Calling Out All WPI Students:

[davidthefat]

I know that team 190 is associated with WPI. I have received a information packet from WPI and I am strongly considering to apply to WPI next year. I want to know if it is worth my time to apply to this institution. Even more important, would my 4 years at WPI be worth it? This school really caught my attention because of their "mentality" about education. I want to ask students and former students how the school is overall. How are the professors? Will it be more lecture oriented or discussion oriented? I'm planning on doing the independent studies where I want to do Comp Sci, Comp Engineering, Electrical Engineering and some physics and math put all together.

How is the community and the climate? (Being from California, 45 degree weather is cold for me)
How is the rigor of the classes?
When do you start the 2 mandatory projects?
What about the studying abroad programs?

[Cyberphil]

I also am highly interested in WPI. I have talked to a few people on this forum and the person I received the most information from was definitely Art Dutra. It seems like the absolute perfect place for me, and I visited there a while ago in November. Beautiful school in kind of downtown Worcester. If you have any questions about my visit I would be glad to respond to you.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

How is the community and the climate? (Being from California, 45 degree weather is cold for me)

I can count on one hand how many times the temperature went above the freezing point in December. But cold weather isn't really that bad, you can always dress to be warm. Being from New England, we make the most out of every season. During the winter, sledding on campus and skiing/snowboarding at nearby Wachusett Mountain is common.

Worcester is a college city. There are between 30k and 40k college students here every year. Most of the city is relatively compact with a LOT in walking distance (in the gentrified areas). My apartment is only a block away from campus, and within ten minutes I can walk to seven restaurants/bars, seven take-out/fast food places, a coffee shop, two convenience stores, two ATMs, one grocery store, two package stores, and a variety of other stores and parks. One of my favorite places to go is a seafood restaurant about 100 yards from my apartment that has $5 sushi rolls after 11pm Thurs through Sunday. There are also a ton of restaurants/bars/nightlife in a former warehouse area called the Canal District around Union Station. From 4pm to 4am there is a van service operated by the WPI police called SNAP that you can call to get rides anywhere within a mile of campus.

Worcester is also about 40 miles from downtown Boston, which is a fun city to hang out in. You can get to Boston by driving (it'll include tolls and parking) or by taking the T (commuter rail). The Worcester Union Station is about 1.5 miles from WPI campus.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

How is the rigor of the classes?

Intense.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

When do you start the 2 mandatory projects?

Whenever you want. There aren't any official prerequisites at WPI, so you can literally take any classes you want at any time. They may strongly suggest doing things in a certain order, but WPI is generally a pretty self-motivated school. The same philosophy carries over to our machine shops; there are two on campus and they are open to all students (for course work or personal projects) who complete a safety/training course.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

What about the studying abroad programs?

Most students at WPI do one of their projects overseas. I did my senior engineering project in Wuhan, China.

[rsisk]

two package stores,

also know as liquor stores in California.

[davidthefat]

Are housing guaranteed for how many years? Yea I heard Boston area is a big college city from a buddy. And more importantly how are the housing? 1-10, 1 being prison cell and 10 being a mansion.

[Chris is me]

"Housing guaranteed" is code for "housing mandatory", by the way.

Just a good pro tip for your college searches.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Are housing guaranteed for how many years? Yea I heard Boston area is a big college city from a buddy. And more importantly how are the housing? 1-10, 1 being prison cell and 10 being a mansion.

Freshmen have to live on campus, sophomores and higher can live on or off campus. Freshmen dorms are probably 4 to 6, upperclassman dorms range from 6 through 9, off campus runs the whole gamut. Finding housing on or off campus is not a problem.

Nearly all of the off campus (non WPI-owned) housing used by WPI students is within a block or two of campus in neighborhoods like this. Most of the houses are three stories tall and usually have one apartment per floor, and are nicknamed triple deckers.

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

...

Stop making me miss New England!

[davidthefat]

Sorry for necroing this thread, but I noticed that WPI has no "Computer Engineering" major. Would double majoring in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering cover all that is needed? Now what I want to do with my life is research. Researching in AI, Quantum Computing, massive parallel processing, conventional computer architectures and stuff like that. Does not exactly fit into robot engineering, only AI does. I am aiming for a doctorate too.

[Joe G.]

Computer engineering is a concentration option within Electrical engineering (Actually, the Electrical Engineering major is referred to as "Electrical and Computer Engineering", or ECE). The list of topics in your post sounds like they would fit within WPI's ECE department nicely. Again, the system of no pre-requisites would allow you freedom to take plenty of CS classes as well, without necessarily declaring a double major.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

Computer engineering is a concentration option within Electrical engineering (Actually, the Electrical Engineering major is referred to as "Electrical and Computer Engineering", or ECE). The list of topics in your post sounds like they would fit within WPI's ECE department nicely. Again, the system of no pre-requisites would allow you freedom to take plenty of CS classes as well, without necessarily declaring a double major.

Ok thank you, WPI is one of my "target" schools, it might still be a little "high" I guess.

[Chris is me]

Everything you're describing that you want to do with your life is stuff you do with a Computer Science degree. None of it requires an engineering degree.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Everything you're describing that you want to do with your life is stuff you do with a Computer Science degree. None of it requires an engineering degree.

Even the real low level stuff like computer architectures? I mean I don't want to just LEARN about them, but actually design and optimize them. Who knows, by the time I go to grad school, quantum computing will have already made big leaps, may be enough so that it would be ready for consumer usage (a little far fetched, but certainly in industry)

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Even the real low level stuff like computer architectures? I mean I don't want to just LEARN about them, but actually design and optimize them. Who knows, by the time I go to grad school, quantum computing will have already made big leaps, may be enough so that it would be ready for consumer usage (a little far fetched, but certainly in industry)

Computer Architecture is a CS topic. You would cover it in CE but most of the research is in CS.

Computer Architecture research falls into two categories. Practical and Theoretical, If you want to get into practical research in computer architecture, i.e. parallel processing distributed systems etc, then you want to look at CS. For the theoretical side you can look at CS where it is common to model complex systems, however in general all of these systems are using traditional electronics. If you want to get into non-traditional computing, or redesigning computer architecture at the transistor level (or replacing the transistor all together) then you are looking at Device Physics.

In general if there is a science and an engineering department for the same discipline then the engineers are going to be looking at using what we have today in a better way, while the scientists are looking at paradigm shifting improvements.

In general Computer Architecture is more theoretical than what Computer Engineers get involved with.


As a note, if quantum computing is ready for consumer use (even in industry) by the time your children are in grad shcool then I would be stunned.