<p>Instead of choosing engineering classes with your electives, let's say you decided to venture out into other subjects, stuff that really interests you. Instead of electromagnetism (or whatever), you decided to take business ethics. Or French. Or American legal history since 1950.</p>
<p>Are you hurting yourself by not taking as many technical electives as you can? No doubt you've heard that companies will train you on the job. Would it not be better to get paid and learn something (such as processor design), rather than pay to learn that very same thing?</p>
<p>I’ve found undergraduate specializations (at my former college) to be mostly useless. An extra postscript is printed and shown on your transcript/diploma, otherwise it means very little to a prospective employer, who probably knows nothing about your engineering program’s overall curicuulum.</p>
<p>Just as long as you don’t jeopardize your degree requirements (by dropping a required course), I’d say indulge your fancies. This is the kind of thing where no one outside of your school can help you choose. On the one hand you may have special interests in a particular niche (like CPU design or 3D/graphics) or non-engineering area (like finance or technical management) – but only the peers at your school, who took those courses, can tell you whether they’re worthless or genuinely beneficial.</p>
<p>So you think that beyond your degree’s core requirements and any other required courses, your electives are best left up to your interests?</p>
<p>I only ask because I’ve been inundated with questions from underclassmen asking me what classes are the best to take (structural engineering). I’m hesitant to tell them “take timber, geotech, foundations, etc.” because even though I plan on taking 1 or 2 of those, I’m doing it mostly because I’ve been told from professionals and members of forums (including this one) that a certain course would be really helpful in my career.</p>
<p>But the # of times I’ve heard “oh yeah, companies will train you, they are looking more for someone who can think analytically and communicate well, not really looking for a specific skill set” encourages me to tell these students to take whatever their hearts’ desire.</p>
<p>Well, I was trying to say that the value of specific tech electives will vary from school to school, and year to year (as curiculuum and instructor change over time.) If you can’t talk to people who already took the electives under consideration, then I’d say go with your heart. (On the other hand, if a bunch of people you know and trust say a class is good, then you’d probably want to take it.) And I’m assuming you’re talking about ‘theory’ classes, not vocational classes (like a class on using AUTOCAD for mechanical drawings, which I guess is a directly marketable skill.)</p>
<p>I personally feel that a few business-oriented engineering electives are good choices, because they’re relevant to the practice of engineering in the industry (economics drives a lot of engineering projects in many ways, seen and unseen), yet not something a EE major would normally take, so it adds breadth to my education.</p>
<p>UCIrvine’s engineering department didn’t offer such a course, so I took the next best thing, which was a general accounting class (at UCIrvine, that was in the school of management, so I had to expend some electives just to complete a few of the management minor’s prereqs), just to get the basics of accounting principles (assets, liabilities, capital, depreciation, etc.) – partly to get my ‘4 units of A’ (easy class after having taken those EE upperdivision courses), and partly because I’ve never balanced my checkbook before. haha. Now I know what a ‘ledger’ is, though in retrospect, I’d been better off (in a practical sense) buying Quicken or Microsoft Money, and going through the tutorial.</p>
<p>Just make sure that what you take will satisfy your graduation requirements. My school required a certain number of technical electives and a certain number of non-technical electives.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend taking a course you had no interest in. In my experience, taking a course that I had no interest in resulted in me not learning anything, and was thus a waste of time.</p>
<p>That’s a trick question; there is no right or wrong answer. If you take your electives outside your major, you will acquire a more well rounded education which could be valuable to your career. If you take your electives inside your major, you could benefit from a deeper understanding of the area you intend to work in for the next 40-45 years.</p>
<p>Probably the best thing to do is take the classes that interest you the most. That way you will be more successful in the class because you will actually get something out of it. </p>
<p>Which ever you decide will be the right answer for you.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think I’m going to go with these two the next time I get asked. Picking something because it will be useful but uninteresting can be a bad decision.</p>