[kaszeta]

Originally Posted by sciguy125

So I've recently reviewed my academic progress. I figure that I need another 4 semesters to finish a BSEE. That brings the total to 5 years. The existance of the handy little 4-year chart thing means that it's possible to finish in 4 years. Under closer inspection, however, you'll notice that you need to take 17-18 units (roughly 6 classes) for 7 of your 8 semesters.

This is roughly what the courseload was for a full-time engineering student when I was getting my BSME (I finished in 95). It varied, however, since the 21 credits of freshman and sophomore level classes I took one winter quarter my freshman year was waaaay easier than the 14 credits of lab-heavy senior-level courses (where "1 credit" of lab would take 3 hours in the schedule and another 6 to write it up...) I took my senior year. And all of this was cake compared to the first two years of grad school.

In comparison to other majors, engineers do need to take more classes.

Yes, but that's because there is quite a bit of material you need to learn. As an R+D engineer at a consulting company, in the last two weeks (pulling up my timesheet and looking at my work log), I've done work involving

• Convective heat transfer calculations
• Drag coefficient calculations
• Programming a PIC18F controller (for a non-FIRST application!)
• Designing a distillation column
• Running a residual gas analyzer (Mass Spec)
• Java programming
• Image processing
• Debugging problems in a plate stamping operation

With the exception of the RGA, every one of these items was something I learned as an undergraduate, although many of these skills were sharpened in grad school or on the job. But, while there definitely was some fluff in my engineering education, the vast majority of it turned out to be useful, and I'm glad I had to take classes in it.

I pretty much have my mind set on the fact that taking more than 16 units per semester is too hard for me, so don't waste your time trying to pursuade me otherwise.

Figure out how much of a load you can do without doing things poorly. Then take a little more than that to challenge yourself. But if taking more than 16 credits really means that you'll do all your courses poorly, then, by all means, take 16 credits. Doing it well is more important than just doing it.

I've also noticed another trend. I started keeping track of my friends from high school that went into engineering. It seems that about half of them have bailed out.

This isn't uncommon. Of my group of me and six high school friends that all set out to be engineers (that I can think of off the top of my head), the list includes

• Three engineers (including myself)
• One sysadmin
• An elementary school teacher (who did get his engineering degree and worked for a few years as an engineer)
• A police detective

Some of them just couldn't hack it (if you are having problems with math, for example, then engineering just isn't fun). Some of them learned that they wanted to do something else. And some of them liked engineering itself, but didn't like the hours/the companies/the other people/etc.