I was admitted to the class of 2021, and have a question about Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) vs Computer Science and Engineering (CSE).
I plan on majoring in Computer Engineering, but I’m perplexed on which track I should go. I have been leaning towards ECE because I love circuits, transistors, and am more of a hardware guy (this is really what I want to do). On the other hand, my mother (with her mother mentality) told me that I should pursue CSE because it incorporates more of a Computer Science degree, which she believes can earn more money, has more job opportunities, and is the field of the future.
Is she correct? Does CSE really have more benefits that ECE? Are the job opportunities and the pay really significantly better than ECE, and better enough to change the track of my major?
There’s not much of a difference between computer engineers and computer scientists in terms of opportunities/salary. Both of these fields do generally have more opportunities than electrical engineers, but even then the gap is not that significant. If that’s your only concern, I don’t believe it’d be worth it to change the track of your major.
Major in ECE. You will have so many more opportunities with ECE rather than CSE. Mainly because right now you don’t know if software is what you want to do. But if it is then you can still do it with ECE. Honestly you should probably major in Electrical Engineering yourself and minor in computer science instead of ECE, because with Electrical Engineering you can literally go into any sector you want. Software, Hardware, Power, Signals, Communications, and even oil and gas. You may want to hop up one day and take a drilling engineer job for 200k down off the gulf coast and with Electrical Engineering you can because you are taught the fundamentals of power. But with CSE no, you are destined for Software. Whenever you start applying for Internships you will see that with Electrical Engineering you can apply for any Engineering Field as long as its not Civil Engineering or really design related mechanical Engineering jobs. In Electrical Engineering I got Internship offers from companies to be a Software Engineering Intern then from other companies looking for Signals Processing Interns ( Don’t worry you will learn what that is in year 2 if you choose ECE ). But the point is you don’t know the field you want to go in right now, so try to give yourself a broad brush to work with and don’t pigeon hole yourself. And tell your friends also going to Texas A&M and majoring in Petroleum Engineering to drop it and major in mechanical for the same reasons except with that there is always going to be software jobs open, but oil and gas fluctuates and they don’t want to be stuck in a 5 year downturn with a specialized Engineering degree.