How to find a college that offers ECE?

Parents Forum
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<p>Looking at these courses at Stanford which cover calculus, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations (MATH 41, 42, 51, 52, 53, all 5 quarter units each; slower paced 19, 20, 21 at 3, 3, 4 units can replace 41, 42), they total to 25 quarter units, which is equivalent to 16+2/3 semester units. Looking at some semester system schools, these courses total to:</p>

<p>UC Berkeley (1A, 1B, 53, 54): 16 semester units
UC Merced (21, 22, 23, 24): 16 semester units
USC (125, 126, 225, 226): 16 semester units
San Jose State (30, 31, 32, 129A, 133A): 15 semester units
San Francisco State (226, 227, 228, 245): 15 semester units
Diablo Valley (192, 193, 194, 292, 294): 23 semester units
Laney (3A, 3B, 3C, 3E, 3F): 21 semester units</p>

<p>It looks like Stanford’s frosh/soph level math courses cover nominally similar material in a similar number of units as other semester system schools, except for the community colleges which seem to have inflated unit counts for these math courses (the CSUs seem to be more surprising with their low unit counts). Due to the quarter versus semester system, the topics covered in each course do not line up on a one-to-one basis. Stanford also does cover the material at a slightly faster pace (5 quarters instead of the 6 quarters that 4 semesters equates to, assuming the student takes 41, 42 instead of 19, 20, 21), but with “larger” courses each term (5 units instead of the more usual 4 units).</p>

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You are not listing the actual requirements. Engineers are not permitted to take the MATH 20 series, as far as I know; and EE substitutes CME 100+102 for MATH 51-53 (CME series emphasizes use of MATLAB, MATH series does not). This drops the total for the 4 courses to 20 credits, which is the equivalent of ~13 credits in a semester system, fewer credits than occurs at all the semester colleges you listed. A similar pattern occurs in most tech courses and sequences. While it’s a small difference for individual courses, it adds up over a large number of courses.</p>

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<p>MATH 19, 20, 21 versus 41, 42 makes no difference in this discussion (each sequence is 10 quarter units).</p>

<p>CME 100, 102 appear not to include (much) linear algebra (included in MATH 51, 52, 53), according to their course descriptions:</p>

<p><a href=“Stanford University Explore Courses”>Stanford University Explore Courses;
<a href=“Stanford University Explore Courses”>Stanford University Explore Courses;

<p>Presumably, that is why MATH 41, 42 and CME 100, 102 total 20 quarter units (= 13+1/3 semester units), while Math 41, 42, 51, 52, 53 total 25 quarter units (= 16+1/3 semester units) and other semester system schools’ equivalent sequences have similar unit counts.</p>

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<p>Stanford’s ditching of ABET accreditation may have as much to do with the accreditation process as the actual requirements. Collecting the required data and preparing for the accreditation visit is a huge amount of work and they may have decided that their faculty and staff could spend their time in better ways than keeping track of how many students in course X correctly answered question 3 on exam 2 in order to demonstrate satisfaction of abet outcome b. </p>

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I’ll use the AE requirements at <a href=“undefined Department | Stanford University Bulletin”>undefined Department | Stanford University Bulletin; as an example because they give the option of either the Math 50 or CME sequence. When taking the math 40/50 sequence, the courses are 41, 42, 51, and 53. Math 52 is not required, yet it still covers calculus + multivariable calculus + linear algebra + differential equations with a total of 20 credits. They give the alternative of CME 102 to math 53, even though math 53 covers both linear algebra + differential equations, while CME 102 places less emphasis on linear algebra, leading to the same total of 20 units. It sounds like the course sequence and content are not equivalent to certain other schools, so it is probably more meaningful to compare other sequences. Some examples are below, comparing SUNYA and RPI to Stanford. I chose these 3 because I have taken classes at all of them.</p>

<p>Physics
Stanford 41/43 – 8 quarter units
SUNYA 141/151 - 7 units * 1.5 = 10.5 quarter units
RPI 1100/1200 - 8 units * 1.5 = 12 quarter units</p>

<p>Comparing the RPI EE course list to the Stanford one (SUNYA does not offer EE), many of the most common EE courses appear to have similar content and a similar number of nominal credits (without converting semester credits to quarter credits), leading to a 50% difference in equivalent number of quarter credits from Stanford, like occurred with the physics courses listed above. Examples include most of the EE labs, signal processing, waves, among many others. A student taking these classes would receive ~50% more of the ABET requirement at RPI than at Stanford . </p>

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<p>52 is “integral calculus of several variables”, which would be the “missing” 4-5 quarter units when comparing to other schools’ 24-25 quarter unit or 16 semester unit frosh/soph math sequence.</p>

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<p>Stanford’s 41/43 (4 units each) have associated labs 42/44 (1 unit each), making a total of 10 quarter units = 6+2/3 semester units.
SUNYA’s non-honors physics courses would be 140/150 (3 units each), with 145/155 lab portions (1 unit each), total 8 semester units = 12 quarter units. The honors courses 141/151 gives 4 units for 151, giving a total of 9 semester units = 13.5 quarter units.
RPI’s 1100/1200 does not split out the labs, so it takes 8 semester units = 12 quarter units, but covers additional topics like optics and quantum physics.</p>

<p>Based on the above, SUNYA’s physics courses do cover somewhat less material per credit unit than Stanford’s physics courses, but that may not be true for RPI, where additional topics are covered in the extra 2 quarter units = 1+1/3 semester units.</p>

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Maybe something has changed, but when I took Physics I at RPI, there was no lab. I also do not see anything in the syllabus at
<a href=“Course Syllabus”>http://www.rpi.edu/dept/phys/courses/phys1/syllabus.htm&lt;/a&gt; about a lab. Stanford offers 3 physics series at different levels – 21/23, 41/43, and 61/63. Two of the three series clearly specify covering optics (the word optics is titled in the lab class). They also list other topics not mentioned in RPI’s summary. While it is possible that RPI covers more material, I think it is highly unlikely that RPI covers 50% more material to correspond to the 50% larger amount of quarter credits. When I was a student, I took physics 1100 at RPI, then skipped 41/61 and started with physics 63 at Stanford (a more rigorous version of physics 43, with same number of credits). I felt that the Stanford’s physics 63 covered far more material than RPI’s physics 1100. Even if RPI does somehow cover 50% more material in physics, do they also cover 50% more material in many of their EE labs, their EE waves class, their EE signal processing class, and all the other classes that have a similar title and the same number of semester credits as Stanford’s quarter credits?</p>

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<p>Yes, the stats will help you narrow down colleges. DS is ECE, but don’t get too hung up on that level of presision now (many students switch majors). FYI - I could see DS being happy and EE or CompE programs elsewhere. </p>

<p>Most families are either chasing need-based Financial Aid (use NPC, Net Price Calculators on some college websites) OR merit-based scholarhips. So that answer will hope hone the list too. </p>

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<p>If you want a better idea of what CE is, and how it relates to EE, look at chapter 2 in
<a href=“http://www.acm.org/education/education/curric_vols/CE-Final-Report.pdf”>http://www.acm.org/education/education/curric_vols/CE-Final-Report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;