<p>I understand that the engineering program at UF is amazing and top-ranked? Does anyone going to UF have some useful or interesting info about UF engineering?</p>
<p>UF’s engineering college is probably its best college as a whole. I enjoyed my 4 years; did research for a couple of years, took an internship or two and got paid to go to grad school as an MS everywhere I applied. Your question is kind of vague so I don’t know what to really say.</p>
<p>You answered the question I asked. Sorry if it’s vague. Just looking for good facts, knowledge, or observations about UF’s engineering. A very broad range. I’m kind of just asking for any info you can give me that may not be commonly known, or is useful. Maybe specific majors at UF have certain “qwerks”…</p>
<p>wasslion, I can tell you for sure that UF Engineering is very well respected all over the country. Many of the large, well known engineering firms/corporations have UF as one of the top universities they prioritize for recruitment.</p>
<p>UF also has a two semester program called IPPD where undergrad students are paired with corporate sponsors to create/design products. Here is a very small sample of the cool projects the students work on:</p>
<p>Lockheed Martin
High-Velocity Projectile Impact Sensor Technology
Description: Design a sensor network, computer control, and detection algorithms for sensing projectiles during their impact. Test the sensor network for accuracy and robustness.</p>
<p>Raytheon Systems
Wireless Operator Speech Source Surround
Description: Design and build a system for connection of multiple VOIP phones to a wireless single phone with simulated 3-D source locations.</p>
<p>Integrated Technology Ventures
Detection of Explosives by Differential Reflection Spectrometry
Description: Develop a prototype remote explosives detector for baggage screening. The technology was developed at the University of Florida and is based upon differential reflectance spectroscopy.</p>
<p>US Special Ops/US Forest Service/WinTec
Smart Communications Node
Description: Develop a small, lightweight, weatherproof “smart” communication node prototype to track the position of forest firefighters and echo back pertinent information to/from the remote position</p>
<p>[University</a> of Florida - Integrated Product & Process Design](<a href=“http://www.ippd.ufl.edu/]University”>http://www.ippd.ufl.edu/)</p>
<p>Another thing that impresses me about the engineering college (and the university as a whole) is that they are pushing harder than ever to encourage inter-college cooperation. For example, engineering, medicine, physics, agriculture, materials, etc… all working together to come up with innovative research solutions to solve each other’s “problems”.</p>
<p>I participated in IPPD and it was a good experience. My mentor wasn’t very involved, but I learned way more about EE than I have from any single course sequence. It really enabled me to grasp what it is like to be an engineer working on a big project.</p>
<p>I did IPPD as well – best experience I had during my curriculum (I loved my uP class with Schwartz and Solid State with Bossman too). Talking about my IPPD project to the hiring managers made their eyeballs pop out while they were interviewing me.</p>
<p>I’d say the quality of our engineering depends on which department you’re in. You don’t have the same experience as a Electrical Engineer as, say, a Materials Sciences engineer. Generally how your department measures up nationally will matter the most.</p>
<p>If you’re mechanical or electrical, there’s quite a lot of people doing those majors. The experience is totally different if you’re in a department that has like 30 people a year. I have the same people in all my classes, it’s almost like highschool again, we all know each other.</p>
<p>Is the materials engineering program small? How about industrial?</p>
<p>I popped over to some websites and found a little information about that.</p>
<p>Materials: The department has 31 distinguished faculty members, 30 scientists and research scholars, with over 240 graduate students including 200 PhD students, 150 undergraduates, and 20 technical and support staff. </p>
<p>Industrial: * 13 Tenure-Track Professors * 7 Lecturers, Scientists, or Engineers * 10 Staff Members * 408 B.S. Students * 258 M.S. or M.E. Students * 54 Ph.D. Students</p>
<p>Those are from the respective program’s websites, it should give you some feel for the department sizes.</p>
<p>wasslion, what kind of engineering do you think you’d like to do?</p>
<p>Materials or Industrial. Industrial for the economics related to it. Materials because I think it’s interesting. My only concern about materials engineering is that it will be too hard for me. I feel like materials is a more limited field, though.</p>
<p>Well, UF Materials Engineering is top 10 in the country. Hard or not hard, if you like it you will do well in it. Any engineering field will have lots of math, and in your intended major, lots of physics and chemistry. If I remember correctly, the two years of prereqs are pretty much the same for all the engineering fields so you’ll have lots of time to narrow down the path you want to take by your 3rd year.</p>