, I was overwhelmed sometimes by how the undergrad college is saturated by students from the Chicago suburbs. Also, the Greek scene is big–if you don’t like being in a rowdy party scene that resembles Animal House, then you may not like UIUC. Most of the other students are international students so being out-of-state is somewhat of a novelty at UIUC. If you’re looking for the type of diverse, cosmopolitan, worldly experience that can be gained by going to a private college, then I wouldn’t recommend UIUC.</p>
<ol>
<li> I got involved in communications theory (kind of like the mathematics of networks) research during my Junior year and then spent a summer on campus continuing that research. Undergraduate research is <em>extremely</em> important if you want to get into a good graduate program. The sooner you can get involved in something that you like, the better. The ECE department also offers lab classes in just about every area of Electrical and Computer engineering. Also, you can take an “independent study” class in which you work on a project that is supervised by a faculty member. There are also engineering organizations (i.e. Solar Decathlon, IEEE) in which you can build engineering projects (such as a solar-powered house and robots) outside of the class room.</li>
</ol>
<p>Thank you. How about one last question.</p>
<p>What do you know now that you wish you would have known when you first started the ECE program?</p>
<p>Were you in a fraternity? If so did you find it hard to keep up with your engineering work as well as the social commitment of the fraternity? Also, what would you do differently i.e. take classes over the summer so you did not have such a heavy class load during the year? Lastly, what year was the hardest…junior year, freshman “weedout” year?</p>
<p>From your experience and what you have heard, what are easiest and hardest engineering majors?</p>
<p>TO ALL PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS: </p>
<p>I highly recommend that you check out the following link, which is an independent guide to ECE at Illinois produced by the ECE honor society, Eta Kappa Nu. </p>
<p>[Home</a> (Dr. Everitt’s Neighborhood by Eta Kappa Nu)](<a href=“http://sites.google.com/site/hknden/]Home”>http://sites.google.com/site/hknden/)</p>
<hr>
<p>@contramundum09</p>
<p>That’s a tough one. Hindsight is always 20/20. With classes especially, you will inevitably say to yourself, “looking back I should not have taken that class, or looking back I should have taken this class”. But that’s the wrong mentality–I would say that it’s important going in to be willing to be flexible and take the classes that interest YOU. </p>
<p>For example, as someone who ended up focusing on more math-ish areas of EE, I would have benefit from taking a class such as Linear Algebra earlier in my sophomore year, but instead I took an elective on evolutionary biology. But at the time I had no idea what I was interested in–at the time I thought that a career in medicine was a possibility. Ultimately, you may benefit in the long term from taking a class outside of ECE. I did a minor in business and personally did not enjoy some of the classes, but I’m sure I will benefit from, say, the exposure to what thought processes are common in marketing in the future if I choose to pursue a non-technical path. </p>
<p>Another thing that they really don’t emphasize enough is that you DON’T have to follow the recommended course sequence posted on the ECE website. Depending on the individual, it may make more sense to delay certain classes (such as ECE 385) depending on your professional aspirations. </p>
<hr>
<p>@chriscollege </p>
<p>I was not in a fraternity, but I had several friends who were in ECE and in fraternities (such as AEpi, ZBT, Pi Kappa Phi) who were able to balance ECE and the social life. Most people in the Greek system rush/pledge during their freshman year. I’d guess that it is a bit stressful if you are getting adjusted to a new environment at that time, but what you may be able to do (especially if you’re coming in with AP credits) is join a fraternity/sorority in the Fall, and take general education/elective classes instead, and take the intro to ECE class (ECE 110) in the Spring semester instead. But the people I knew in ECE who were in fraternities at the same time were both outgoing and academically successful at the same time, so it is do-able to be in both. </p>
<p>It’s hard to say which is the hardest year, but most ECE majors generally agree that the hardest/most time consuming classes in the core curriculum are ECE 385 (Digital Systems Laboratory) and (to a lesser/varying extent) ECE 440 (Solid State Electronics). I PERSONALLY found sophomore year to be most time-consuming because I was taking courses in areas that I was not necessarily interested in at the time, such as ECE 190 (Intro to Computing Systems) and ECE 290 (intro to Computer Engineering). My junior year classes were probably harder, but at the same time I was interested in them so it didn’t seem too bad. </p>
<hr>
<p>@johnk2011</p>
<p>I came in as a materials science (MatSE) major and switched to ECE during the second semester of my freshman year, because I was not interested in MatSE. If I had stayed in MatSE, I would have been miserable and this would’ve been the worst possible outcome regardless of how easier/harder it may be compared to ECE. The point is that it really is a personal thing–as someone who is less into experiments and more into computation, I probably would find experiment-oriented majors like MatSE and ChemE more difficult. </p>
<p>From an immediate impression, ChemE is probably the hardest major at UIUC to navigate through because of the requirements and structure of the curriculum. In the ChemE section in the official handbook of the curricula for each engineering major, it even says that students coming in w/o an adequate chemistry background may find it difficult to graduate in 4 years. </p>
<p>I will say that the PERCEIVED difficulty of majors at UIUC are such that ECE, ChemE, Aerospace are more difficult, while Civil and MatSE are easier. Again, this is PERCEIVED and is rather shallow, because in reality it comes down to the individual. I had friends in other engineering majors and I could never imagine attempting the type of work they are doing.</p>
<p>Would you say that decent grades are hard to come by? Like should you lower your standards from high school? Is an engineering GPA of a 2.8 -3.0 considered more acceptable than say in other majors?</p>
<p>I don’t think the College of Engineering discloses what the average GPA is among its undergrads. Nor does the ECE department. If I had to guess, I would guess that the avg. GPA in ECE (and maybe the College of Engineering) is around a 3.0. </p>
<p>Either way, I know that most of the major companies that recruit on campus require applicants to have a 3.0 or higher to be considered. </p>
<p>As far as standards from high school, it depends on what high school you’re coming from. What is a “good” GPA in engineering? Ideally, you should try your best and hopefully that translates into a higher GPA. </p>
<p>A more complete answer that I can give is that GPA matters in engineering, but not to the same extent and/or way as it does in Business, Medicine, and Law. A good GPA in engineering is a plus, but when applying to jobs and/or grad school, your technical skills (such as what projects you’ve done, how well you understand fundamentals, etc) and research matter more. More often than not, though, there’s somewhat of a correlation between your GPA and those things, but not always–many of my colleagues have been able to get into positions at big companies and top graduate programs without having 4.0’s. </p>
<p>That being said, employers know that Engineering at UIUC is pretty hard; but this is probably one of the reasons why Engineering at UIUC is well-recognized. I’m sure if you get something above/around 3.5 here, you’re doing pretty good. But ultimately it’s important that you don’t come in here and give a half-hearted attempt. </p>
<p>Another thing worth mentioning is that many engineers at UIUC go into non-technical careers such as consulting and banking. Companies such as Deloitte and those on Wall St. recruit extensively on campus for UIUC engineers to fill technical (mostly software/quantitative analysis) and non-technical roles in their companies.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your responses. They have been very thorough and thoughtful. Just one more thing to add…I have heard i said that freshman year is the “weed out” year. would you agree with that? Or would you say that Freshman and Sophomore years are both “weed out” years. And having said that would you say that professors ease up a bit on the grading/curving of the classes in sophomore, junior and senior year after the so called weed out year? Just a thought…</p>
<p>In a way, freshman and sophomore years are the “weed out” years because you don’t really take any technical electives until your junior year. Of course, many students come in with some credit from AP tests and have a little more leeway in being able to explore what they might like. I can’t imagine a student enjoying every class he/she takes over a period of 4 years. </p>
<p>There are many factors as to what you really consider a “weed-out” class. One is your academic preparation coming into UIUC–if you’ve done well on AP Calc/Physics B and C/ Computer Science, then you’re at an advantage. But there’s no guarantee because another factor is your interest in engineering as a career. As the story girls, there was a girl in ECE who had a 3.98 GPA in her junior year who decided to become a nun. </p>
<p>Engineering is just not for everyone, and it’s not only going to be classes that weed out students. You might go to the engineering career fair in the Illini Union held each semester, meet some rude engineer and think, "wow I would not want to be like this when i’m ___ ", or you might just want to have fun and go out to the Clybourne every night, because college is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you might take a class in political science and decide to become a lawyer. I switched from MatSE to ECE b/c I thought about how much I enjoyed my high school electronics/E&M physics class one day. </p>
<p>Another part of it is LUCK. Sometimes you get professors who think teaching what they view as elementary knowledge to sophomores and freshmen is a waste of time. You might wind up with a TA who barely speaks english. Inevitably, when you get a poor final grade in a class towards which you worked so hard, you may ask yourself, “did I really know this?”, when perhaps the professor only believes in giving 10% of the class an A of any form. These are questions that depend ultimately on how well you deal with adversity and challenges. </p>
<p>As far as grading goes, in general, in ECE if you score at least a std. deviation above the average, you got at least an A. I don’t know about other departments, but I’m sure each has their own policy towards grading. </p>
<p>Feel free to ask more questions, keep 'em coming.</p>
<p>Ok …here is one more question I just thought of…do may kids use tutors on campus? I see honor societies provide free tutoring and I hear about other offerings of tutors available…have you or any of your classmates utilized any of the tutors, free or otherwise on campus to help you before a test or to get you through a rough patch? It seems like if there are so many tutors out there someone must be using them!</p>
<p>chriscollege,</p>
<p>I know that in ECE a good amount of freshmen take advantage of tutoring via engineering honor societies such as Eta Kappa Nu (the ECE honor society) and Tau Beta Pi (an engineering honor society that includes all engineering majors). Eta Kappa Nu works closely with faculty in ECE 110 (Intro to ECE) to provide extra help for students. In addition, they will hold additional review sessions for various classes in the core ECE curriculum (such as ECE 210 and 290). </p>
<p>For the most part, of all the professors I had at UIUC, the professors who were most passionate about teaching were generally in engineering and math. In business, the professors I had were much more strict about grading and enforcing a level of hierarchy (student->TA-> professor) that sort of discouraged students from contacting them directly, though granted these were classes that had 600 registered students. But in most of the classes I took in ECE, the professors were quite welcoming and flexible with office hours (when professors allow students to come to their offices for help). Office hours, btw, are a VALUABLE opportunity for you to get to know professors on a first name basis and can lead to research/internship opportunities, connections, good letters of recommendation, etc. There have been countless times in which a question on a homework turned into a friendly conversation with the prof. about other stuff. </p>
<p>There is never any shame in asking for help–that’s an important piece of advice. It’s super easy to get intimidated by the students who are either smart or like to make themselves look smart. 99% of time, if you don’t understand something in lecture despite giving it a lot of thought and effort, at least one other person in the classroom (if not the majority) does not. To summarize, the resources are there, be it Grainger Library, the office hours, study groups, etc.–it’s up to you to take advantage of them and 9/10 times that begins with overcoming your ego.</p>
<p>You said keep 'em coming so I am … how about interview senior year. Is it true that you need a 3.0 to get on campus interview? Is that a hard and fast rule or just generally? Is every senior guaranteed an interview? Do you bid for the interviews? How does that work? Is it different for ECE than Civil etc? How important is the GPA for employers doing on campus interviews would you say? Do internships play a big role? How about study abroad…do interviewers ask about that? There seems to be a big push in the engineering department recently … would you think an internship would be better than study abroad?..now I am throwing a lot at you!!</p>
<p>Often, companies will state that a minimum 3.0 GPA is required on the brochures that they hand to you at the career fairs and on the online job descriptions. So literally, you need > a 3.0 GPA in general to be considered. </p>
<p>Statistically, it is highly likely that you will have multiple interviews based on the the following info from [Facts</a> & Figures | Engineering at Illinois](<a href=“http://engineering.illinois.edu/about-us/facts-figures]Facts”>http://engineering.illinois.edu/about-us/facts-figures) </p>
<hr>
<p>2008-09 Career Services Statistics
Total number of on-campus interviews - 5.585
Average number of interviews per interviewing graduate - 6.1
Average number of offers per interviewing graduate - 1.9
Approximate number of jobs posted on the online job system - 1.295
Number of companies recruiting on campus each year - 400+
More than 90% of graduates have internship experiences</p>
<hr>
<p>You don’t bid for interviews; it’s not major-specific, it is company specific. If you impress a recruiter at a career fair or submit a solid resume online, then the company will contact you. You may have phone interviews, on-campus interviews, or even on-site interviews (companies will generally pay for your travel). For each internship that I had, I actually did not interview as a result of a career fair where I met the recruiter in person. </p>
<p>Engineering Career Services (ECS) coordinates on-campus interviews with visiting companies. Countless companies like Intel and Texas Instruments will hold presentations/seminars to promote their companies throughout the year. Sometimes these presentations will be geared towards a specific area (software, for example). Since Engineering at UIUC is well-recognized, these companies use these presentations as a way of recruiting engineers for their companies. I know that many, many students have been able to get jobs simply by showing up, impressing the company representatives in person, and getting job offers in a very timely manner. </p>
<p>Again, GPA is not everything. At best, a high GPA will get your “foot in the door”, but then you have to WALK through the door yourself by being able to think on your feet, demonstrate effective communication skills, being creative, etc. Really, once you are past a certain cut-off, say 3.6, then your GPA doesn’t matter as much as those things that I just mentioned. </p>
<p>On that note, how important previous internship and/or study abroad experience is depends on you, and the company that is interviewing you. I’ve heard that Google’s interviewers seldom asks you about your past experiences and instead will ask you to solve puzzles, or even code up something and e-mail the code later to the interviewer. I’ve had interviews that were entirely behavioral, in which questions such as “Tell me about a time when you had to resolve a disagreement” to entirely technical in areas such as data structures and mathematics. </p>
<p>I can’t really tell you whether any internship or study abroad experience is more important than the other. If you did an engineering internship one summer with, say, Ford, where you designed some component for some engine that’s used in their automobiles, and you did a study abroad experience in China, and you’re interviewing for some kind of marketing/consulting position, then maybe the study abroad experience in China might carry more weight. </p>
<p><strong>This is important:</strong>
It’s not the Engineering at UIUC name, or the name of the company, or place of study-abroad that will ultimately take you places, it is the skills, lessons and future ideas that you yourself develop from each of those experiences.</p>
<p>Great! Thanks so much!</p>
<p>If you don’t mind, could you post (or PM) your profile and results as a grad school applicant like they do over at the grad school forum (i.e. GPA, GRE, research experience/publications/internships, and admissions results at places you applied to)? I’m interested as I just finished junior year in EE and I’ll be applying to highly competitive places in about 6 months, including PhD track at Stanford which you got into. There’s plenty of profiles around but they’re mostly from internationals and the only good data points I have from Illinois ECE are im_blue (you might remember him from this forum) and a couple of students that I knew personally.</p>
<p>I graduated with an overall GPA of 3.72 and a major GPA of 3.63 or something like that. I don’t remember my exact GRE score other than I got a 750 in the math (lower than avg, I know). No publications, just did research for about a year and a half with a prof in the ECE department. </p>
<p>That is as much of my stats as I would like to share; frankly, a high GPA+GRE score alone won’t get you into a top grad school. I have friends who have higher GPAs (and probably better GRE</p>
<h2>woops, messed that one up:</h2>
<p>Gshine1989, </p>
<p>I graduated with an overall GPA of 3.72. I don’t remember my exact GRE score other than I got a 750 in the math section (probably lower than avg. for top EE grad programs). I did research (comm/signal processing area) for about a year and a half with a prof in the ECE department–no publications from this experience (yet?). </p>
<p>That is as much of my stats as I would like to share. <strong>Really, a high GPA+GRE score alone won’t get you into a top grad school, which is why I think sharing stats/profiles isn’t useful.</strong> </p>
<p>Graduate admissions is not an exact science. I have friends who had higher GPAs (and probably better GRE scores) who were not admitted into Stanford’s EE MS/PhD program. Likewise, I know of students with lower GPAs than mine but awesome research experience who were admitted into MIT. </p>
<p>RESEARCH EXPERIENCE MATTERS ABOVE ALL. If you find a research topic that you are passionate about, it will be reflected in your letters of recommendation and statement of purpose. Thus the sooner you can start working with a prof, the better. But even research experience alone won’t get you admitted–a major factor is how well your research interests align with those of professors. Ultimately, it comes down to how well the applicant “fits” with the department. </p>
<p>FYI, a fair amount of ECE students from UIUC this year got admitted into Stanford’s MS-only program (around 7), while 1 got admitted into UC Berkeley and 1 into MIT (both PhD-track). Virtually everyone I know who applied to UIUC again was admitted (the department likes to admit its own undergraduates) and I know that if you have a > 3.9 GPA at UIUC, you are automatically offered admission into the UIUC ECE graduate program. Also, several others were admitted into PhD-track programs at UCSD, UT Austin, and University of Wisconsin at Madison.</p>
<p>I know this thread is a over a few mos old, but I thought I 'd ask a few questions in case our generous friend is still lurking on CC.</p>
<p>It seems that the OP did a grad school track vs getting a non academic position since there was a mention of GRE. *Is this true, OP? If so, why did you (and those others that you mentioned in the thread) opt to go into academia to pursue advanced degrees?</p>
<p>*Was it poor pickings for gainful employment about now, or is it the case that your long term goal is to work in academia possibly?</p>
<p>I saw the Palo ALto location. *Is this where your university is or are you working there now?</p>
<p>*I also wondered what kind of work (non academic ) can an ECE compE major expect to fit into post UIUC graduation?</p>
<p>another question: *how long did it take for you to earn your bachelor’s at UIUC? *what about your peers? *did you graduate with everyone you started with freshman yr?</p>
<p>Since now is the time for thinking about housing, OP, *where did you reside during your yrs at UIUC? My son is trying to figure this out now. Is it most important to be closest to the engineering quad / classes, reside with fellow engineers, reside in a centrally located area - closer to the main quad ?</p>
<p>I saw your comments on study abroad - duly noted. DUring your UG at UIUC, did you do study abroad, internship, or both?</p>