<p>Hi! I will be a freshman in college next year, and i want to major in Electrical Engineering in UCSD(hope i can be accepted to that school). But when i tell my friends and my parents about my major, their first reaction was "OMG, that major is one of the hardest in engineering." = =" even My dad said,"Good luck, there are a lot of conceptual stuff in EE, i dont think you are smart enough to handle those stuff in EE." (My dad was a mechanical engineer in China) After I heard those, i am kinda scared. hahahha~~~
alright here are my questions:</p>
<p>1) is there really a lot of conceptual stuff in EE? or is it conceptual in all engineering?
2)Is there gonna be a lot of chemistry involved in EE? (i am taking AP chemistry now, and i really dont like those chemistry stuff. I like physics better.
3) My weaknesses in physics are nuclear stuff and magnetic stuff, is there gonna be a lot of nuclear and magnetic in EE? I know there should be some amount of magnetic stuff in EE, but i dont know if there is a lot or so.
4) how is ur life (in college or maybe after college) being an electrical engineer or electrical engineering student? Is this major fun to u?
5) whats the hardest course u took in EE? and whats that course about?</p>
<p>please answer as many questions as you can, thanks
Thank you very much for your replies, please help me~~~~~~
thank you very much again :)</p>
<ol>
<li>Yes, EE is very conceptual </li>
<li>No, not much chemistry, if any. If you take courses on solid state technology, it would help if you knew it. I avoided it.</li>
<li>Mostly it's pure electrical, you'll find more magnetics if you take an electromagnetism route. You will have to take a difficult fields course that deals with this though.</li>
<li>It was okay, but then again, I didn't go to Caltech or MIT. You can have a social life and major in engineering. It's all time management. </li>
<li>I would say Communication Systems. Many concepts that you had to connect together to understand the big picture, abstract at times and many of the mathematical concepts were hard to visualize. Radio Frequency Electronics was a tough one too.</li>
</ol>
<p>Most time consuming, although not difficult, was Microprocessors and Digital Design.</p>
<p>So what if it's hard? If you enjoy it, you'll have a good time and you can get through it. At least if you like what you are doing, studying more won't be so bad when it's interesting material.</p>
<p>I'm only in the first semester of freshman year and studying for my third test in my ECE class has been much more interesting than for the first two. I'm having a good time, I can't wait to see what's ahead.</p>
<p>1) All engineering is conceptual... not sure exactly what you mean, but EE is more abstract than all the other engineering disciplines with the exception of chemical.
2) Not very much chemistry. Just one course at my school.
3) Nothing nuclear (thats chem) but you will need to become friends with magnetism... its really not that much different than electricity. Look up Maxwell's Equations....
4) Life is what you make of it. If you want to do well in EE you won't have as much time as some other majors, but you can definitely have fun while in college as an EE major.
5) From my experience, the toughness of a course depends on the professor. In this vein, the hardest course I took was in digital logic design, though conceptually semiconductor device physics, is probably the scariest of all. Its about quantum mechanics.</p>
<p>Just remember that you don't have to be "smart" (ie: the top math-wiz in your school) to be successful in EE, but it sure helps if you are.</p>