I have been so excited to finally go to college and study. I knew I wanted to go into engineering since I’ve always loved math and science growing up, so after a lot of research and trying things out, as of now I have decided to major in EE. Everything I’ve done so far makes me really excited to obtain my major and apply what I learn to help people in ways I’ve discovered electrical engineers can. I think it’s so cool how vast the field is and how much can be accomplished with it and what has yet to be discovered. I’m not going to lie, I was really surprised how few people are actually in this field, let alone how few girls there are. I’m not one to shy away from a task just because I’m the only girl or anything, it just took me by surprise. Everyone says it is the hardest engineering major and everyone I tell that I’m going into this field says something like “yikes that’s going to be hell” etc. After finally meeting people within my college who are in this major they all seem to have so much experience with things like circuits and doing things in high school. I started getting kind of nervous when these guys are talking about hacking through systems in their high school or blowing things up, doing so much they electrocuted themselves etc because I have never done this stuff and have no idea about it…I am still learning and know I have a lot of hard work ahead. I am the kind of person where I do not get things right away like some people can. I do however work my butt off and take the time to learn ahead and study really hard. Yet, I am still getting intimidated seeing all these types of guys in this field and feel like I may not be good enough. I know it’s not good to have doubts and I need to just believe in myself but there are times I get scared for what’s ahead. I really want to get my masters in EE and have loved what I’ve been learning so far, I just feel that down the road I’ll get lost. Has anyone else been through this and graduated/with a job now? What was it like getting through college? Thank you 
Don’t worry. Go for it. The world needs more women engineers. You will be fine. I am an EE.
I had no EE in HS and met the same kind of kids in my college. In the end they were hobbyists and really didn’t understand. You will do better than them - don’t let them intimidate you.
- Most engineering students have no engineering experience when they start.
- If they're talking about frequently hacking into school systems or blowing things up, they're likely exaggerating or straight-out lying.
- Every engineering major gets the "wow that must be awful" crap. It doesn't mean any of them are harder or better than the rest.
- The people who are ready to work their butts off are the people who do the best in college. You don't need to be a genius. Almost no one is, yet thousands of newly minted engineers graduate every year.
Source: female ChemE student. Have been the only woman in groups several times. Work hard for my grades and it pays off.
My daughter and myself were both math majors. I am in high tech now where there are very few women. My daughter is in investment banking, also with very few women. The plus side is employers do want more women in those jobs, so your chance of getting hired into those positions is much higher.
A funny story about my daughter…She was always a sharp dresser. When she walked into a high level math the first day, she had boots, scarf, nice bag and a cup of “fancy coffee”, and she was huffing and puffing because she was late. Few guys around her started laughing and told her maybe she was in a wrong class - sociology class was down the hall. My daughter told them that she was good. It wasn’t until they got their first exam back that they realized she was for real. They found out she had the highest score in class. She also said those guys were constantly yakking about how they solved all those math problems or wrote some great Matlab algorithms.
Don’t get intimidated. You may be smaller in size than those guys, but your brain is just as big as theirs. We lose a lot of good female programmers and engineers because of stereotyping.
Many years ago I was a computer science major in a similar situation. I took my first computer course first semester freshman year and fell in love. However, most of the guys in my classes had been playing around on computers for quite some time. What I found was that as long as you worked hard and pulled your weight on projects, the rest didn’t matter so much. Many years later I’m now a director in a technology company, after being a developer and other roles throughout my career.
You are likely not the only one in this position. My son is entering his sophomore year as a mechanical engineering major. He had no engineering classes at all - just calc and physics. Lots of his fellow students had engineering classes in high school. That hasn’t held him back from being a dean’s list student and active contributor to projects.
Best of luck to you!
Two of my college suite-mates were EE majors – and that was back in the 80’s. Work hard, persevere, and you should be just fine.
My D is an architectural/structural engineering major and has taken a bunch of EE classes. Her roommate is an EE major. They will both be graduating in a year. Don’t let anyone intimidate you. You can do this, no problem.
One thing my uncle and several other engineering relatives kept emphasizing is that it doesn’t take a genius to graduate as an engineering major or moreso, to succeed as a professional engineer.
Hard work, persistence, a solid mathematical and physics foundation, and passion for the field are the most important prereqs.
Don’t let the bragging about HS engineering/tech antics get to you.
While I disagree with @bodangles about the fact such talk is usually exaggerated/made up as I attended a STEM-centered public magnet where such antics were commonplace and well-known that my public magnet gained a bit of notoriety over it, a large majority of that isn’t going to matter much in the long run.
Especially the part about them bragging about electrocuting themselves or blowing stuff up. Not too many clued in folks brag about actions/outcomes which are actually manifestations of carelessness, bad practices, and/or plain old incompetence.
That is unless one’s intention is to do so as a form of self-deprecation as I’ve done when recounting the time I caused an explosion in HS chem lab…but that was mainly to underscore how crappy of a chem student I was…not to show my chem bona-fides(The HS classmates in that chem class/lab…especially the actual topflight students would be ROTFLOLing at the mere thought.).
Especially if such antics end up getting them into substantial legal hot water or cause them to be such bad team players(engineering work is often collaborative and requires good teamwork and social skills…including listening to client/customers’ needs within a given budget) that they don’t last very long in the engineering workplace.
I was an architectural/structural engineering major, also, @Parentof2014grad. There weren’t many girls, but even way back in 1980, it didn’t bother me a bit. What DID scare me was that I made a 45 on my first college exam, in physics. The other students seemed so smart!! I kept working hard, though, and eventually graduated with high honors and got a full fellowship to attend graduate school. When I go to meetings of our engineering society, I’m usually one of two women present. I’m on the Board of Directors, though! Hang in there, and you will be fine. Keep us posted on how things go for you!
Part of it depends on what they mean by blow things up. Frying a circuit board is easy if you don’t know what you’re doing. There are student rocket competitions: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-selects-student-teams-for-2017-student-launch-rocket-challenge. I wouldn’t assume anyone is lying without a lot more context.
If it helps, those guys are probably equally intimidated by you.
Keep in mind that just a couple of months ago, those boys were still high school students. They might be tech savvy, but I guarantee you that a good portion of their bragging is just your normal run-of-the-mill chest beating…think of a pack of male gorillas trying to establish who is the dominant male. In this case, their chosen test of strength is in engineering stuff.
Get used to this sort of behavior. Because it just continues for the most part, but as those 18 year old boys get older, they do mellow out a lot. The positioning for who is the dominant male in the pack just shifts a bit in terms of whatever the subject matter happens to be that particular day.
I’ve worked in high tech for many years and I’ve run into this pretty much everywhere. Another way to label it is “Who’s the smartest dude in the room?” Then whoever happens to be competing offers up their tales of their 'I’m the smartest because ___" adventures. I’ve seen my computer geek husband do this with his buddies, too.
Trust me…all of those freshman boys in your engineering classes are just as nervous as you are. They just might not show it. They show their insecurity by the frequency of their “I’m super cool, super smart in engineering because I electrocuted myself” tales.
Also, they are showing what huge fools they are by bragging about doing dumb stuff like electrocuting themselves.
You have just as much a right to be there as they do. Don’t let them intimidate you. Don’t let their pontificating, chest-beating, and one-upmanship games get to you. Study hard, do the work, and beat them the good old fashioned way…with good grades.
I guarantee you that by the end of freshman year, some of those EE freshman boys will have dropped from the EE program because they couldn’t hack it. So they’ll have to switch majors and they can brag all they want until the cows come home about blowing up their mom’s toaster in the backyard or dumb stuff like that…but they won’t be the ones with a BS in electrical engineering. You will.
You have nothing to worry about. The EE girls I know are not only great engineers but also fantastic friends.
You’ve got this! You can do it! Go get 'em and don’t look back! So here’s the thing about many guys especially when they are around each other. They like to puff up their peacock feathers and strut around their testosterone! Let it go in one ear and out the other. Take it one class at a time and press on! You’ll develop a support network along the way and with your hard work, you’ll be fantastic! Take a breath and guess what…a lot of the guys in your program are feeling intimidated too! Congratulations and keep putting one foot in front of the other! And never forget hard work beats talent every time!
I graduated (many years ago) with a EE degree. About 110 kids my year in that major and only 10 were girls. Try to think about how cool it is to do something that so few girls are doing and how that makes you special. I honestly do not remember feeling like the guys thought I didn’t belong. But like Oldfort’s daughter, when the professor of one of our sophomore major classes called out my name saying “where is adlgel” and I raised my hand and he congratulated me for getting a 100 on the test (and a few weeks later did the same thing again), it certainly ensured that the guys knew to take me seriously. So enjoy the opportunity you have to do something you seem to love, do your best at it and let the chips fall where they may in terms of how the boys react.
Also, for what it’s worth my first job out of college was not in the EE field but every single thing I learned and the hard work that I had to put in to graduate with that degree certainly contributed to my post-college employment success.
They are one-upping each other and showing off, especially with you around. You focus on putting in the work. You’ve got this!
See if you can join any clubs or organizations, especially if they are women-engineering or women-STEM focused. Not only will be surrounded by people like yourself, you will probably get all kinds of life hacks with regard to navigating a school where females in that major are a definite minority. Work hard - good results will shut up the skeptical.
What you’re feeling is called impostor syndrome or impostor experience. It’s very common with estimates that around 70% of people experience it at some point, and may be particularly prevalent in high-achieving women and minorities because of social attitudes. It has nothing to do with your intelligence or skills. If you google for that term you’ll find a bunch of articles about how to deal with it.
So what you’re feeling is completely normal - like being homesick the first semester away at college. You might think you are the only person ever to feel this way, but if you knew it, a bunch of people around you feel the same. Most likely even some of the boys on your course. They could be telling their stories because they’re trying to cover up and make themselves look good. (Or they think they’re funny, or they’re bonding over similar experiences. Don’t worry, after a semester or two of labs and projects you’ll have funny stories too.)
Any type of engineering is hard. What will help you to succeed is working hard and having good study habits now, not electrocuting yourself messing around in high school. I have a friend who never had any coding or engineering ECs in high school, but she graduated top of her class in computer engineering. High school doesn’t matter all that much as long as your math and science foundation is solid. Some of those guys with the hacking around stories might end up looking for your help on a project or in a study group later on. (You might find that some of the other students think that not using office hours, study groups and cramming at the last minute instead of planning your study/project time sensibly, makes you look smart. It doesn’t, it’s a good way to set themselves up to be weeded out before the end of sophomore year. Don’t be intimidated by them into their bad habits.)
Second the thought of finding a women in engineering/STEM organization. Also if you have ECs that aren’t too time-consuming you could try to continue with them. It’s good to get out of the engineering bubble sometimes, even if it’s something as simple as having a gym or running buddy.
They are bragging. They may have a few pockets of knowledge, but that’s no match for steady hard work on the material you need to learn for your classes. Don’t be intimidated. You can do this. I’m a woman in tech, and my D is a PhD student in Physics – just ignore their bluster.
I know a woman engineering major who joined a sorority to maintain & build female friendships in college. Don’t think she would have otherwise, but she found a low-key house that suited her personally and it worked well for her.