<p>I'm a chick.Talk of football and breadboards roll off my tongue as easily as homecoming and school scandal. I can balance engineering studies and a social life, however there's a concept that worries me. Accounts of major engineering schools often reference the male to female reference, more specifically "the odds are good, but the goods are odd." Can anyone shed some light on how odd engineering guys can get, or even better, whether there are any decent schools with reputations in student life and engineering?</p>
<p>The guys are actually pretty normal, despite what they try and tell you before you get to engineering school… particularly at a more diverse school like Rice or Stanford or something where there’s a good engineering program but the students are more likely to be well-rounded. Occasionally, you’ll run across a complete one-sided nerd who drools a little bit when you walk by, but it’ll be okay.</p>
<p>Since your screenname is bandgeek05, you’ve probably already run into guys like this, and the ratio of completely odd people to completely normal people is probably approximately the same in band as it is in engineering. You’ll be okay. ;)</p>
<p>Yeah, seriously, just because I am a male engineer who happens to like Star Wars and airplanes doesn’t mean I am a complete weirdo. The same goes for most everyone else I knew in undergrad. There were those select few shady weirdos though…</p>
<p>The “goods” are “odder” in EE, CE, and CS, the true hardcore socially indept nerd domains. And I’m allowed to say that, being a socially indept nerd who is going to be a ECE major and used to be a CS major. :-)</p>
<p>I’m going into engineering and I don’t consider myself a weirdo at all. Yeah, my studies are extremely important to me, but so are watching football/baseball/basketball and my 4+ year relationship. I go to lots of concerts and have fun on the weekends.</p>
<p>Bah. THere’s my 2 cents.</p>
<p>There’s an inverse relationship between how much of a computer nerd a person is and how competent they are in social situations. Us hardcore computer geeks need therapy to improve.</p>
<p>I hate generalizing, but like others, I’ve noticed the really stereotypical oddballs are found in EE/CS. Everyone else seems pretty normal.</p>
<p>Hell, as a CS student I think the engineers at my school are far more odd. The poor dumb sods use pico to write their programs instead of vi or emacs. Can you believe it?</p>
<p>In all seriousness, there are odd characters in every field. It probably depends more on where you attend school, but there are plenty of sociable engineering and science students.</p>
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<p>for some reason, i literally laughed out loud at this.</p>
<p>I’ll agree that the computer nerdy majors get some strange fellows, and that is true for the real world as well; IT guys are cut from the same cloth. It’s not a bad thing, just a different thing. My little sis married one for crying out loud.</p>
<p>Other than that engineers are probably the most normal of the science types. The hardcore nerds are in a straight science and planning on a PhD and staying in research.</p>
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<p>He’s right. Typically the strange ones are in EE/Cmpe/CS.</p>
<p>The guys in architectural engineering were great. The only problem was that they treated ME as “one of the guys,” and none of them ever asked me out. </p>
<p>My future DH was in two of my grad school classes. He WAS geeky at first - wore thick, black glasses, western shirts, and didn’t use deodorant!! But when I started talking to him, he was fun and smart. He cleaned up pretty well, too! I convinced him to get contacts and wear deodorant and normal clothes. We’ve been married 23 years. So don’t rule out a guy merely because he LOOKS geeky, lol. My friends all think I’m the luckiest woman in the world. :-)</p>
<p>^ sounds like he’s the luckiest guy in the world. I don’t know any woman that would take on a project like that…</p>
<p>At my school anyway a lot of them are pretty frigin weird. I guess they’re not socially ■■■■■■■■ because they seem to get along well amongst themselves but they’re all pretty socially awkward. Which I guess is why they never get any girls.</p>
<p>There’s a good diversity in my class… we have punks, surfers, geeks, hackers, juglers, stoners, etc. Not everyone in engineering is a “nerd.” I would say that engineering students are geeks and weird on freshmen year and the beginning of sophomore year. After that, they change by a larga factor.</p>
<p>i’m not weird at all…</p>
<p>You’ll be fine. I think the myths about engineers being smelly socially awkward number crunches is largely unfounded and that the vast majority of engineers are by all means normal. Sure, if you to a very-very technical school you might find some strange ones and occasionally the computer science/physics guys can be quirky but I don’t think you should be concerned.</p>