Areas of Focus in Electrical Engineering

[jegues]

Hello all,

I'm trying to decide whether or not I'd be interested in pursuing a specialized Electrical Engineering degree in one of the many offered "Focus Areas" at my university, but I'm not sure which one best suits me.

I have a tough time deiciding which focus area to pursure because as of right now, I've only taken general courses such as Electric Circuits, Digital Logic, Microprocessing Systems, and Electronics 2E.

I seem to enjoy the circuit analysis courses more so than the digital logic/programming courses.

If I had to rank the ones I've listed above it'd be in the following order,

Electronics 2E, Electric Circuits, Microprocessing Systems, Digital Logic.

I still enjoy and appreciate the material presented in the two lower ranked courses, just not as much as the others. (I guess you could say analog over digital, but not really because I enjoy the digital stuff as well!)

Given that the four available focus areas are,

• Power and Energy Systems
• Wireless Communication Devices
• Biomedical
• Engineering Physics

Any suggestions as to which focus area may be more suited for my interests?

It's difficult for me to choose anyone out of the four because as I mentioned previously, I haven't necessairly taken any courses in 3 of the 4 domains.(i.e. Power Systems, Wireless Communication & Biomedical)

Would anyone like to share their experiences/interests/advice with regards to any of the 4 focus areas mentioned above?

I'd love to hear how you are finding it, what you're working on and why you chosen it over the others.

As always, I appreciate the input.

Thanks again!

 

[jegues]

No feedback from any of the Engineers/Engineering Students out there?

 

[tyler1215]

I am pretty much like you, analog over digital. Given the choices your university offers you, I would take the Power and Energy Systems route. That is the route I took at my university and I have enjoyed it so far.

I think that regardless of what specialty you choose, you should enjoy the learning experience. Your specialty will only be important for the first job you go after, but after that you'll receive a lot of on the job training and you'll gain the expertise needed to be successful at your job. After about five years, then it won't matter what your speciality will be, or was, cause at that point you'll be wearing some many different "hats" that people will just expect you to get stuff done that requires an engineer to work on it.

 

[niehaoma]

Research! I am in the same boat. I needed to know what to specialize in EE for my Masters (currently underway). Explore the options available to you, such as:

1. Talk to your adviser. Ask them about the course content, their opinion based on your interests thus far, etc.
2. Find a way to examine the textbooks used for each specialization. Either find students enrolled in courses of interest and ask to look at their book, or find snippets of the book online. This can give you insight into the material you will be exposed to.
3. Research online. Find other books/websites/etc that cover the topics of interest.

In other words, check multiple sources, and try to get a feel for the content. For instance, I "thought" I was interested in Control Systems, so I researched it online, bought a Control Systems book, etc, to see what it was all about.