College - Majors and Career Ideas...

Khane

Khane

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Which is why lab driven courses are infinitely more suitable to higher learning education. Tests are about as worthless as asking memorization questions during interviews. The difference between an A student and a C student is the A student forgets everything 5 minutes after the test, the C student forgets it 5 minutes before the test
 
Dyvim

Dyvim

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wormie_sl said:
My assumption is based on him saying that it wasnt real math. To me that means one of two things:

1) Person is computationally minded and trained and the class was all theory with no applications
2) Person understands that math is more than a few algorithms and was expecting a theory class but instead had to memorize a few formulas and how to plug them into Matlab and nothing else.

There is plenty of "real" math in numerical analysis and to say that there is none is most likely due to it being taught really poorly.
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It was theory, lots and lots of theory. Dont remember we were allowed to use computers even (beyond anything a calculator could do itself).
All pen and paper old school style. And more than one mistake in your papers would just mean another paper for homework pileing up. Shit sucked.
 
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Soriak_sl

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Tuco_sl said:
On the other hand, I'm much less able to trick myself into believing the information I need to learn to pass a test isn't generally useless.
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Khane_sl said:
The difference between an A student and a C student is the A student forgets everything 5 minutes after the test, the C student forgets it 5 minutes before the test
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That just sounds like you had bad luck with your courses and/or professors. If you can pass a test simply by memorizing some formulas that you'll no doubt end up forgetting again, then that's a badly designed test. If the course hasn't made a connection to why the material matters, then that's a badly designed course (or you didn't pay attention). In either case, a crappy experience... but maybe (hopefully?) not representative of most colleges and (again, hopefully) even less so of grad school.
 
Khane

Khane

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Have you never taken a test? Or gone to school? I mean there's really no other way to design a test. Hands on kind of stuff is done in labs, which was my point.
 
Noodleface

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wormie_sl said:
My assumption is based on him saying that it wasnt real math. To me that means one of two things:

1) Person is computationally minded and trained and the class was all theory with no applications
2) Person understands that math is more than a few algorithms and was expecting a theory class but instead had to memorize a few formulas and how to plug them into Matlab and nothing else.

There is plenty of "real" math in numerical analysis and to say that there is none is most likely due to it being taught really poorly.
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Since my class was a graduate level class it was almost all theory. We did have homework that was absurdly difficult though. The problem was the book and teaching was tons of theory and the homework was all application of that theory, none of which was described in the book at all. And there is a surprisingly low amount of reference materials on the web to deal with Numerical Analysis for help. It was a brutally difficult class for me.

I also believe the class was a hybrid between Numerical Analysis and advanced Linear Algebra, it definitely wasn't pure Numerical Analysis.

We basically had a homework assignment every 2 weeks, a couple of projects, and no tests. I did poorly on a lot of the assignments because it was just too over my head. I was the only undergrad in the class, so maybe it affected his decision, but I still got an A. Since there was only 4 students and he was retiring, he took us all out to dinner at the end.

Weird class.
 
Noodleface

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wormie_sl said:
My assumption is based on him saying that it wasnt real math. To me that means one of two things:

1) Person is computationally minded and trained and the class was all theory with no applications
2) Person understands that math is more than a few algorithms and was expecting a theory class but instead had to memorize a few formulas and how to plug them into Matlab and nothing else.

There is plenty of "real" math in numerical analysis and to say that there is none is most likely due to it being taught really poorly.
Click to expand...
Since my class was a graduate level class it was almost all theory. We did have homework that was absurdly difficult though. The problem was the book and teaching was tons of theory and the homework was all application of that theory, none of which was described in the book at all. And there is a surprisingly low amount of reference materials on the web to deal with Numerical Analysis for help. It was a brutally difficult class for me.

I also believe the class was a hybrid between Numerical Analysis and advanced Linear Algebra, it definitely wasn't pure Numerical Analysis.

We basically had a homework assignment every 2 weeks, a couple of projects, and no tests. I did poorly on a lot of the assignments because it was just too over my head. I was the only undergrad in the class, so maybe it affected his decision, but I still got an A. Since there was only 4 students and he was retiring, he took us all out to dinner at the end.

Weird class.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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Vinen_sl said:
Which begs the question. Why go back to school? Unless you are failing working for a Government Contractor or the Government (99.99% of people who work these jobs are fails) there is really no reason to have a Masters degree. You MUST have one to actually get promoted past a certain point at some (maybe most?) Government related jobs.
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And even then, why even strive for promotion? More responsibility, more stress, more hours? Sure you get paid more, but money is not everything. The older I get the more I realize that time away from work and all that stress is more valuable than earning an extra 25K per year. All that $25K per year would give me is more junk to buy and more bills in the long run because you always end up spending all that money anyway.

I look at my current supervisor, was promoted right out of our group. The poor fucker has "special" projects, that the manager offloads on him, pretty much the directors and managers bitch. But also has to deal with 20 assholes underneath him, someone fucks up in his group, he gets the blame. Works more hours, definitely more stressed, more deadlines, more shit sandwich.

Me? I come in at 9AM, surf nets, do minimal work (its a downtime for us right now) go to lunch, come back do some more surfing ad minimal work, and leave at 4:30 or 5:00. But when the shit hits the fan, usually for 3-4 month stretches, I work my ass off in the niche I carved out for myself here. Im like the only one that can engineer layout and design an instrument panel substrate from concept to release. And Im damned good at it. Which gives me some level of leverage.

Perfect job is doing something you like (you might of loved it at one point, but lets get real here, you do the shit every day for 8-10 hour a day for 20+ yrs it starts to be a grind) and getting the fuck out and enjoying your time with your family. Being low on the radar at work, but at the same time being good enough that you are needed. If you are going to apply 100% more stress, more responsibility, you might as well work for yourself at that point. Not giving yourself away to some company to make you sick because of stress, to take away your precious time, all because of $25K more per year.
 
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Pinch_sl

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I am going to endorse the camp saying bachelors, then work, then assess whether a graduate degree is useful or necessary. Working in industry following college gave me a taste of the real world, and made grad school feel comparatively easy since I was used to stricter deadlines and hours. I ended up going back to school so I could move up the ladder more quickly, and because you tend to hit a ceiling in my industry without a terminal degree. I think about half of the grad students I met should have just found jobs straight after undergrad, because their degrees just ended up slowing them down and costing them money. These were people that ended up taking entry level jobs after finishing a masters or phd because they didn't realize they were being trained to become independent. It's definitely something that should be done for a reason, not just because. This advice probably applies to bachelors degrees in many fields, too.
 
Erronius

Erronius

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Question for the EEs out there:

I will probably be starting an EE undergrad this spring, but the nearest ABET program is aCOMBINATIONof EE and CE. In fact it is ABET accredited for both. Sooo...it has relatively little gen ed courses, and the courses involved run the gamut:

http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2..._2014_2015.pdf

So, after asking around a bit, it seems that some companies actually dislike this degree because it doesn't focus enough on a single particular discipline. So for example, someone who works for a local company (Black & Veatch) told me that if they want to hire, say, a Power Engineer, then they will just hire exactly that. Same with some other companies...they'd prefer to avoid what might be a "jack of all trades" degree. But then, on the flip side, I was told that some companies (Cerner was used as an example) like getting people with these degrees, as you are more well rounded so to speak, but I was also told that they like hiring newbies straight out of school so YMMV I guess.

So I've been asked a number of times recently notwhatI want to do necessarily, but specificallywhereI want to work...as in, what company...as that might make the difference. I've also been told that they may be changing from a dual-ABET accredited degree to something akin to a more "pure" EE, but that is a couple years down the road and I don't want to wait? And I'd have to up and move to go to what I think are some of the nearest alternatives for ABET accredited EE programs.

So, all of that said, does this even sound like an issue to anyone? Is it even something I should be worrying about?
 
Borzak

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I looked at the pdf you posted of that major. I guess I'm in the super minority, but does no school offer a general course on the given major to start off with? When I started you had 2 classes the first semester you had to pass before you went on to anything else. In both those classes most what you did was visit professionals in a variety of jobs related to that field and saw what they did, ask questions, get ideas on pay ranges, get ideas on what speciality you wanted to get into for those jobs etc...It really weeded out a lot of people who thought it sounded cool but then reality hit. It was a required so that you could choose the next 4 year path thru a variety of branches you could take.

Not really to engineering obviously, but I read about so many people who went to college and got a degree that they have no idea what the practical use of it would be before they got too far into it.
 
Noodleface

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Erronius_sl said:
Question for the EEs out there:

I will probably be starting an EE undergrad this spring, but the nearest ABET program is aCOMBINATIONof EE and CE. In fact it is ABET accredited for both. Sooo...it has relatively little gen ed courses, and the courses involved run the gamut:

http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2..._2014_2015.pdf

So, after asking around a bit, it seems that some companies actually dislike this degree because it doesn't focus enough on a single particular discipline. So for example, someone who works for a local company (Black & Veatch) told me that if they want to hire, say, a Power Engineer, then they will just hire exactly that. Same with some other companies...they'd prefer to avoid what might be a "jack of all trades" degree. But then, on the flip side, I was told that some companies (Cerner was used as an example) like getting people with these degrees, as you are more well rounded so to speak, but I was also told that they like hiring newbies straight out of school so YMMV I guess.

So I've been asked a number of times recently notwhatI want to do necessarily, but specificallywhereI want to work...as in, what company...as that might make the difference. I've also been told that they may be changing from a dual-ABET accredited degree to something akin to a more "pure" EE, but that is a couple years down the road and I don't want to wait? And I'd have to up and move to go to what I think are some of the nearest alternatives for ABET accredited EE programs.

So, all of that said, does this even sound like an issue to anyone? Is it even something I should be worrying about?
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Ok, so looking at that curriculum it almost looks exactly like a Computer Engineering curriculum and not a dual major in both. See mine for CE:

http://www.umassd.edu/media/umassdar..._2013-2015.pdf

Compared to our ECE curriculum:

http://www.umassd.edu/media/umassdar..._2013-2015.pdf

You'll see that you're missing a whole bunch of core classes from electrical engineering (and some from CPE). It's kind of a weird setup.

That said, I've seen people in the field that have had just an EE degree, just a CE degree, dual major degree (two BS's upon graduation) and people with a combined degree like your curriculum shows. The important thing here is that it's ABET accredited - it's really important to employers and if at any time that status changes you need to transfer schools.

Don't go to school with the hopes of working at a particular company - as long as you get good grades and try to get internships, jobs will literally fall into your lap with an engineering degree, I can't recommend that enough.

I wouldn't worry too much about this courseload - I certainly wouldn't question it from a junior engineer applying at our company. In the end if it was really terrible you could always work on a master degree that singles it down.
 
Erronius

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Yeah, we talked about a masters, they said if I take it within a year of finishing the undergrad it's only 24 credits or something along those lines.
 
Phelps McManus

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Erronius_sl said:
Question for the EEs out there:

I will probably be starting an EE undergrad this spring, but the nearest ABET program is aCOMBINATIONof EE and CE. In fact it is ABET accredited for both. Sooo...it has relatively little gen ed courses, and the courses involved run the gamut:

http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2..._2014_2015.pdf
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I was on the CompE track (CE was Civil) and Power Systems was an elective. I took a senior level Computer Science class instead (Compilers). It didn't matter for my first job at a Systems Integrator as long as you could program PLCs and get your PE to stamp panel drawings. Most of my coworkers took the EE focus of the PE exam because "Control Systems" was much harder, having more to do with Laplace Transforms, fluid flow, and some loop tuning than programming. I can't imagine an AE like Black & Veatch would be that picky about engineering degrees either.

After your first job, it becomes even less important what your degree was in (as long as you have one). I only really look at previous job experience. Did you work on a project that was similar to what I need you to do? The only time I ask about someone's degree is if they cite skills that are not backed up by work history. And honestly, I look negatively on skills learned in school but never practiced.

In short, that curriculum looked fine, other than being a little weak in math. I don't think any employer would seriously get tripped up by the combo - even for an electrical engineering job. 80% of the workload will be applying the National Electric Code, which they don't teach to pure EE's either. So, you won't be able to understand a generator test report - join the club.

edit: In hindsight, I would have taken Power Systems.
 
Noodleface

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Also don't be surprised about the lack of gen eds, engineering degrees are so jam packed with required courses that most skimp out on the bullshit like that.
 
Erronius

Erronius

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Phelps McManus_sl said:
80% of the workload will be applying the National Electric Code, which they don't teach to pure EE's either. So, you won't be able to understand a generator test report - join the club.

edit: In hindsight, I would have taken Power Systems.
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LOLWUT?

Like, what, just generic portions of the NEC? The wacky stuff in the back like 600-700-800? Or the more generic, everyday stuff? Because between having been an electrician and the NEC exposure for my AA degrees, I've prob spent a lot of time with the NEC and I kinda figured I wouldn't use it ever again. I do wonder if I need to get the 2014 book though, still have the 2011.
 
Phelps McManus

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Erronius_sl said:
LOLWUT?

Like, what, just generic portions of the NEC? The wacky stuff in the back like 600-700-800? Or the more generic, everyday stuff? Because between having been an electrician and the NEC exposure for my AA degrees, I've prob spent a lot of time with the NEC and I kinda figured I wouldn't use it ever again. I do wonder if I need to get the 2014 book though, still have the 2011.
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I have used some of 600 (PV Systems, Fire Pumps). Mostly circuit protection (200), conductor sizing and raceways (300's). A lot of the other stuff is residential, which didn't apply, but 200 and 300 apply to everything, even piddly control panels and skids.

Basically your PE stamp on a drawing is saying "I designed this in accordance with NFPA 70".

edit: The interview test for my first job had a whole section on NEC, which I knew nothing about coming out of school. I bombed that test. It was way more important that they felt I could learn it and eventually stamp drawings.
 
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