engineering degrees

[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. The only reason you don't take that many for one of them is that you don't meet the prereqs for anything else yet. It seems to me, however, that anyone who thinks they can take that many classes is insane. Well...the lower level classes aren't that bad... so you could probably do it for a little while.

In comparison to other majors, engineers do need to take more classes. I need 135 units to graduate. Mortals (business, art, etc) only need 120. Even sciences and math only need 125-130. There's also special GE accomidations for engineering majors. Several GE requirements are simply waived. Engineering Reports satisfies 2 GE requirments. There's also a nice series of classes that engineering majors are recommended to take. They satisfy 18 units of requirements with only 12 units of classes. (The 135 figure uses the 12 units) Lastly, much to my dismay, engineering majors still need to take PE...as in physical education, not professional engineer. Maybe I can get into something easy, like bowling. "Beginning walking" sounds good too.

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. Actually, a few of my classmates think I'm a little crazy for taking even that many. But I would like to ask how many units others are taking/took.

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. I think that only one of them dropped it because he realized that it wasn't what he wanted to do. The others bailed because it was too hard or too long for them. It took one of those guys 5 semesters to fail calc so many times that he finally had to just give up. The thing is, it doesn't seem that hard to me. It's challenging, but not impossibly hard. Has anyone else noticed something like this happening around them?