<p>Hi, I'm entering my third year in EE. My school is UC Davis. It offers the following areas:</p>
<ol>
<li>Electromagnetics, RF </li>
<li>Analog Electronics </li>
<li>Physical Electronics </li>
<li>Digital Electronics </li>
<li>Communication, Control & Signal Processing</li>
</ol>
<p>I'm really having a hard time choosing which area to focus on because I'm equally interested in all of these areas... So I guess the only aspect I am considering is the job prospect. </p>
<p>So I hope to hear opinions from you guys. If you could tell me any pros and cons about any of these areas, I will really appreciate it. Thank you!</p>
<h1>1 is big with military systems and anything wireless and RF pros get top dollar in the EE world. Probably the hardest area to study.</h1>
<h1>3 Everything is going digital. Design logic gates with discrete inputs to build a system.</h1>
<p>I’m an EE major too and it’s hard. Talk to your advisors at school. Take classes for what you think you want to work on after you graduate. The jobs are there in any of the above fields. No point in going in a direction that you hate the courses.</p>
<p>I studied #4 because I had an affinity for the higher level math and conceptual thinking, but have worked mostly with #1, lower level math with conceptual thinking. </p>
<p>It’s best to visualize what job you want to be doing in 10 years and work backwards from there. Silicon Valley startup or Indiana factory? Get good at product design or design theory?</p>
<p>It’s easy to say somethin interests you until you study it and realize you hate it. For me, electronics is a chore that’s not worth it, which is why I’m physics/cs. I similarly discovered I’m not as into assembly language as I thought I’d be.</p>
<p>You might take a signal processing class and struggle to be motivated, or find digital electronics is too tedious, etc.</p>
The short answer is that in signal processing your job is to take the raw data from some instrument or system, get rid of the noise, and turn it into a useable format. As an example, I work with remote sensing systems - I design the systems themselves, but the raw data that comes back is fragmented, noisy, and spotty. The signal processing guys take that junk and turn it into coherent images.</p>
<p>cosmicfish, thanks a lot for your reply. Are Signal Processing engineers in high or low demand in the market right now?
Your job sounds quite challenging. Would you choose Signal Processing if you could start college all over again? :)</p>
<p>I think signal processing and antenna theory go hand-in-hand, but that’s a non-EE’s surmise. My point is that with all these mobile devices, signal processing probably isn’t going anywhere.</p>
<p>my two cents. analog pay more as its a rare skill since everyone knows digital.
be careful with analog though. There is a reason its a rare skill, only some are apt to do it. It requires a lot of experience and intuition as opposed to vlsi.
I went the analog path and essentially found out my senior year, when I started taking hardcore analog design course, that I had wasted 4 years in college because I majored in the wrong thing. To find this out in my senior…
I dont intend to scare you off or anything but just put some though into it. </p>
<p>but there is always a need for analog and if you couple it with a decent background in digital you are set for a good paying job.</p>