Electronics > Beginners

Uni Degree for someone interested in Arduino, programming, and electronics?

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Rick Law:

--- Quote from: rstofer on October 24, 2019, 07:49:07 pm ---Ian makes at least two very important points:

First, you aren't going to learn anything practical in college.  If you want practical, do it yourself.  Even the lab classes don't do much in the way of advanced applications.  Maybe in grad school and certainly in doctoral programs, things might get practical.

Second, your major isn't all that important.  My degrees are in electronics engineering and I never spent a day in that field.  Rather, I got into electrical design and project management.  There are a number of reasons for that but, basically, I bought engineering, I didn't do engineering.  That's not to say I didn't need to understand what I was buying, that isn't the case.  I still had to tell the designers what I wanted them to design.
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--- End quote ---

I am also in general agreement with the above.  I will however making a slight modification to one of point above.

Major doesn't matter as long as it is a STEM or related field.  If your major is "Woman Study" or "Man Study" or something like that, it would likely matter.  You may not be taken seriously if you don't come from a hard-science, engineering, or mathematics field.

Ask yourself this: why do you like to tinker with Arduino?  I suspect it is "fun", then you go the next layer and ask "why" again.  Dig deep.  You may reach a point you understand what makes you tick.  Understanding "what really drive you" will make deciding "what path to take to get there" a lot easier.

AG6QR:
I'm closer to retirement than to University, but I'll give you the benefit of my experience.

In my university, and I expect in most, the first two years were so similar for all engineering students that it was possible for someone to change from one engineering field to a different engineering field at any time during the first two years without losing much, if any, credit.  My first year, I majored in ceramic engineering because that department offered me a scholarship.  After one year, I transferred into mechanical engineering, because I liked geometry and Newtonian physics.  But I was spending all my spare time in the computer labs, and I saw that mechanical engineering involved lots of thermodynamics, which I was not very interested in, so at the end of my second year, I transferred into computer science.  At my school, computer science was about 60% software and 40% hardware design.  Anyway, my point is that, once you get into an engineering program, it's OK to change your mind from one engineering field to another.

rstofer said that engineering school won't teach you anything practical.  I'd quibble with the details of that; I learned a few very practical things, but I would agree that the focus is on the theory more than the practice.  What I would say is that a good university strives to give its students an education that will last a lifetime, instead of teaching the fad of the month.  This pushes them to teach the theory, because any student who understands the theory can apply the theory to many areas of practice, including areas of practice that haven't been invented yet.  (by "understands the theory" I mean a deeper understanding than "can parrot it back just barely sufficiently to answer the test questions").

I don't know what the future will bring 40 years down the road, but I expect nobody will be making much money tinkering with Arduinos.  But unless technological society suffers a total collapse, I believe many people will be making money creating and using electronic circuitry.  I expect inductors, capacitors, and resistors will be in wide use.  There will be analog filters, amplifiers, feedback loops, antennas (both intended and unintended), analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters, and lots of software driving all of that, among other things.

I expect oscilloscopes will be displaying traces, and many of those traces will be good approximations of sine waves, exponential curves, and exponentially damped sine waves.  Anyone who has taken a course in fundamentals of differential equations will know why: the solution to a first order ordinary differential equation is an exponential curve, while the solution to a second order ordinary differential equation is a sine wave.  Nature is apparently extremely fond of first- and second-order differential equations.  Engineers should become very familiar with the patterns that nature adores so much.

Learn the kind of fundamental theory that will last a lifetime, and learn a few practical applications of it while you're at it, and you'll be set.  Don't ever stop learning.  If you ever feel like you're seriously on the wrong track, don't be afraid of a mid-course correction -- I've been to many retirement parties, and none of the honorees had figured out much of the course of their career by age 25.

Don't forget to have fun!

rstofer:

--- Quote from: skillz21 on October 24, 2019, 09:59:42 am ---I will be going to university in a few years and wanted to have a think about exactly what I want to do. I know I want something like Electrical Engineering, but I just want to make sure I pick the right one.

--- End quote ---

I skipped that part in my initial readings...

If you have time between now and entering a university, I encourage you to study all the topics of PreCalculus now rather than wait until the lack of those skills slows your progress by a year when you eventually start at the university.

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/precalculus

Although it costs money and other Internet programs are free, I would still highly recommend anything Calcworkshop.com has to offer.  Here is the PreCalc program.  Note that it consists of 150 videos.  That's a LOT of instruction.  And she is a really good instructor!

https://calcworkshop.com/precalculus/

Note that the Calcworkshop videos are quite similar to what you would get in an actual classroom.  After all, she taught the material for many years!

Around here, there is some kind of entrance exam that diverts students away from Calculus and into a year long PreCalculus program and this diversion will add a year to the education process.  That's good in that there is other time during the week for General Education classes which are mostly nonsense but it's bad in that it stretches what used to be a 4 year program that has grown to 5 years into potentially a 6 year program.  My attention span just doesn't go that far.

Of course, PreCalc assumes you have passed Algebra I and Algebra II.  If not, Calcworkshop has a program for that as well.  So does Khan Academy.

FWIW, 150 videos would be exactly the same as taking a 1 hour class, 5 days per week, for 30 weeks.  This turns out to be a lot like taking a year long program without holidays.

You may wonder why I keep bringing up math when clearly the adventures are elsewhere.  That's because engineering is all math.  Nothing gets done by hand-waving, there are numbers all over the table.

If at all possible, start early on the math stuff.  It's nice to be ahead of the curve.

I wanted a rude username:
In addition to the excellent advice already given, I want to add something ... which may already be obvious to you ... which is that just because you decide to study electrical engineering, doesn't mean you have to give up tinkering. Just the opposite: working on your own projects now and at uni will:


* Put you in a better position to integrate the theory you learn into your experience
* Give you natural authority to lead the direction of group projects
* Make you a far more desirable candidate for jobs when you graduate
On that last point, a well-stocked GitHub account hosting your projects (code, schematics, PCBs, etc.) will set you apart. You should absolutely link it from your résumé, in the most enticing way you can.

GerryR:
There is some very good advise, here, but it is sad to see the way universities have gone.  I graduated in 1972, BSEE (as in Electrical Engineering).  The University I went to had the typical "waste-of-time" courses during the first 2 years, but the engineering courses required lab time, which counted for 1/3 to 1/4 of your grade in that particular course.  Lots of practical applications, with prof's that all had industrial, hands-on, backgrounds and excellent laboratory equipment.  And, math is essential to engineering, period.  You don't have to be a genius at it, but you need to know what works where, so you can break open the books (or computer program) to help your design or to help solve a problem.  The same with the theory courses; without them, you'll spend a lot of time spinning your wheels, or re-inventing the wheel, so-to-speak.
 
I've been an "Automation Engineer" for a good part of my career, but have also spent a lot of time working in military electronics (General Dynamics, Singer-Link, Textron Defense Systems...) and have done some Medical Electronic designs, as well.  It was the BSEE degree that opened many doors for me.  None of it has been boring; all has offered many learning experiences.

My advise: Learn all you can, including the math and go for the BSEE degree.  You'll never regret it!  Did I mention that you should learn the math?  ;)

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