<p>Hello, I am a senior in high school wanting to major in computer engineering. I have interest in hardware, software, (although not that much real knowledge other than some PHP and C++) and Information Technology in general, especially when it comes to computer network design and security. ( I Could Certify in Security+, and am currently studying CCDA and CCNA.)
Right now I wanting to go with computer engineering mainly because it opens more doors than software engineering or straight up CS, and I am wanting to explore my interest as well.</p>
<p>So, now a little bit about myself,</p>
<p>As a student, I have a 3.3, expecting a 3.4-3.5 upon graduation, with an ACT Composite of a 27 ( I retook, my school of choice Uber Scores). I have excellent ECs, Three years of football on the offensive line, and one of wrestling and Track. I have competed on the state level and nationally with FBLA in their cyber security competition and placed 2nd in my state, and 9th in the USA. (right now I am preparing for their Network Design competition (hence the cisco certs that I am studying for) I enterd the Siemens Competition and Intel STS with a white paper that I wrote comparing the strength of MD5 and Windows LM hashes.</p>
<p>Mathematically speaking, I am not the best in the world, however; recently I have done much better than in years past. I was able to bring my ACT math up from a 19 to a strong 27 with plenty of hard work, and I currently have one of the highest averages in my pre-cal class with a very high 90 as aposed to the 80s and 70s I earned in geometry and Algebra I. I think alot of it has to do with me maturing as a student.</p>
<p>So, what I need are some suggestions. I plan on going to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and I want to get the most out of my future. Right now I really like the networking industry ( I especially like the idea of ethical hacking for auditing purposes), but robotics sounds like it would kick ass also!</p>
<p>Oh and don't forget... Engineering Majors FTW!!!</p>
<p>This sounds a little like me. I went into Computer Engineering because I thought robotics was cool and I play around with hardware and OS’es galore. I even wrote TI-83+ programs and the logic is so similar to C++. You can’t do it all, unfortunately. I’d say robotics because you can always do Dept of Defense work. Ever see “Future Weapons” on Discovery? FCS is the new warfare battlefield. Miniature robots galore. Government jobs are the most secure jobs, despite the economy. Networking sounds great, but I bet Indians or Pakistans can do a better job with Network Security, aside from US Gov’t network specialists. They simply work harder than Americans because their life sucks. </p>
<p>Lastly, UT Knoxville seems like a pretty good school for working in industry afterwards. I went there as a possible option for grad school. Nice campus. You need to ask the senior guys this, but I’ve come to the conclusion that typically where you go to school is where you may work when you get out. Maybe that’s the case with civil engineers.</p>
<p>^ The reason I ask at all is that I remember a fairly recent discussion in which I recall looking up some numbers, giving very favorable numbers to some engineering discipline and mediocre numbers to CS/SE, and getting that there were an order-of-magnitude more jobs for CS/SE than for whatever I was comparing. Oh well.</p>
<p>I should make a correction, there are not nessicarly more jobs for CS than SE, but there are more kinds of jobs. The fact that a good CE can kinda work his way into multiple careers if need be, some of the careers being the domains of SE guys.</p>
<p>^ That’s true. CE is a combination of CS and EE. The Computer Software and Computer Hardware components under the BLS. You can get most of the jobs a CS/SE major can get and most of the jobs EE’s can get. Majoring in CE does not exclude you from many of the “computer software” or “computer hardware” jobs the bls has projected. </p>
<p>Most software engineering jobs are freely open to CE graduates. Could be more if you included embedded software which is a little toward EE’s. So it seems like a logical conclusion that CE opens more doors than CS/SE when the hardware related jobs are taken into account.</p>
<p>Your a lot like me too: a pre-calc. student who enjoys tinkering with electronics/computers. Sadly, the math is really hard. Every CE course will involve quite a bit of math, incl. differentials and MV calc. </p>
<p>@SlippingEdge:</p>
<p>Uh… Pakistanis and Indians have different interests and lifestyles… our lives don’t “suck”!</p>
<p>@ Lacero:
I don’t want to get into this again - I think you were there when this happened last - but I think the analysis I did then using BLS data took into account the fact that CE majors could do most CS/SE jobs (and I even made the generous assumption that CS/SE majors couldn’t do many CE jobs, though I doubt this is entirely accurate). CS/SE came out on top simply because of the <em>vastly</em> greater number of jobs in programming and SE than in computer hardware engineering (or, in fact, all “engineering” put together!) Of course different numbers could have turned the tide, but I felt - and still feel - that a 90-10 split is already more than favorable enough to the CEs. Anyway, I can’t argue that CE’s probably have more variety of work, and that’s probably the strong point in its employment prospects. Certainly CE is a good, respectable major… one that anybody would be lucky to study.</p>
<p>There are much more computer science jobs than computer engineering jobs.
But computer engineers can do computer science jobs more easily than CS people can do CE jobs, so their prospects might be better. On the other hand what is a CE job? Embedded systems is covered in many CS departments so probably you are set either way.</p>
<p>Why this obsession with job prospects anyway? How many do you need?</p>
<p>^ Yes, they might be, but like I said, you’d have to be pretty generous in favor of the CE’s for it to be true… more generous than I think reality would admit. And, like I said before, job prospects should be fine either way. This knowing, of course, that CS/SE will have more jobs and more growth than CE, so if you major in CE you might end up doing CS/SE work anyway, at which point one might question the utility of majoring in something other than your intended field, but I digress.</p>