EE Electives: Best 3 for Well-Rounded Education

[Tpark25]

Hello all,

I am going to be a 3rd year electrical engineering student in the fall of this year.
I am currently reevaluating my choice of electives for the upcoming semester. Right now I'm doing my second internship in a large oil/gas company and am doing very well. If all goes well I will be able to come back next summer at a new location and a different division. I'm currently working in the electrical/instrumentation group and could see myself trying out control systems next summer.

After talking with several of the full time engineers here, they seem to think that some of the electives I am taking aren't worth the time and that others would be better. Although I'm not positive this is the industry (would like to work with renewable energy solutions one day) I want to work full time in, it's important to consider my options.

For the best, well-rounded EE education, which 3 of these 4 electives would be best?

Control Systems
Microprocessors
Solid state devices
Digital signal processing

These are all fall only courses and I can only take 3. Thanks for your input and for reading the long post.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Control Systems
Microprocessors
Solid state devices
Digital signal processing

Which one to leave out depends on what kind of career you want in the EE world and which has the most overlap with courses already on your transcript.

I'd leave out Control Systems if you aspire to a typical silicon valley job and solid state devices if you aspire to DoD work.

 

[donpacino]

Hello all,

I am going to be a 3rd year electrical engineering student in the fall of this year.
I am currently reevaluating my choice of electives for the upcoming semester. Right now I'm doing my second internship in a large oil/gas company and am doing very well. If all goes well I will be able to come back next summer at a new location and a different division. I'm currently working in the electrical/instrumentation group and could see myself trying out control systems next summer.

After talking with several of the full time engineers here, they seem to think that some of the electives I am taking aren't worth the time and that others would be better. Although I'm not positive this is the industry (would like to work with renewable energy solutions one day) I want to work full time in, it's important to consider my options.

For the best, well-rounded EE education, which 3 of these 4 electives would be best?

Control Systems
Microprocessors
Solid state devices
Digital signal processing

These are all fall only courses and I can only take 3. Thanks for your input and for reading the long post.

In any given industry there are multiple jobs you could take in the EE field.

those four electives are in many ways linked and almost 'entry' electives into their fields.

microprocessors is almost required for any computer hardware job. It will also be very important for embedded software, and some traditional software jobs.

control systems is obviously the start of being a control systems engineer, but also important for systems engineers, analog engineers, etc

solid state devices will be very important if you are an analog or power engineer. other than that, not that applicable (assuming you are required to take a micro electric circuits course, where the subject matter covers transistors). often solid state devices goes into how and why semiconductor devices work, more so than the application of them.

DSP can be important for a systems engineer, controls engineer, comp hardware or software engineer, depending on the route you take.So the question is, what do you think you want to do? WHat do you NOT want to do?
just to reiterate, the field in which you want to work doesn't correspond to the type of work you want to do... If you want a job at nasa, you can get in as a software engineer, artist, controls engineer, IT specialist, Janitor, scientist, etc

 

[EM_Guy]

Are you planning on going to graduate school? Would you ever have the opportunity to take the 4th course?

Honestly, if possible, take all four courses. I didn't take DSP in college, and I wish I had, but I also don't know when I would have. My schedule was so full.

Tough choices. All of these classes are great EE classes.