Physics Major Looking for Advice on Computer Engineering Grad School

[mattst88]

I'm a sophomore at a small school (1600 students) in North Carolina, and I'm majoring in Physics. I'm also double minoring in Computer Science and Math.

I'm doing this with the intention to graduate in four years and attend graduate school to work towards a Masters Degree in Computer Engineering.

I'll have 20+ hours of Computer Science, 20+ hours of Math including Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, three semesters of Calculus, and a class to be decided later.

What advice can you guys give me on course selection? Should I try to take Physics E&M classes where I have options instead of Optics, Mechanics, etc?

I'm just trying to get things figured out before my senior year rolls around.

 

[mr_coffee]

I had a question,

The maths you just said are all the standard maths any physics major should take, as well as any engineer, or computer science major, don't they make you take any more than that?

Also as a physics major wouldn't you have to take physics E&M, Mechanics, Quantum physic, etc? Or are they giving you the choice?

I was a computer engineering major, now I'm a computer science and the highest physics we took were:
Mechanics, E&M, and quantum waves/particles.

If you want to get a master degree's in computer engineering why don't you just major in computer engineering then go to grad school for computer engineering?

The major disadvantage I see here is your not taking any EE courses, a big part of a computer engineering degree is Electrical Engineering.

Another disadvantage I see here is computer architecture classes, does your computer science major make you take Computer Architecture classes? If it doesn't then you should really take those.

In these classes you go over CORE Computer Engineering topics that you would def. need in grad school.

'

 

[mattst88]

As far as math courses go:

Computer Science minor requires Calculus I and II;
Math minor requires Calculus I and II, Linear Algebra, and two Math electives;
Physics major requires Calculus I, II, and III, and Differential Equations.

The math courses I'll take are:
Calculus I, Calculus II, Calculus III, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, and a Math Elective (a Statistics course, Discrete Math, etc)

As far as required courses for Physics, one must take
200 Level Mechanics, Heat/Light/Sound, Electricity and Magnetism, Modern Physics
300 Level Classical Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Thermodynamics and Kinetic Theory, Quantum Mechanics

Aside from those, you must take two courses from the following list:
315 Scientific Instrumentation, Lab (evidently involves a lot of circuts and some logic design)
320 Optics, Lab
322 Mathematical Methods of Physics
383 Nuclear Physics
401 Theoretical Mechanics
402 E&M II

So should I take the E&M II course instead of Optics, for instance?

As far as computer architecture classes go, the only thing I see is "Computer Organization". Its description from the course catalogue:

An introduction to the assembly level machine organization and machine level
representation of data. Memory organization and architecture will be discussed.
Multiprocessing and alternative architectures will be explored. Two credits. (Odd Fall)

I'll have to ask my professor more about this class.

The reason I'm not majoring in Computer Engineering currently deals with my choice of school. I didn't want to go to a school where all my friends from high school would be going. By the way, I go to Lenoir-Rhyne College (http://www.lrc.edu/ )