<p>Well Tadd89, as a rising 3rd year in Computer Engineering, I will give my honest answer to your questions.</p>
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How do you like the professors?
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This is a hard question because the professors have different teaching styles which really work for only a few people in the class. One professor I consider to be good is terrible for the next person. There are a few professors who everyone agrees is terrible at teaching. To get a good impression of a professor is ask students majoring in same discipline as the professor is teaching/researching in. I know Mech E's who hate Professor Bloomfield when they took his CS 101, but he is the best professor the CS department (trust me on that one). Really good professors are approachable in office hours. I always enjoyed going to Professor Reed's office hours to learn something about CMOS transistors and his encounters with Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. If you can't get to know your professor, then he or she is not that good of a professor. Some time soon Professor Calhoun's, my research adviser, fifth child will be born soon. I say I am in the middle with my overall experience with my professors right now. </p>
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How is the overall rigor? Invigorating or exhausting?
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The Engineering School is not a cake walk. Professor Reed actually asked for the meaning of that expression once in class. The days are long and tiring, but there are breakthrough moments in your education that make you so elated. In the same lab situation, I have cursed to myself when failing to get the desired input resistance for an amplifier circuit and cheered to myself when I got my 4 LEDs to blink, two-a-time. The rigor can scare the faint hearted as I remembered the entire group next to mine in that same lab dropped the class. The exhaustion makes the little breakthroughs great. </p>
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Are the classes thorough and maybe even a little interesting every now and then?
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The first couple of classes are very broad. ECE 200 introduces things you will see in CS 202, ECE 204, ECE/CS 230, and beyond. The classes can get a little boring once and a while, but that is just college. Many incomings think that college classes are intellectual discussion of Plato on the lawn. There are professors who can make intro or specialized courses more interesting. CS 101 would not be the same with the in-between Demotivators, or ECE 203 with the realization that your skin has the impedance of a few megohms protecting your heart from the few millivolts that could kill you. </p>
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Does your course schedule seem to flow well?
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I can't answer that question that well since half of the class I take are on the "off" semester so they bring unexpected results when I fit them in with the "on" semester classes. My third semester almost had a STS 200 class in Alderman Library starting right when my CS 216 lab ended in Olsson Hall. The day-to-day class schedule is a hodge podge at least one semester in a while. It at least goes fine as the semesters go by. I find my progression through the years so far to be seamless. Granted, I take two classes each summer so that can make things a little different.</p>
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Do you feel prepared for The Real World(tm)?
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With my research this summer, I feel like that there is no end to learning. You can't be "prepared" in the sense that you will be stuck in knowledge-gathering. Engineering is about learning new ways so the school prepares you for solving problems the "Real World" will face. I am in a project team working a low power portable heart rate monitor for the military and we sometime have to hax to get some module to work. It seems sad to have your fastest sampling rate without crashing be 87 Hz. A digital conversion every 11.5 ms is sad, but we are still working out it. So the Real World is just another place with new problem to be worked out. At least, that's what it is to me.</p>