<p>A friend of mine asked me what he should do and told me his interests.
He likes EE and CS.
I told him to Undergrad in EE, then Master in CS.
Good idea or bad? Felt like it would be more stable and manageable. Should he double major in both? He had the talks of getting his mba too. I told him to wait awhile before that.</p>
<p>Many EEs work in software. Almost no CS guys work in circuits. If he likes both, do EE. If he has some AP credits and is willing to put in 5 years he can do both. </p>
<p>MBA decisions can wait.</p>
<p>How about computer engineering? At my school at least, it’s separate from but within the school of electrical engineering.</p>
<p>I always thought of CE as a waterdowned major of EE and CS.</p>
<p>Not watered down at all, just a different focus. The guys designing the next generation processors for Intel and gpus for Nvidia will all be CEs. The guys designing jet engine controls and power distribution systems for airplanes will all be EEs. The skill sets overlap in the middle for something like a portable bar code scanner which would have both analog and digital pieces.</p>
<p>Not bad advice at all.</p>
<p>It is easier to get into a graduate CS program than graduate EE as far as number of undergraduate courses. You really only need 4 core CS courses to get into most graduate CS programs. More and more CompE programs will have students now take 2 of those 4 (algorithms and data structures).</p>
<p>That leaves Organization of Programming Languages and Operating Systems and a graduate CS program may still admit the EE/CompE major and ask them to take those two courses in addition to the other MS requirements.</p>
<p>CE is not a waterdown version. CE’s work with comp architecture, while some may focus a bit more on digital circuits and vlsi, while some may even be more software orientated, while some may even do stuff with dsp.
I vote ee because its more versatile and I do it! Though I will be honest with you. In the beginning it seems like CS guys just get more jobs more easily and in more varied fields (every company needs cs guys), and the pay tends to be higher sometimes up to 10k. I think in my school starting salary for cs is around 10K higher than EE. It can be a little frustrating. </p>
<p>On top of it none of your cs friends will be asked in interviews about solid state, emag/ circuits or whatev, but you will definitely be asked programming stuff and often times it will be pretty hard stuff. </p>
<p>I hope in the long term EE will bring some advantages over cs</p>