CS or EE?

<p>i'm unsure about my major. right now, i'm currently majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. at my school, you have to apply to the major to actually start taking the upper-division courses. i'm expected to apply around April. however, i'm not sure if i want to keep doing ECE or do CS.</p>

<p>the thing that is bothering me right now is i'm not sure if i really like ECE anyway. the material isn't really that bad at all right now but i hear it gets ridiculously hard in your junior and senior year. it's going to be tough doing stuff i don't like and i really do not want to have any regrets later on in my college life.</p>

<p>with CS, i love/hate it. i've only taken two CS courses in my life and i did OK in both of them. probably could have gotten an A if i applied myself but whatever. i did good in my Discrete Mathematics course. anyway, i love it because i love trying to solve things. the feeling and satisfaction is great when you are able to run a program that you wrote yourself. i hate it because of the frustration but i think i can overcome that if i apply myself in school.</p>

<p>any words of advice from any CS or EE majors?</p>

<p>I'm not sure what you are trying to say, but it seems that you're not really passionate about either one of them. You need to make a good decision based on what you want to study AND what you want to do.
I'm an EE major because I enjoy physics/math more than programming and would like to be making developments in EE related fields rather than computers.
Also keep in mind that both majors are tough, and I think there is a general consensus that EE is harder because it has more math/physics. But CS is no walk in the park either. If you want something easy (and not frustrating) you might have to change majors entirely, though from your description it seems you like CS. I'm thinking you are frustrated because of the programming, but that is normal. Its part of the fun, you have to learn to live with it.</p>

<p>Some fields in ECE also require high programming skills, such as signal/image processing. You can consider to concentrate on such fields.</p>

<p>I'm an junior EE, going into my spring semester, so hopefully I can shed some light.</p>

<p>EE or CS? Hmm... good question. I would preferably do EE with a minor in CS? I'm sure your school offers that, many many schools do.</p>

<p>As far as the coursework in your junior year, yeah it's pretty hard and time-consuming, but the way to combat that is to dedicate the majority of your time to studying and doing homework. That is the only way you'll get through, and it is completely manageable. You may have to put in 3-4 hours of studying each day after classes, but again, it shouldn't be that bad. And before exams, at least 3-5 days before the exam for non-stop studying (5 hours a day or so). These figures will obviously be different, depending on your style and method of studying.</p>

<p>Will you find jobs as a CS? Yes. I've applied for many internships and I've seen tons of postings for a software engineer. But remember, the real world out there will not put you in a job that make you write problems from scratch, very rarely so. You might be hired as a software engineer to test a certain product by making C or Perl scripts. Does QA seem appealing to you? You might also be doing lots of documentation, code review, code revision, etc. It won't be anything like what you've done in class.</p>

<p>Will you get a job as an EE? Sure. Tons of them out there. I actually interviewed with Boeing for a CS position, though I was unaware of it beforehand. I didn't really want to do CS, but believe it or not, as an EE, you could get hired on as a CS person. That's just with a BSEE. If you add a CS minor to that BSEE, you will be more appealing.</p>

<p>As powerboy said, ECE requires lots of programming skills regardless. You probably won't be building or modifying databases or whatever, but you'll definitely need them. If you do signal processing (taking in a continuous-time signal or analog signal and converting it to a digital signal, then processing that digital signal for information, then performing an action) will require you to program DSP chips... most likely in low-level assembly language. As a CS student, you'll be exposed to assembly language, too. However, I'm sure a company will prefer an EE grad who can do the DSP processing, rather than a CS grad. You need exposure to the EE topics/mathematics in that field in order to program the FPGA or microcontrollers.</p>

<p>So, as you see, there's many options and many routes. I have not yet regretted being an EE... ok, I lied. Only sometimes, when the work gets tough, but who doesn't regret something that they're doing or have second thoughts? You won't have any regrets, as you are worried about, as long as you just study your ass off during the semester. Plus, college semesters aren't all that long. The way I see it: the more better I do in school (academically and through internships), the better chances I'll have at getting a job after graduate and also the better chance I have of obtaining a HIGHER starting salary. Would you rather make $50k or $60k starting straight from college? You'd earn $50k if you did mediocre, but $60k if you did very good to exceptional in college. Your choice. $10k is a lot of money. Just work hard now - it WILL pay off.</p>

<p>UNDEFINED
...........YOU have pretty good persuasive power........</p>

<p>Thanks ;) If you have any other questions, I'll try my best to answer them.</p>