Beware to Engineering majors in general especially Computer/Electrical Engineering

Colleges and Universities A-Z Virginia Tech
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<p>As someone who has struggled with Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech for 4 semesters now and is dropping out of the major and possibly the school I just wanted to warn aspiring Engineering majors your in for a fun time here at tech (Sarcasm). Electrical Engineering is in the same department and share a lot of the same courses the first 2 years as well. Some Engineering departments are better taught than others so I don't know how it is in other departments. </p>

<p>The bottom line is, 75% of the professors who I've had in Engineering/Physics/Math ect don't teach very well at all, that is a fact. They are there for research mostly and are required to teach classes.</p>

<p>You may get one or two good professors that actually do a great job organizing the class and the material but that is rare. Virginia Tech is a researched focused institution so don't expect outstanding educational quality in Engineering like I did, your in for a let down. The rankings reflect mostly the money put to research and the results...less on the education itself. If you plan to do research as an undergraduate...Virginia Tech is for you.</p>

<p>The basic classes for all Engineering students are rough in general and also lack great teachers but there are some good Engineering professors on that note but mostly upper level, you just got to do some research when signing up for classes. If you do get a good professor or one that sticks out...make sure to commend him/her and right a good review so other students know.</p>

<p>In particular for computer engineering they throw advanced programming problems at you 6 weeks into the intro level programming courses. It's taught with an assumption you've been programming for several years. It's not uncommon for students to repeat that course. I had to take it 3 times, first time was a drop and the 2nd a 69 when you need a 70 to get credit.</p>

<p>So if your in high school make sure you are well versed in C++. Electrical Engineering majors also need to take one C++ course. </p>

<p>Here are my major points:</p>

<p>****Make sure you are well versed in Calculus and Physics BEFORE college as all courses will utilize that knowledge. That is kind of obvious though but I really do emphasize that too. </p>

<p>****Physics and Calculus are not as rough as the in major engineering courses if you form study groups and I got by first time around by studying and doing homework in groups and office hours if needed. It's advanced level though so they assume you know the basics and don't teach them.</p>

<p>****A lot of the professors have foreign accents so it is hard to understand so be prepared.</p>

<p>****The exams are very very hard and usually have problems much harder than any of the homework problems</p>

<p>**** Most course grade layouts are as follows exams: 25-30%, Final 20-25%, labs 15-20%, homework/pop quizes: 10-15% </p>

<p>So usually the exams and the final alone are about 50-60% of your grade and that's how most students fail. So study a little each day, well actually that is the only way to pass. All nighters don't work as I found that out the hard way even though they did in High School.</p>

<p>****Computer Science students: Be well versed in Java(primary language used) and good at math before college.</p>

<p>****Electrical Engineering students: Know your basic circuits in High School BEFORE you come to college in particular RL and RLC circuits and the various methods to solving them, some AP Physics courses may introduce them but mine didn't and I was in for a surprise since the basics were ignored. </p>

<p>****Computer Engineering students: Be well versed in C++ and good at math BEFORE college they expect you to know and don't teach you the basics like I had thought. Be prepared to spend 20+ hours a week doing various labs starting Sophomore year. Not every course has a lab but one or two a semester do.</p>

<p>****All other Engineers: Same as above and prepare to work/study 30 to 40 hours a week with some lab work too. Everyone is different but the majority will have to work hard for C's and B's. That's right..C's and B's.... A's are harder but not impossible to get in college but maybe the top 2%-5% of the class get A's and they literally study all the time and have no job.</p>

<p>So make sure to get rid of that high school mentality of freaking out over anything lower than a B+ be happy your passing because some courses you will have to work hard for a C. Also be prepared for a course called "Statics" , I haven't had to take it personally but most of my friends have and I've seen the tortures they go through so be prepared.</p>

<p>****45-60% exam averages are not uncommon too especially in physics and Calculus and more common in Engineering. Most professors do curve but not all, it's not uncommon to repeat a course so don't feel bad if you do, if you repeat more than a few Engineering might not be for you.</p>

<p>I'm not trying to discourage anyone but just giving a heads up. If I could go back I would have utilized more office hours to get the professor to actually teach you any stuff you don't know or was assumed you did know. </p>

<p>A good amount of friends I started off with freshman year switched to Business or another major by the end of Sophomore year so if your an Engineering major MAKE SURE it is really what you want to do and you are up for the challenge. The challenge I mean studying 30 to 40 hours a week to pass sometimes even more depending on who you are rare partying and very few if any extra-curriculars. I was told this and shrugged it off when I was a senior in HS and suffered the consequences. </p>

<p>Finally be prepared to teach yourself most of the material on your own time or seek tutors, don't rely on the lectures or the notes as much unless you have a good professor and they are easy to follow, most aren't though. There are plenty of online resources. Sad but true. </p>

<p>The easy route if one would be to go 2 years at a community college then 2 years at tech for an Engineering degree, believe me.... I wish I had done that. They teach you the basics at community college and a lot of things that Virginia Tech leaves out. Trust me I took a semester at community college. It also saves you so much more money and you get the same degree from Virginia Tech as a 4 year student there. </p>

<p>Just giving a heads up and feel free to ask me any particular questions too. Anyone else willing to shoot some advice please do. Just trying to better prepare incoming freshmen engineering majors.</p>

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<p>This sounds horrific</p>

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<p>It is if your caught off guard, that’s why I want students to expect that so they are better prepared for the trauma and have better chances than I had. I wasn’t warned. </p>

<p>I knew Engineering would be hard, because it’s a very technical subject matter, but it is more so at Tech than I even expected mostly because they assume you know a lot going in since that is the attitude I got after taking some 60 credit hours of engineering courses there. </p>

<p>Just a heads up to work hard.</p>

<p>If your gifted in the math and sciences and makes A’s easily you may not be hit as hard but I know natural genius’s that still have to put in a good 4 to 5 hours a day of study time.</p>

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<p>Also one more thing…the course tracks for most engineering majors assume you can handle 17-18 credits a semester to graduate in 4 years. Most engineering degrees require 130 + or - a few credits to graduate. The average amount of credit hours any college student can handle is about 14 or 15 which is about 4 or 5 classes. I personally can’t handle more than 4 classes let alone 3 engineering classes since they are so time intensive for each one. </p>

<p>So plan on taking 5 years or a few summer terms if you can’t handle 17-18 credit hours a semester. Do the math. Computer Engineering requires 132 credit hours which is an average of 17 credit hours a semester. Computer Science requires 122. So it varies.</p>

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<p>Well… I agree with you on some stuff. Not everything though. One basic thing I’d point out is that in every engineering major (I’ve noticed this in my department and it’s been confirmed with people in just about every department) is that the first couple years are really hard and not very fun because you’re still learning all the barebones basics. One you hit Junior and Senior year you get to actually specialize a little bit, get smaller classes (usually) and it gets a lot more fun. </p>

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<p>Ehh… If you get Chang for freshman Physics you could walk in with 0 physics knowledge and end up fine. It helps but I wouldn’t get too worked up over it. Walking in without any Calc experience will put you at a pretty big disadvantage though.</p>

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<p>Calculus isn’t really that terrible until you get to Multi anyway, but study groups and office hour usage are always good advice for any class, especially if you’re struggling or falling behind. I’ve observed that groups help more in Physics and Chemistry than any other Freshman engineering classes.</p>

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<p>True, annoying, but an unfortunate fact of life for engineers at pretty much every big engineering school. You get a little better at picking up on the accent over time (unless you have Ohenahi. He’s always unintelligible.)</p>

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<p>That completely depends on the professor. Especially in larger classes you can get on ■■■■■■■.com and look up old tests to see how hard the tests usually are, but some professors make the tests much easier than the homework (the guy that wrote the book in DiffEQ did this heavily) while some are harder. Having gone through 7 semesters (almost) of engineering I wouldn’t say that most give harder tests than homework though; it just feels a lot harder when you don’t have the book and as much time as you need.</p>

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<p>Yeah, exams and finals are worth most of your grade. In some classes they are your only grade. I don’t know why you consider this to be a bad thing though. Good advice on consistent study habits though. Relying on all-nighters will bite you hard.</p>

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<p>Do EE majors not have to take ETheory? I’m MSE and I had to sophomore year, and they went over all the basics. As in as basic as Ohm’s law. No, they didn’t spend a lot of time on the extremely basic concepts, but they were definitely covered.</p>

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30-40 hours a week? Including time spent in class yes, but it’s not a consistent 30-40 hours a week. There will be weeks where you have a good amount of free time to do whatever you want, and there will be weeks where you can’t even go out on the weekends because you’re absolutely slammed. Way more people than the top 5% get As in most classes; again you can look many of them up on ■■■■■■■. Sophomore classes are the hardest to get A’s in, and it gets exponentially easier after that, once you get to the smaller in major classes.</p>

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You’re dead on here. Most engineers will probably get a C. That C will probably come courtesy of the ESM department. It happens. And Statics isn’t really that terrible. What’s terrible is the class after it, Dynamics. It’s Statics, except stuff moves.</p>

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<p>This gets a lot better the further you get into engineering. Some tests will still have averages around 40% but all professors have to curve, since an in-major professor can’t be clogging up everything down the line by failing everyone. I know a lot of successful people that had to repeat a class (one person took 3 or 4 tries on dynamics) but it’s usually not a good sign, especially if you really did give it your all. One or maybe two classes isn’t the end of the world though. I’ll also say this; a lot of people give up too early. They get a D on the first test, decide they want to drop the class even when they know there will be a curve, and it messes them up down the line. If you think your courseload isn’t too brutal and that you can catch up, don’t drop just because you do bad on one test.

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<p>No. I get pretty good grades. I have time to party and am pretty involved in extracurriculars. I know >3.8 students with extracurriculars and jobs. Yes, there will be times when you can’t party, and you need to budget your time well, but you can absolutely make time to do whatever it is you want to do in college even if you’re in engineering. Sophomore year is brutal; I remember. But I still had time to go out at least one night a weekend, date, be involved in recruiting for my major, participate in a couple societies and still pulled off a decent GPA. It all comes down to how good you are at budgeting and regulating your time, and where you put your priorities. It absolutely is a challenge and anyone that doesn’t like a challenge, please don’t do engineering here or anywhere. But it’s a surmountable challenge. And it’s not a challenge that will destroy your social life in college. </p>

<p>And like I’ve said several times already, it all gets better after sophomore year (unless you put sophomore classes off till later, which I don’t recommend.) Your classes get smaller and more interesting, you learn how to be a better student, and the professors get generally better, or at least you learn how to compensate for their weaknesses better. If you don’t notice it getting better you may have chosen the wrong department of engineering. It seems like you’ve got a lot of the right ideas as to how to deal with some of the challenges but maybe engineering just isn’t the right major for you. It’s a good thing you figured that out now instead of after you graduated and hated what you were doing. VT (engineering specifically) isn’t perfect at all and many of your criticisms are valid, but it isn’t as bleak as the picture you’ve painted.</p>

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<p><<**** Most course grade layouts are as follows exams: 25-30%, Final 20-25%, labs 15-20%, homework/pop quizes: 10-15% >></p>

<p>Wow! I would have LOVED to have had that breakdown in college. Most of the classes in my major (science) had a mid-term and a final. That was it. Grad school was the same.</p>

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<p>Yeah it all varies, some courses you have a better opportunity to bring your grade up if you don’t do that well on the exams but Engineering like most other schools is mostly exams and a final. My problem is that most of my exams I faced had maybe 3 or 4 problems with 1 or 2 worth 50% of the test and the other’s worth 15%. This has happened in 2 of my calc classes and my differential equations class this past fall. I find it hard to reflect what I know if I can’t solve even 1 or 2 problems that are generally tough. </p>

<p>Physics from my experience has been a little easier. Professor Chang is the best professor you can get period. His tests are really hard but you can make up for them easily via take home problems and homework ect. For Physics II (2306) however there is not one good professor I can recommend sorry to say. I had professor Kim after switching from Slawny since I had a hard time understanding what he was saying and I actually should have stayed with Slawny since he curves exam grades. That was a dreadful class but got by studying in groups and getting good homework grades. </p>

<p>My 2000 level Computer Engineering classes have been awful and maybe part of it is bad luck. I haven’t had one good professor. My intro to circuits breezed through intro material the first week of classes and by the second and third week your solving linear circuits via linear equations. That wasn’t hard to learn but the problems they give you on the test were way hard and when comparing the test problems to problems in the book they were way more challenging. It’s not that challenging problems are bad in general but they require a great deal of time that I don’t have during exams to fully solve. That is a big issue in many science/math/engineering related courses at tech. </p>

<p>I’m switching from Computer Engineering because they repeatedly do not teach any of the basics. I got through the intro to C++ course (ECE 1574) the third time and my professors coincidentally retired the following semester. I had a great TA the 3rd time who really helped if you go to office hours. I have friends in it now and it appears even harder, the problems they are doing are nothing related to what we did a year ago, they seem to change the course every semester and it is so much harder than the first time I took it. </p>

<p>A big reason is because I was new at programming. My high school had no programming courses at all let alone any computer courses, believe me I would have taken some. Most of what I knew/know is self taught. </p>

<p>My last computer engineering course ECE 2534 is pure hell no joke. I’m withdrawing from it when I can. They started the course with assembly programming topics, commands and subroutines under the assumption you’ve been taught it of which I was unfamiliar because I had never been taught nor even mentioned in prior courses. We ordered a spartan digital board that is fun to tinker with but they would give us impossible labs to do. Our 2nd lab (first was intro to the board and making sure it works) was to program a blackjack game and have it output such and such numbers and generate random numbers ect. This was in assembly and C of which I had no clue of any assembly, I’d go to lab hours for help but they’d tell you to figure it out and if you are close or not so you spend the whole day there figuring it out on your own and debugging why it doesn’t work or other obscure errors. There was no text to refer to or teach myself either. Half of my computer engineering courses had no textbook and that is normally how I teach myself. So if the professor is not clear your SOL. </p>

<p>This is a 32 character lcd screen, not a desktop system. It would have even been a fair challenge in my intro to C++ course on a normal desktop system let alone a digital board. This is “Intro to Microprocessing” yet we are creating unrealistic impossible programs on a digital board that takes hours upon hours and lots of office hours to have a chance. </p>

<p>Trust me no one in the course completed the lab on time so they extended it and still no one got it working since it was so complex. But still it was unrealistic and you don’t do those types of problems in the real world.</p>

<p>I was genuinely interested at first thinking we would learn the fundamentals of microprocessors and how they process ect. Nope not the course I had. We didn’t even get a text to come with it. Just Powerpoints.
That’s when I called it quits since it could only get worse. </p>

<p>I’m switching to Computer Science in hopes they are better organized with the course material and in hopes they go through the basics very well. It will take me longer to graduate but oh well, it’s closer to what I want to do in the computer field after college.</p>

<p>Computer Science will be tough but if they teach the basics much better then I can learn from there and put in a lot of effort I should be able to pass. This wasn’t the case in Computer Engineering. Perhaps I was just unlucky and what I went through is a rare combination of bad professors (since a few were in their first semester of teaching). </p>

<p>So yeah for Computer Engineers make sure your expert at assembly, C++ and C languages BEFORE entering College period.</p>

<p>As for other departments I’m not that familiar, but from other peers in Aero, Mechanical, ect. it doesn’t seem nearly as bad as Electrical and Computer. Perhaps they are better taught or have better professors in those departments. I don’t know. Engineering itself isn’t hard, but it is if you don’t have a good teacher, such complexities you need firstly a great teacher to guide you and lots of time and effort on your part to learn it and practice. College can get very distracting so that’s why it’s either make it or break it in engineering. Other subjects like History or Psychology you have to read, and write essays and papers but is generally easy to learn if you are interested and can pull a B if you do all nighters but not so with Engineering.</p>

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<p>Also Chuy what are your study habits in regards to engineering? I haven’t been able to find any method or way of studying that seemed to have worked for me in Engineering.</p>

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<p>I actually graduated a year ago with a CpE/EE double major.</p>

<p>Make no mistake- VT Engineering is hard. They will work the **** out of you and a lot of professors are brutal on tests and projects. I once had an exam where I had a triple integration problem and fudged a limit, I set it as 0-2pi instead of 0-pi/2. I went from a 100% on that exam down to an 88 instantly. But they prepare you for what is demanded down the road. The fact is that engineers need to be right. </p>

<p>If there was anything I wish I did- it was go to office hours more. The professors may be mean in grading, but they ALL are willing to help. Go when the class starts and make sure you get it, and don’t stop going until you get the material down hard.</p>

<p>I guess the one part of your argument that isn’t quite down is to be an expert in any one language. I’d say you don’t have to, but understand general object oriented programming. Once you know classes, loops, and general data structure concepts, you can apply those ideas to any language. There are some differences with pointers when you talk about C++ and Java, but in general, if you do one thing in C++, you can understand how it works in Java.</p>

<p>If you’re EE, make sure to get Signals and Systems DOWN. It will only continue to haunt you down the line if you don’t get Signals. </p>

<p>Also- for CpE, Statics is NOT required anymore. At least in 2008 it wasn’t. But embedded systems is. And that in itself is an intimidating class. It’s essentially a capstone class where the professor literally can’t help you. You choose the project, the approach, pick the parts, do the soldering, write the code. The prof has no clue what you’re doing up until the presentation. Consider it a final exam of everything you learn.</p>

<p>ECE is hard. It’s ridiculously hard. But there’s a reason the ECE grads have one of the highest starting salaries right out of school. Work hard your first 2-3 years. Make sure you know the material, even if you took the final, don’t relax, if you weren’t sure, or got a B, find out why you didn’t get an A and learn from it. When your senior year comes around, it’s ridiculously easy.</p>

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<p>Since you graduated in the program you have even more reliable advice to give, Tech is basically an engineering bootcamp many enter and less graduate without having changed majors or dropping out all together. I think it’s intentionally hard to weed out people but I originally didn’t think it would extend past the 2000 level courses like it does, perhaps even through the entire course track which is why I dropped, can’t take it anymore. I still find the material interesting and may study it again someday maybe in grad school down the road but not here.</p>

<p>I am a person who needs to be taught from the ground up and one step at a time before tackling much more challenging problems. If I was better educated in High School (graduated overseas) then I might have a better chance. I just came into tech thinking it had awesome educational quality in regards to teaching. It doesn’t…you either get it or you don’t and the rest is on you and it takes a hell of a lot more to pass if you haven’t been exposed to the material prior at least in CPE/EE. Don’t get me wrong Virginia Tech is an excellent school and an engineering degree from there only shows you endured hell from one of the top programs in the nation. But some people need to be taught more than others. All I’m saying is if you are gifted and have a natural aptitude for math and science and are well versed in Calculus and Physics coming out of high school, you can make it but will still have to work hard. If you work hard enough and want it bad enough and don’t rely heavily on a social life (you can have some social life) then you can do it. For CPe majors add programming on things to know coming into tech. </p>

<p>I was over exaggerating when I said you had to be an “expert” but you have to know the basics at least and be a very well versed intermediate I should say for the courses to be easy or manageable. So something like maybe 2 or 3 years experience would do. Many high schools offer programming courses and you should take all of them you can, you’ll be ahead of the pack if you come in knowing the basics.</p>

<p>However they did through some insane homework and lab assignments in our intro to C++ course. For example encrypting/decrypting via strings using specific loops ect. You are already utilizing overloaded functions by the 5th week which is extremely fast for an “intro course” it took me that long to get use to for,while,if/else loops ect coming in not knowing anything. </p>

<p>Everyone learns differently, I’m a very visual/hands on learner and learn through examples and labs that take it one step at a time. I probably would have excelled at a good technical school but tech was a lot of unrealistic theory and way over the top but I guess that is all to over qualify you when/if you make it though with a degree. </p>

<p>I love tech too much to leave entirely the rest of the aspects of the school are great which is why i’m trying to pursue computer science. I really wish they did have an Information Technology program however. Oh well…</p>

<p>I don’t know about your Senior Year being easy, that embedded systems course (coming from my advisor) is the hardest course of the major. That is a 4000 level course however so it could be your 2nd semester junior year or senior year. It’s best to take it junior year so if you have to re-take it senior year you can.</p>

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<p>I guess it may be the fact that it’s easier if you come in with some prior knowledge. </p>

<p>For future students- if you intend on CS or CpE, definitely try taking AP CS. It helps a lot prior to coming into engineering at VT. I have indeed heard some horror stories about the intro to C++ course- and in all honesty- if you can’t grasp the basics of loops/basic logic flow within a week or so, CS/CpE may not be your cup of tea. The speed of the courses tend to be governed by the rest of the student body- and if they all come in with coding knowledge, then you’re going to have to double down to catch up. </p>

<p>I’ve had moments where I felt behind, and I struggled badly. But the reality of it is that all the students have those moments. If you can reach out and find help though through TAs and Profs, then they are more than willing to help. I think the lectures definitely aren’t geared towards “teaching” as many people would expect, but more information transfers to students. They’ll throw some examples at you and answer some basic questions but if you feel lost, office hours are immensely critical. I think that’s what separates college in general from just learning from a book. You pay for that access to professors who can answer your questions and figure out where your weakness is and how you can improve. </p>

<p>Embedded systems is hard in the fact that if you have a poor foundation early on, then you will not have the skills to get through the class. If you have a good grounding in your first 3 years, embedded will not be as bad as many make it out to be.</p>

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<p>I guess the #1 thing I can suggest for study habits it to keep some sort or record, be it on paper or computer, of everything you need to have done and when it needs to be done. Work on stuff in order of importance/due date soot stuff doesn’t sneak up on you. Sophomore year is going to be draining no matter what you do, but if you stay organized and keep on task while studying and doing your homework, if you find yourself repeating multiple classes multiple times you may just not have the aptitude for engineering. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just might be the right major for you.</p>

<p>When I said senior year is easier, what I’m saying is that by senior year you’re hopefully taking classes that interest you (which are always easier to study for,) you’ve picked up a lot of study skills on the way, and you should have a lot of friends in your major that you can study with and ask for help. The classes aren’t easier in that if you dropped a freshman in a senior level class he’d almost certainly be lost, but you’re much better equipped to deal with them. Also if you plan your semesters right you can be like me with 12 credits each semester, which is very nice.</p>

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<p>well this sounds great news to me lol
i am freshman at tech and thinking declare electrical engineering early since I survived the 1024 weed out class with A luckily, ( spent tons of time studying) and the bad news is i did not get chang for physics i got kim instead, any advices?
I also have that first C++ class called Engineering problem solving with C++, how is it?
Thanks
Your post make me feel very bad about my upcoming years at ECE :(</p>

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<p>So chuy, is the general agreement among engineers that after sophomore year (especially second semester), classes become more forgiving? </p>

<p>Or put another way, if you have made it through two whole years of engineering without being weeded out, would you be rewarded with easier classes to pad your gpa?</p>

<p>Or is it that if you enter junior year in engineering, you have a good understanding of how to handle the workload, and the classes from then onwards become more interesting and manageable to get high grades in? btw I don’t go to va tech engineering, but I thought I’d join in in this discussion which had some things I have had questions about.</p>

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<p>Jets: 1) You never should have traded away Chad.
2) Keep refreshing the course timetable until a spot in Chang’s class opens up. I’ve never had Kim so I don’t know how good he is but Chang is good enough to be worth switching out of anybodies classes for. If you don’t get Chang then look up what time Chang’s classes meet and sit in on them anyway. Yes it is extra work. Yes it is worth it. I never took any programming classes so I have no idea about C++. </p>

<p>Tennis: Uhh… it’s a bit of both. Especially once the classes start getting smaller (from 200 to 40 to 5) you start getting more access to the professors and more individualized attention. That helps. Also, a professor in a smaller class can’t fail everybody, so if a few people are falling behind they have to help you out with a curve or dropping a test or something. I certainly wouldn’t call it a reward that we get, and it isn’t about padding our GPA, it’s just that at that point they know you’re at least a moderately capable student, so if a lot of people are having a problem something needs to be done by the instructor to rectify the situation. </p>

<p>Another thing is that classes tend to get much more project and group based, especially toward senior year. It’s unlikely that we’ll use the a lot of the technical knowledge that we gain in class ever again (depending on where we end up), but our communication, teamwork and leadership abilities will be useful in any career. They know this and tailor the curriculum to that effect. If you can work effectively in a group then many senior level classes are going to be a breeze compared to freshman level ‘problem set every night’ classes. There still are those classes, but not nearly as many.</p>

<p>And a lot of it is what you talked about, where you know how to handle the workload and the classes are more interesting. You usually have more friends that you can work with and study with. You’ve got the little bit of confidence that not being the person that somebody was looking at to their right or left on the first day of class can give you. You’re studying something that you presumably like, since you picked your major/concentration and you picked your technical electives. It’s kind of this perfect storm of circumstances where, if you put in the work up front and chose your major wisely, you have an opportunity to grow and excel to whatever heights you’re capable of.</p>

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<p>Listen to chuy - “Chang for physics” was a very useful tangible piece of information that I passed on to my son. He just finished his first semester at VT, had Chang for physics, and had only positive things to say about the class.</p>

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<p>I’ll second Dr. Chang being the only bright spot in the physics department. I just finished the class as well.</p>

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<p>yea i got in chang finally haha
chuy so the C++ class they actually teach you? because i heard someone say if you had no previous experience you are screwed. Also how did you think about the class on matlab?</p>

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<p>No clue on either; I didn’t take those classes.</p>

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<p>Honestly I have trouble understanding where this guy is coming from. I’m a second semester freshmen currently in engineering. The intro to C++ class is currently a joke ( just took the first test, and it was like a high school test). We do less work in our engineering class than the other engineers do. I have Joyce for physics (not Chang), and so far it’s been pretty easy ( had to study because I don’t have a strong physics background). Yea sure I’ve had to work for it, and maybe it’s just because I’m still a freshmen, but so far the rough engineering curriculum hasn’t overwhelmed me , in fact I have a lot of of free time and a great social life. And honestly , if your having trouble with into calculus and physics, hell, of course you’re going to think that later classes are hard. Putting all of this aside, I’ve heard computer engineering is one of the harder engineering classes. But really , the first year is really not that hard.</p>