<p>Can you tell us about Engineering and/or Computer Engineering at the Viterbi school?
i.e. classes, internships, professors, visiting lectures, what the kids are like,?</p>
<p>Are you specifically questioning about the computer engineering program, or just engineering in general? Also, I find that sometimes people get computer engineering mixed up with computer science, which are both fairly disparate from one another. Computer science = programming where as Computer Engineering = Electrical Engineering with emphasis on computer hardware. </p>
<p>Being in the CS department, my knowledge is mostly limited to CS courses, although I have taken some basic intro EE classes. For the most part, I have found Viterbi students to be fairly smart. Our CS department is top notch - in the 3 years we have participated in the Southern California Programming Contest, we have routinely beat the likes of UCSD, UCLA and Harvey Mudd, losing only to Caltech (no explanation really needed there). </p>
<p>As for the professors, they are best described as available. My current prof holds office hours every day, for several hours a day. So, contacting him for assistance is NOT an obstacle. The classes themselves are around 50 people, but significantly decrease as you get into upper division. The labs for these classes are usually around 15 people. </p>
<p>I'm pretty sure you'll be interested in grading too. From my experience, most Viterbi classes wind up with an average 2.5 - 3.0 GPA. But really, it depends on the class. My last CS class had a student average of 76 - a C (2.0). Anticipate less than 20% of students getting above a 90.</p>
<p>" Our CS department is top notch - in the 3 years we have participated in the Southern California Programming Contest, we have routinely beat the likes of UCSD, UCLA and Harvey Mudd, losing only to Caltech (no explanation really needed there). "</p>
<p>USC is great. However, note that you do not routinely beat HMC in this competition. In fact the only team that routinely beats HMC is Caltech and often UCSD.</p>
<p>HMC beats USC:
2007-2008
no data for 2006-2007
2000-2006
1995-1999</p>
<p>USC beats HMC:
1999-2000</p>
<p>So I'd say beating HMC once does not equate to "routine beat". Also, note that HMC will send about 9 people to that competition (the major only has 40 people in it or so)...</p>
<p>Source:
ACM</a> Southern California Regional Programming Contest</p>
<p>Thank you for your info. I would like to know more about the student's experience with Computer Engineering-the classes, internships, research, etc.
What are the students like? Jobs on graduation? Do you think USC is a better choice than Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, or Carnegie Mellon? Why did you pick USC Engineering?</p>
<p>^ CMU and MIT are the 2 top universities for CS. USC may be a better choice than UCLA for CS, but it's not better than CMU or Cal in the field. Not sure about UCSD.</p>
<p>You are correct RocketDA. The statistics that I referred to were only the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 competitions, of which USC won the latter of. </p>
<p>View</a> Standings</p>
<p>Honestly, I had no idea that USC even competed in competitions prior to 2004 ~ 2005; I was always under the impression that we had just recently started participating in the ACM contest. Now that I reflect upon it, I think it's mostly due to the fact that USC wants to downplay its previous state of mediocrity (no offense to people who graduated prior to 2004), and emphasize its recent influx of highly talented students (hence informing the students, like me, of only the 2005-2007 results).</p>
<p>what about biomedical engineering?</p>
<p>My son is a freshmen in Viterbi and is majoring in Computer Engineering. Very different than Computer Science.</p>
<p>As a freshman he is on a robotics team and has enjoyed his classes so far but he is only a freshman. He is interviewing with NASA this week for a summer internship in Washington D.C. </p>
<p>He really likes USC and says the students are great and seem "normal" to him LOL for whatever that is worth. He has had no problems meeting people adn that is nice since we are from Montana and he didn't know a soul there.</p>
<p>Do you know how many students are majoring in Computer Engineering? How are the professors?</p>
<p>I hope your son gets the internship with NASA. Did USC have any internships for him to apply to in Los Angeles? Did he find any research to work on at USC for the summer or during the year? Which dorm does he recommend for a student who wants to live with similar interests type (also likes Computer Science, Computer Engineering). Is he happy with his dorm this year? How do you feel about USC not providing on campus housing all 4 years?</p>
<p>USC's Computer Engineering major comes with Computer Science (it is called Computer Engineering and Computer Science). I'm not sure if this makes any difference in the material taught, but I haven't really seen any other colleges that do this. Just wanted to throw that out there for prospective students.</p>
<p>There are three computer science majors at USC of which I'm aware, in no particular order:
1) Computer Science
2) Computer Engineering and Computer Science
3) Computer Science - Games</p>
<p>So there's no plain computer engineering major - that would probably be equivalent to Electrical Engineering. (2) is usually abbreviated CECS. CECS can be described as a combination of computer science and electrical engineering, so it's probably similar to the "EECS" major at UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>(3) is the newest major, and is computer science with an emphasis on game development, including computer games and video games for consoles.</p>
<p>does anyone know how easy it is to switch between majors at USC? </p>
<p>I applied engineering... but what if i wanted to switch to the business school? anyone know how hard this would be?</p>