Elysian Shadows

I completely agree with Falco's point on double majoring. I have seen far more students fail than succeed at a double, and the ones who succeeded were buried in work every minute of the 4 years they were there.

Having a masters will increase your pay grade, whereas a double major usually costs at least 30% more in college credit costs (and tuition/room/board/time etc. if it takes you more than 8 semesters to complete) without really expanding your job opportunities (unless they're drastically unrelated majors).

In high school, most academically talented students will focus all of their efforts on taking as many honors courses, being in as many clubs, and doing as much volunteer work as possible. The whole point of which is to get into a good university. Once you're there, you should focus on actually learning skills that will help you succeed in the workplace (unfortunately, you still have to take English and "Contemporary Latin American Poetry" to fill the humanities requirements ).

I'm the kind of person who doesn't do any homework but gets A's on the tests.

Uh
On second thought
I think I'd die if I double major

Falco Girgis wrote:Do they not offer "computer engineering?"

Computer engineering is the midpoint between the purely software CS degree and the purely hardware EE degree.

You learn a fair amount of hardware and computer architecture, and a fair amount of software (you never go above C++ in the software abstraction hierarchy). Most of your work is dealing with drivers, operating systems, and low-level code.

That's what I did for my undergrad and what I'm doing for my masters... If you have a genuine interest in both hardware and software, CPE is really where you should be.

I would not recommend wasting the time or resources doing a double major. What exactly are you gaining? You will be working as one or the other in the work environment. It's not like you will get paid any more. Why would you not just finish your undergrad then take the other one in graduate school, so that you are actually getting more mileage out of your time and money?

I never knew there was middle ground between EE and CS, now that I know it has a name, I know what I am getting.

Accy wrote:I'm the kind of person who doesn't do any homework but gets A's on the tests.

Uh
On second thought
I think I'd die if I double major

That will never fly in college...

Accy wrote: Uh
On second thought
I think I'd die if I double major

To be fair, it's not really twice the effort, because most of the classes are the same, so you wouldn't have to do them twice.

bbguimaraes wrote:

Accy wrote: Uh
On second thought
I think I'd die if I double major

To be fair, it's not really twice the effort, because most of the classes are the same, so you wouldn't have to do them twice.

Ehhhh, I don't know what your curriculum is like but there is absolutely zero overlap between CS and EE majors here.

That said, the double major isn't TWICE the work, but there is minimal overlap and you will have significant extra work especially in the 3000-4000 level courses. Ouch...

qpHalcy0n wrote:

bbguimaraes wrote:

Accy wrote: Uh
On second thought
I think I'd die if I double major

To be fair, it's not really twice the effort, because most of the classes are the same, so you wouldn't have to do them twice.

Ehhhh, I don't know what your curriculum is like but there is absolutely zero overlap between CS and EE majors here.

That said, the double major isn't TWICE the work, but there is minimal overlap and you will have significant extra work especially in the 3000-4000 level courses. Ouch...

At least here at the university I work (and graduated in CS) and many others I know, all math-related courses have some classes in common (~5-10%) and the computer-related have a great bunch (~50%). That reduces the amount when multi-classing (sorry, the pun was irresistible).

But there are some disadvantages. For example, when we were studying quadric surfaces in a CS-only class, the teacher gave extra assignments to build programs showing the surfaces on the computer after we learned them in good old paper. That was pretty fun, but could not be done in a more heterogeneous class.

qpHalcy0n wrote:

Accy wrote:I'm the kind of person who doesn't do any homework but gets A's on the tests.

Uh
On second thought
I think I'd die if I double major

That will never fly in college...

It started in sixth grade, everyone said "that will never fly in seventh grade", in eighth grade they said "that will never fly in high school", in ninth grade they said "we're just babying the freshmen, this will never fly sophomore year", and so on.

I admit that you're probably right
but I'll let you know how it works out anyways

Honestly, though... What the fuck is the point of a "double major"? You aren't working two jobs at once. You're paying for more school, taking more classes, prolonging your graduation, and you aren't exercising the other major. I guarantee you it will not result in a pay increase, and I guarantee you that once you spend 3-5 years in the work environment, the major you aren't using will be worthless, because you don't have the experience to back it up... You will be a junior software engineer, and an entry-level electrical engineer in a few years...

But what IS smart is continuing with whatever second major you like in graduate school. A masters degree IS worth something, you learn way more than you would as an undergrad, you are moving up in the professional environment, and you are building esteem in academia... You will also undoubtedly get a pay increase...

Well my reasoning behind it is that I've always wanted to understand electronics but I also wanted to be a programmer. I wanted to build a machine and then program it do something. So it was more of a personal endeavor than something with a mind on business. I don't mean to boast but I kind of got a free ride to the college I want to go to so resources weren't an issue. I said in an earlier post that computer engineering was actually exactly what I was looking for but just wasn't aware of, but it got page-bottomed.

Getting a major or PhD may very well be something that comes up in my future but I'd say that's more of a decision to make when I'm close to getting my degree.

You know the reason that I say that this mentality simply won't fly in college is because even in the time that I've been involved in higher education and the workforce (14 years) after high school, the gap between what is minimally acceptable academically in college and what is produced from your typical American public high school is growing rapidly. So there's this massive gap between where high school graduates SHOULD be and where college will EXPECT them to be...especially engineering. The remediation rate is astronomical. I can't count how many freshmen I've tutored that lack the skills that were even minimally acceptable 5 years ago. Now make no mistake, being "good with electronics" or tinkering with circuits is not what you're going to be learning in college. The theory behind digital circuits, signals, and all of these things is applied mathematics, physics, and discrete logic.

Just be ready for a higher form of learning. You should try to absolve yourself of the "I've gotten this far.." mentality as you prepare to enter college because it will only serve to harm you. College is 180 degrees apart from high school. I'm not "probably right"...I AM right. Coming from a guy who was a kid just like you...

Just don't be "that guy"...you'll save yourself a lot of grief.

accy wrote:I don't mean to boast but I kind of got a free ride to the college I want to go to so resources weren't an issue

My father served in Iraq, and I also got a full-ride from the VA (for my undergrad, my employer is paying for grad school)... But my argument still stands. That free VA money is better spent on a masters than a second bachelors.

qpHalcy0n wrote:You know the reason that I say that this mentality simply won't fly in college is because even in the time that I've been involved in higher education and the workforce (14 years) after high school, the gap between what is minimally acceptable academically in college and what is produced from your typical American public high school is growing rapidly. So there's this massive gap between where high school graduates SHOULD be and where college will EXPECT them to be...especially engineering. The remediation rate is astronomical. I can't count how many freshmen I've tutored that lack the skills that were even minimally acceptable 5 years ago. Now make no mistake, being "good with electronics" or tinkering with circuits is not what you're going to be learning in college. The theory behind digital circuits, signals, and all of these things is applied mathematics, physics, and discrete logic.

Just be ready for a higher form of learning. You should try to absolve yourself of the "I've gotten this far.." mentality as you prepare to enter college because it will only serve to harm you. College is 180 degrees apart from high school. I'm not "probably right"...I AM right. Coming from a guy who was a kid just like you...

Just don't be "that guy"...you'll save yourself a lot of grief.

I'm currently in a college networking course. Believe me, I'm familiar with the difference in difficulty.
Subnetting subnetted subnets of subnets
I was more or less joking around. I'm pretty adaptable to situations like this.
But I do thank you for your concern.

Falco Girgis wrote:

accy wrote:I don't mean to boast but I kind of got a free ride to the college I want to go to so resources weren't an issue

My father served in Iraq, and I also got a full-ride from the VA (for my undergrad, my employer is paying for grad school)... But my argument still stands. That free VA money is better spent on a masters than a second bachelors.

I can't really argue. Other than that my scholarship only lasts four years.
Although paying for two years of college wouldn't be too overwhelming.

Accy wrote:I can't really argue. Other than that my scholarship only lasts four years.
Although paying for two years of college wouldn't be too overwhelming.

Again, I can't help but feel you are completely missing the point. Nobody is saying it's too hard for you and or that you're too poor to afford it. We're saying there's more useful ways to spend your time (the one resource that nobody should take for granted). If you are seriously interested in the other topic, take some of that major's courses as electives or join some related clubs and learn about it on your own time. While college was an invaluable experience that I will never regret, I learned many of my practical programming skills on my own time, or at work, not at school.

dandymcgee wrote:

Accy wrote:I can't really argue. Other than that my scholarship only lasts four years.
Although paying for two years of college wouldn't be too overwhelming.

Again, I can't help but feel you are completely missing the point. Nobody is saying it's too hard for you and or that you're too poor to afford it. We're saying there's more useful ways to spend your time (the one resource that nobody should take for granted). If you are seriously interested in the other topic, take some of that major's courses as electives or join some related clubs and learn about it on your own time. While college was an invaluable experience that I will never regret, I learned many of my practical programming skills on my own time, or at work, not at school.

Completely?
I wasn't arguing with him: the thing about the scholarship was just an aside. My point was that I'd think about getting a major but it would depend on the circumstances.

All of what I'm currently doing is on my own time, obviously. I'm going to continue to do things on my own time, considering I'm interested in hobbyist game development.
I considered double majoring as a way to widen my options in the job field and was told that it would be a waste of time with good reason. I said a whole page back that I'm not going to do it anymore. I don't really know what point you think I missed.