<p>At the university I'm planning to attend, I have to choose one of the two. What do you think would be the best choice? They overlap tremendously and I like both fields equally. Which one of the two do you think has the best potential in the future? By potential I mean chances of employment, high salary, grad school...?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>The question should be</p>
<p>Which one are you more interested in?</p>
<p>there's really only a couple courses difference between EE and CpE.. so..</p>
<p>Computer Engineering solves problems in software, Electrical Engineering in hardware. </p>
<p>Software (running on a general purpose CPU) is slower than dedicated hardware for a given task, but is quicker and easier to develop. This distinction is somewhat blurred by the existence of a device called a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) that is dedicated hardware that is programmable and which is very useful to validate the logical design of any code in hardware. These can be now programmed using higher level languages (relatively speaking) like C.</p>
<p>Currenlty, hardware is generally only financially practical for a mass market or for military applications, so the scope of problems that are currently economically feasible to solve in hardware is narrower than software. However, it is my opinion that this distinction too will blur over the long run, say 7-15 years.</p>
<p>EEs do learn some programming and programming is certainly easier to pick up on your own that EE.</p>
<p>If you are on the fence I'd lean toward the more rigorous EE and do as much coding as possible.</p>
<p>Electrical engineering is a broader field that has a number of subfields that have virtually nothing to do with computers, except incidentally as a tool like everyone else uses them. Computer-related work is one area that an EE can pursue, but its hardly the only one.</p>
<p>It really makes no difference what the exact words on your diploma are. Much more important are the courses you took and the grades you got. No employer or grad school says, "Applicant A was better than applicant B, but A majored in Electrical Engineering while B majored in Computer Engineering, so let's go with B." </p>
<p>And yes, it's true that electrical engineering is broader than computer engineering, but the truth is that most EEs end up working in computer-related fields. (There aren't too many power plant engineers out there, and MEMS isn't really a big employer compared to, say, semiconductors.)</p>
<p>"..the truth is that most EEs end up working in computer-related fields"</p>
<p>IF you say so. I don't know any stats or anything. </p>
<p>But most of my friends from EE school are not designing computers per se, Most of them are using them in some capacity, of course. Most need to know more about computers than most people, but the focus of their business is not computers per se.</p>
<p>I know people who went into: lasers, E&M wave guide design, power plant design,power transmission, industrial machnery & plant design, circuit design, solid state electronics, semiconductor design & fabrication.</p>
<p>Once again I'm not dismissing your claims, as I don't have any stats. I just can't confirm them based on my personal (limited) experience.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is due to where and when I attended engineering school. And how broadly one defines "computer-related". There are many solid-state and electronic devices that are not computers. I'm not so sure a software-oriented CS degree would be useful training for developing these other devices, or working in these other areas.</p>
<p>I am taking a double major in both of them. Try it, it's easy</p>
<p>nightfly, </p>
<p>That's not necessarily true. What you are talking about is computer science vs. electrical engineering. </p>
<p>Computer engineering can refer to software engineering, but you can also major in computer engineering with a focus on computer hardware. Computer science is pure software (maybe a couple hardware classes, but not many) and electrical engineering is pure hardware. Computer engineering combines the two (which is why some places call this major Electrical Engineering & Computer Science).</p>