<p>for jalali, one of my friends (graduated in 3 years with EE major/math minor) said he was the best teacher he ever took, but then again my friend was kinda strange :</p>
<p>
I graduated CS. I was CSE, but decided that I wanted to take more CS electives rather than circuits courses, so I switched early in my second year.</p>
<p>I touched on the differences between CSE and EECE in my last post in the Engineering thread. Basically, you can think of a computer as a set of layers. The top layer is the application, and the bottom layer (effectively) is semiconductor physics. Somewhere in the middle is digital logic (below the OS, above the circuits). If you want to work in digital logic and above, CS/CSE is better, but if you like circuits or anything lower, EE/EECE is better. Feel free to visit the SEASOASA site to view requirements, and the registrar for course descriptions. That way, you can figure out what major will give you the largest number of courses that sound interesting to you.</p>
<p>I would argue that getting a CS/CSE degree would give you more job opportunities than an EE/EECE degree, especially at the BS level. Software is seriously on the rise right now, and tech companies are hiring 5-10 software engineers for every hardware engineer.</p>
<p>thanks!!! Thats the best, clear cut response I’ve gotten. And I understand your analogy so thank you ;]!</p>
<p>To the OP:</p>
<p>I just want to add some quick things I’ve picked up over the years of being an EE student. </p>
<p>-professors at universities are hired mainly by their research
- undergrad tuition is often used to fund graduate student research
-in the academic-university world undergrads are the worms that complain all the time
-the quality of education at a university can often be thought of as a random variable since a hired professor is a hit or miss when it comes to teaching (this has nothing to do with ability to mentor though)
-straight up EE theory is boring as hell, and you need to work in a research lab or do internships to truly appreciate it</p>
<p>Everyone:</p>
<p>To those worried about the claims made by the OP, I suggest you not worry that much. Work hard, learn something, get real experience. Your success will be dependent on your effort and intrinsic motivation. UCLA provides all the fundamentals and resources you need to get your career going in EE. If you are unhappy, feel free to transfer out – do what’s best for you!</p>
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<p>I agree with everything you said, except for this part. Can you give us some more info on this? From what I know, the total cost to educate undergrads is almost always less than tuition (the difference being covered by other factors, eg, government funding, private contributions, etc…) So it would be very surprising to me if there was anything left over from graduate tuition to fund graduate students and research.</p>
<p>Usually grad research is sponsored through grants from government bodies, companies, etc…</p>
<p>
Nope. At most research universities, tenured faculty salaries (or rather, promotions that lead to higher salaries) are driven mostly by some combination of seniority, an ability to obtain grant money, and research/publishing. While they do have to teach classes, it plays almost no role in tenure or promotion. </p>
<p>Teaching effectiveness generally only matters for lecturers, and even then they’re only being paid by the number of classes they teach. They simply have to maintain good ratings to be retained on a term-by-term basis.</p>
<p>tetrahedr0n:</p>
<p>Graduate research is funded by grants, but students often get money from TA-ships and departmental fellowships. While I’m not sure where the departmental fellowships come from, I’m going to assume some undergraduate tuition would be directed to the department to pay for TAs. In the graduate world, TA-ships are literally used by professors to fund their students (instead of professors relying on fellowships or their own grant money). I definitely do not have any proof of any of this so feel free to disregard that note :]. Maybe those private school kids have their tuition directed to funding graduate students though. Who knows.</p>
I know this post was made a while ago, but I just came across it and I feel like commenting. I am a year abroad student from Imperial College, at UCLA now for a quarter and two weeks, doing EE. As a matter of fact, my degree back in the UK is EEE, Electrical and Electronic Engineering. I came to the US mostly for the experience, expecting, however, world-class teaching, as I have been told I would find. But boy, what is this?! There are so many things wrong with the course, and I don’t know where to start! From the name? The fact that there is no teaching of power engineering AT ALL, and still this course is called Electrical Engineering? Or from the fact that you spend 2 years learning proper EE stuff in the upper division courses, stuff that I cover mostly in the first and a bit in the second years of a 3-year degree? I got here in my master’s year (I am on an integrated master’s degree, so that would be my fourth year) and thought to myself “OK, let’s go play with some hardware and take the EE 115 L course”. I got there, and he was teaching stuff I learned in my first month at Imperial.
I guess what I am trying to say is that the course is not a joke because of the professors or anything, as a matter of fact I am very pleased with the teaching. The reason EE at UCLA is a joke is the course content. EE is probably the most difficult engineering course you can take (everyone with an engineering academic background I know claims so, EEers or not), as you can’t really see electricity but still need to understand what it does, compared to water flowing in pipes. Time to appreciate it is crucial, and the course needs a structure. For the first two years I was 9am-6pm every day in a lecture theatre getting taught. Yeah, I didn’t absorb everything from the lectures because some lecturers were worse than others, and some more difficult to understand or some subjects needed more time than others. But at the end of the day, if you want to be able to understand why a Fourier transform applies to everything, why a filter works the way it does, you need time and you need practical experience. None of which is offered at a substantial amount in this course.