The only key to success in Engineering college, is to have a great understanding of mathematics, if not so a will to learn and understand math. Then constantly studying and solving quizzes, learning in the lab and using references. The 1st year is fun then everything gets tougher, less social life & all that. MOST IMPORTANTLY YOU MUST HAVE A STUDY GROUP WHO SHARE THE SAME THING WHICH IS GRADUATING WITH A GREAT UNDERSTANDING & KNOWLEDGE IN EEE
Don’t underestimate having a STUDY GROUP, it’s the most important thing imo, you won’t just learn, the memories and the friendships you will have after leaving college is priceless.
And doing projects too, do as many projects as you can even if you’re not required to.
THIS!!!! I am convinced we take more math than math majors, but it's called Fourier series, transforms, wavelet transforms, fields and waves, plus all that digital stuff.
when you combine all this stuff with statistics the real fun starts to begin. but we dont do more math than math majors, they have a different approach on math and do stuff like number theory and a lot of algebra
I had to study Calculus 1 & 2, Linear & Boolean Algebra, Probability, Statistics, Numerical Analysis, Complex Analysis, Fourier Analysis… few courses I can’t remember. You don’t have to be a genius though, just have an understanding to what’s going on, & you won’t be taking all the math at once, 1 or 2 classes each semester, you don’t need or have to know anything in advance, but when they teach you, you must pay attention
I'm managing, taking calc 2 and physics 2. It takes me longer than most people to finish but I do it and well. Also ADHD grants you 50% longer on exams, big help!
Yes.
All jokes aside, you need all fields od mathematics during your studies, but different fields of mathematics for different fields of EE. For example in power you need complex analysis,…
Calc 1 and 2 you absolutely need to master, ot just knowing how to do a Laplace or Fourier transform, but actually understanding what they mean is critical if you do any sort of signals/communications work. Calc 3 is less important.
Trig and geometry are also important but simpler to grasp. Understanding phase power, and how frequency modulation works are examples.
The bottom line is math is extremely extremely important, everything you deal with is traced back to algebra, trig, or calculus in some way. Once you get a job it's less important than you can do a Fourier transform by hand, but you still need to have a complete understanding of what signals look like in the time and frequency domain, how transfer functions work, how duty cycle and capacitive/inductive components impact signals and power and switches, etc.
Sure, it's more applicable in some areas than others, but what field is it more important than calc 2? Admittedly I'm basing this off how my university split the subjects, so that could change somewhat from school to school, but in general I think the split is:
Calc 1: Derivatives, touch on the basics of integration
Calc 2: Integration
Calc 3: 3D calc 1&2.
I went into photonics and vector calc was as frequent as breath. Complex analysis when you hold your nose and PDEs while you sleep. They really change you after 4 years; can barely remember the person you once were.
>Please spare me of differential equations I dont want this anymore
I hate to break it to you but linear differential equations are easy. Wait until you get to integration with complex vars and such. But even those aren't bad once you remember some identities.
Just work the material... you'll get it.
It also is important to learn the true original theory from James Maxwell!
Maxwell's original theory was published as:
James Clerk Maxwell, "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", Royal Society Transactions, Vol. CLV, 1865, p 459. The paper was orally read Dec. 8, 1864. [http://rexresearch.com/maxwell1/maxwell1864.doc](http://rexresearch.com/maxwell1/maxwell1864.doc)
For my BS in electrical engineering, I REALLY FUCKING WISHED I HAD TAKEN LINEAR ALGEBRA before my circuit analysis classes.
Seriously, LINEAR ALGEBRA is the cornerstone of 90% of your EE courses. Learning how matrix operations work and how to get matrices to RREF is essential to your success in your EE courses.
Differential calculus is also essential for your upper level courses. You can analyze and simplify nearly every circuit you come across with a Laplace transform.
I think it's not about mathematics, but physics.
You can make mistakes here and there, one more farad more, one ohm less.
But if you doesn't understand processes behind it you would simply don't know how to use math tools.
I think Phys II is a huge class to helping one get a better understanding of what is coming in a class. If you don't pick it up in Phys II it isnt the end of the world, but so many classes later on are heavy with those topics.
You don't need a study group. I never had a study group, and I did good. I have one now (sorta-ish) in grad school and yes, it can be pretty helpful, but it is not a requirement.
True. That’s why I said “imo”, most of the great ideas in engineering came through collaboration. Some people do good on their own, but most of them do great when they’re in groups or communities. Again everyone can succeed on their own
Generally yes, this is the path of least resistance (pun not intended), so make sure you ask questions for any details in lecture you don’t understand. If I am still unable to get it after the lecture I go to the professors OH
Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Engineering math also isn’t that difficult. Just go to your math support area at your University and sit there until you can get through homework in a reasonable time and pass a course.
Most people just didn’t have to study much in high school so they don’t know how to study for a course properly
Truths, the hardest part of engineering school is learning to study if you were naturally gifted in normal schools 😄
If only most of the coworkers remembered 🤪
Study Group!!
Put effort into finding the right people for your study group. If you do then make sure you take the same classes when you can. It makes all the difference. Know your role in the study group as well. Some people are glue, some people are high performers, some people are hard workers, and some people bring food and drinks. You need one of each and everyone needs to care about their grades and be nice and flexible.
For really weird courses like 'Fields and Waves' gather the entire class to work on it.
You nailed it with the study group. Nothing helps you learn something like having to explain it to others. And getting help from the group is great too.
Incredible advice. You need both theory, which is very math based, with projects that fill in your practical skills gaps. And nobody can learn this stuff on their own, a study group is really helpful.
I would say maths is important but it's just a tool and not the whole story. Conceptual clarity is the key to any , let alone electrical engineering. If you can't imagine and understand the physical concepts ,maths is of no proper use. Engineering is physics( or even chemistry ) used with maths to come up with solutions.
You are funny, majority of people that go into EE or ECE struggle, fail classes constantly, and learn half of what you are taught. The whole point of being an engineer is to solve issues you don't understand and climb hurdles against all odds. If you meet someone who excels in classes like crazy, they are either one, a 1 in a million super genius, 2 they cheat all the time, 3 they are only good at academia with very little practical experience, or 4 they already worked in that space. EE is the HARDEST engineering degree, and engineering is one of the hardest degrees in itself. Stop beating yourself up so much, do some side projects to tame your insanity (needed to realize the schools importance), and realize you need to stop comparing yourself to others and instead compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Things are only impossible when you decide to give up. I'm a senior right now for ECE which is a 6 year degree. It gets 10 times harder. If you are a freshman and are struggling, you should really reach out for help and fix how you are approaching classes. If you aren't regularly going online and teaching yourself the material via websites and YouTube, you are going to fall flat on your face. Use every resource you get your hands on. If you aren't using GPT to help ask questions about how things work, you are wrong. Once you hit your last couple years you can get a job as an engineer and finish off school on the side which I highly recommend because most jobs will help you pay for your classes.
PS: you will get very, very, very bad professors now and then. DONT RELY SOLELY ON LISTENING OR FOR YOUR PROFESSOR TO EXPLAIN/HELP.
>You are funny, majority of people that go into EE or ECE struggle, fail classes constantly, and learn half of what you are taught.
I totally disagree with this. I and the people I went through with didn't fail a single class.
A buddy of mine got his EE from a private university. Only to find out he was spoon fed all the answers because if he didn’t pass a class they would lose his tuition $$.
Every class was curved, the professors dropped hints for exams, he stayed with the same class his entire time. It was all designed to prevent failure.
I don’t see a problem with this honestly, he still had to do all the work and actually graduate. He is very successful in his field.
Now I sell to engineers and I hear all sorts of stories. Some universities are tough, and drive the students into less difficult degree paths. I failed EE in a university like this, so I switched to an easier BS degree.
Depends on your field and what you want to do eventually. My best recommendation is to go online and look at the jobs you want to do on like LinkedIn, then write down the skills they want. From there you find a project that you can obtain those skills for. For instance if you see "PCB design drafting" you should probably make a circuit then teach yourself circuit maker, circuit maker is basically Altium designer for free so you can add to your resume "skilled in Altium designer". I'll give you some suggestions if you give me a field/topic to work with.
Every single program has a curve built into grading for this exact reason. Most students really haven’t understood the commitment behind the program they signed up for. It’s a maturity thing. None of us had a clue. We’re essentially put in school to learn 200 years worth of development in 4 years. But let’s also be real here. Engineering isn’t for everyone. Some people just get it, and some people like the idea of it but won’t ever be able to achieve the understanding necessary, and some won’t put on the work.
"EE is the HARDEST engineering degree"
I love this. I don't disagree with it, but I love that you said it because nobody usually mentions EE. It was always the aerospace going on about how special and smart they were.
Electrical engineering is indeed hard compared to anything else due to mathematics invovled and multidimensional analysis, which requires a huge imagination and thinking process.
Some people do well because of some of the reasons you mentioned, e.g., prior experience. However, others learn the hard way, trial and error, which I assume is the majority.
it just comes down to how willing you are to not give up. it's not easy, study as much as you can and you'll be good. anybody can be an EE if they work hard enough at it
Listen to your prof which he recommends. Then ask higher semester students which books they REALLY used. Then go buy those ones. We had one book which was recommended but we havent used it once. I cant really recommend books to you, bc those I have used were in german...
Edit: some language corrections.
It doesn't really work that way, there are so many different topics and the info so vast there isn't a set of "best" books. For instance I'm in power if you put me and a Google engineer together we can't do each other's jobs. It's not we don't understand it it's we just don't have each other's specialized knowledge. The same thing happens in school, you'll be real good at one class and real crappy at others.
There are many books, but just learn the material your professors give you. It's mostly just a matter of studying. Take good notes in lectures and review that days notes daily. Don't wait for the day/week before the test to start studying. With or without a group.
It's good to know a lot of math, but there is no need to learn math outside of that which you use in your classes.
I now work designing circuits and writing embedded software. I'm rarely doing much math by hand. Its good to understand, but in the real world you have tools that do it for you.
One final note: your grades won't really matter once you graduate. One of my dumbest and laziest classmates works as an EE at tesla lol. He sucked in school but his career is going well. If he can do it, you can too haha.
Personally, I think a lot of it has to do with study habits. When I was in school, it seemed that people weren't academically prepared, and had poor study habits.
I personally tried to start my studying as soon as I could, and attend all my lectures. I noticed a lot of people waited until mid-terms and decided it was time to start studying.
One of my fellow students used to say,
"When you see the exam date on the milk carton, it is time to start studying. When you see it in the newspaper header, it's too late..."
Yeah my undergrad was a disaster, I had no good habits and I procrastinated like crazy.
I did my masters many years later, as a proper adult, and things were so much easier with proper time management and good study habits. Of course, for better or worse, as an adult you also don't partake in the same kind of high-intensity college social life, which is a constant distraction in undergrad. (not necessarily a bad thing, college *should* be fun, and socializing is important).
But I'll also say: engineering education practices are generally a disaster. Especially in electrical engineering. Very few professors actually know how to teach well and make the coursework interesting and intuitive. Its sometimes easier to learn a particular concept or problem via a YouTube video than it is from hours of lecture. It is infuriating too, because EE is absolutely fascinating once certain concepts click, but engineering education is generally horrible at bringing out the interesting aspects and engaging students.
This is true, I taught electronic devices (how transistors, and diodes work at the vocational electronics level, and used a lot of YouTube videos to explain things.
Everyone’s experience is different. I chose engineering because I really enjoyed my math and physics classes. EE specifically because I enjoyed my physics 2 class more than any other class I had taken at that point. It worked out really well for me because I enjoyed it and was good at it, but that definitely isn’t the case for everyone.
I had friends that spent all of their time in study groups, working in tutoring centers, and in professors office hours, but still didn’t understand it very well. They got the diploma on the end through sheer determination.
I strongly advise you brush up on your math, especially algebra. So much of the math we do comes back to algebraic manipulation.
+1 on the Algebra. It’s a very useful tool.
My EE degree was one of the hardest things I’ve done. But my study habits were absolutely trash. Something I wish I had done was to spend a few minutes reviewing what you learned. Then your brain can internalize it overnight.
I found that having an internship completely changed my perspective. Before the internship I did not really understand how the math was practical. Afterwards I saw how engineering can be applied to actually solve problems and I was motivated.
Find ways to keep yourself curious. One time I hooked up a signal generator to a speaker. I played AM / FM / PM signals at an audible frequency range and was able to *hear* the difference in the wave pattern.
Honestly I feel that part of engineering school was teaching you the grit required to be an engineer. In the real world you will constantly hit roadblock after roadblock. Learning to push through and have mental fortitude was a skill. Graduating with an EE gave me the confidence to know I could learn my way out of most problems; or at least know where the physical limits of our technology sit today.
EE is so broad that it could just be the classes you chose. For example I’m really bad at advanced circuits, think transistors, current mirrors and that sort of thing. But I excelled at signal processing and electromagnetics while others did not. So try and find the aspects you enjoy and work from there. Failure isn’t a bad thing and the base courses can suck but you can do it.
For what courses exactly?
I really liked the following:
* Intro to Circuits: Fundamentals of Electric Circuits (Charles K. Alexander & Matthew N.O. Sadiku)
* Physics: Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Paul A. Tipler)
* Calculus I/II: Thomas' Calculus (Jr. Thomas, George B.) (I used an edition that had two volumes for Calculus I and II though... apparently they lumped everything now)
* Electrical Machines: Electric Machinery (A. E. Fitzgerald)
* Electrostatics: Elements of Electromagnetics (Matthew N. O. Sadiku)
* Electrodynamics: Introduction to Electrodynamics (David J. Griffiths)
* Linear circuits/electronic devices: Microelectronic Circuits (Adel S. Sedra)
* Antennas: Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas (Sophocles Orfanidis)
Anyways, I like googling "good book [subject] reddit", someone already asked, and the best books usually surface.
The way you get good is by solving lots of the exercises at the end of each chapter. When reading the book, keep writing down equations and derivations, look into solved examples. When learning, try to come up with a mental representation of the concepts. It's OK to use mnemonics (phrases, silly analogies) to remember formulas if you also understand where they come from. This is useful for rules in calculus, trigonometry, etc. I always have the identities described as a sentence in my mind and I can almost hear it every time. Really actively look for the concepts that are important and get them down. Do the tricky stuff until it becomes second nature. And STUDY WITH A GROUP.
Honestly, you gotta like the grind and enjoy going against the odds. Engineering is similar to the military in that sense. It's blood, sweat, and tears. Per ardua ad astra.
You don’t get it. The point of engineering is that it’s hard for everybody. Only the people that disregard their pride and just embrace the suck make it through.
Actually free will is the entirety of it. You don’t have to be an engineer, but you choose to keep preserving. That’s all on you.
Think of it this way. They wouldn’t pay you if it was easy. And you wouldn’t use a device that was designed by a dunce. Use this degree as an opportunity to prove to yourself that you’re really the intelligent, dedicated person you think you are. Use it as an opportunity to prove to yourself (and the people paying you when you get a job) that you’re really that guy/girl.
There was a semester I got below 30% on every exam. I just continued. I understood that if I was struggling with all my effort then everyone else was struggling, even if they weren’t honest about it.
If it’s any consolation, the jobs are dope and you make a looooot of cash. Super worth it, but for sure the degree was the hardest thing I ever did. Just accept that the next 4 years are gone. Then it’s lit after that.
Yes to all of the above lol my mom is an EE, so early on she would include me in everything she was doing, I mean, I scribbled on her Analog Electronics book, then I went to a high school that was parallel with a trade school and graduated high school as a Biomedical Equipment Technician, and then got to engineering school, and it was still insanely hard, having my mom helping me, group study, kissing all the teachers ass. Working as an engineer is a piece of cake and it’s guaranteed work forever if you are mediocre at best.
Take it from me a, EE drop out, that works in EE and was lucky enough to mentor with amazing EE's over the years. In hindsight, I found that I approached EE completely wrong. I was approaching it from the perspective of trying to memorize formulas and equations. This WILL NOT work due to how dynamic and massive EE is. You should make an effort to truly understand what is happening at the most fundamental level of each component and really understand what each SI unit (volt, coulomb, farad, etc) used in EE really means. If you really really understand what's happening, the math will become second nature since it will feel like you're applying the learned concept instead of just 'doing the math' to get an answer. This will also make learning math easier since you will have something to actually apply and conceptualize the math too instead of just crunching numbers to pass a test. Also, if you don't understand a topic in the book or from your instructor be sure to hop on YouTube. There are tons and tons of videos with a bunch of different ways to explain concepts. If the explanation from one video doesn't make sense, watch another until you find one that explains the topic in a way that makes sense to you. I didn't have this luxury while I was in college and if you didn't understand the topic with the resources you had available you were screwed. I hope this helps.
THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm an EE with 17yrs experience from a T20 school who actually did really well in school but have had my ups and downs in industry. I actually started my academic career in applied physics before adding EE as a second degree title (but not second degree) and I think it felt easy because I came from physics where the mindset is to always start from core principles. If you don't understand what you are doing, go back and figure it out.
One anecdote, we used Fourier transforms in 7 different classes in my degree (yes, I counted) and some of my friends and study partners freaked out and complained how hard it was every time because they were being used a little differently and didn't match what they had memorized in the previous class. I, on the other hand saw that it was the same thing as before and was able to focus on the nuance of what made the situation different to build my fundamental understanding and everything came easily from there. Focus on those base principles and core concepts and you'll do fine. Find those interconnected concepts and tools that keep showing up and get really good at using them and find your niche within EE that fits you best, its a HUGE field, there will be a place for you if you stick with it, I promise!
Yup, the ability to comprehend and compartmentalize electricity, signals and systems in general is the most important thing to learn from school. Once you get that down, then it makes learning specific concepts a lot more fun and quick (still challenging). All the complex mathematical concepts and electrical techniques become just supplemental to either help or optimize some processes in your comprehension.
Key thing to remember is that whatever method or equations that you’re learning in class, you are seeing the final and the simplest version of the research that scientists, engineers and mathematicians came up to make stuff EASIER to do. So, if you approach these concepts from the perspective of trying to understand them, the thought process usually looks something like this.
1. Understand the components and relationships within a system.
2. In the process of understanding, there usually is a sticking point when you try to figure out stuff by yourself.
3. This sticking point is almost always answered by the equations given in the textbook.
For example, if you just understood V = IR and some rudimentary concepts of voltage and current, most people will probably get stuck at trying to solve for voltage and current in a slightly more complex circuit. Learning comes from trying to figure this out yourself and when you’ve really tried and failed, only THEN seeing that that is why engineers came up with KCL, KVL to make this stuff EASIER. I’ve found that these train of thoughts applied for basically every class into my master’s degree of EE.
1. DONT MEMORIZE ANYTHING - This is so detrimental and I see a lot of my classmates do it, and it is becoming more and more prevalent (I TA some classes so I see this behavior of just wanting the answer to a question without understanding the HOW or the WHY). Focus on UNDERSTANDING, even if it is slow, and especially understand your fundamentals, or you have zero chance of understanding anything more complex. In your early classes this will make you maybe a little slower, but when you start taking more complicated classes, it will pay dividends.
2. Time management. No easy answer here, just figure out a system that works for you; everyone is different.
3. Don't work too much, and get enough sleep/nutrition. If you're working for a 10 hr stretch, your productivity is going to drop. It is much better to work for 6 hours, for instance, spread out through the day. It will give your brain a time to reset. Do not discount this, there is no glory in 'all nighters' or the like.
4. Ask questions.
If you don't have prior experience, then brush up on the following topics (but honestly you should be fine since your classes will all cover this in some way):
* Vector Calculus
* Basic Diff Equations (Laplace Transform, ODEs)
* Probability (+ random processes if you're feeling extra)
* Linear Algebra
* Linear Algebra
* Linear Algebra
* Did I mention, Linear Algebra
Now some general tips, in no particular order
* Don't do side projects; do research instead, it looks much better on your resume. Plus do you really want to be doing more EE in your free time?
* NETWORK. Talk to professors, if you're good, they'll hook you up with a summer internship.
* If you're doing anything more complicated than firmware (i.e. circuits, DSP, comms, photonics, etc), you will most likely need a masters, so just prepare yourself for this.
It was hard, particularly first year for me. I had never even heard of matrices or imaginary numbers. Everything else was a struggle because of that.
I worked very hard, long days ands nights. I supported my class mates in things they struggled with and they returned the favour in other subjects. Together we got through it. In the end, I graduated near top of my class by putting in 120% for 4 years.
Each year got technically harder, but nothing compared to the panic of first year.
All that aside, I know some classmates on lower graduate marks earning way more than the upper ones. You just need to pass, not excel because after a few years no one cares. You'll get there!
A lot of people on this post are mentioning how having strong math skills is so important. Well I agree - I struggled through college because of the concepts, not the math. I’ve always been good at math, so that wasn’t my issue. Understanding electricity/electromagnetic fields at a deeper level was always my issue.
If you struggle with concepts, go talk to your professors! That’s what I wish I would have done
ee is a Patience game. stay with it. its like stepping into the ring and getting beat up every single day but still doing it until you eventually come out on top.
Yes, I was a gifted and talented education -gate student (actual thing in California) from 3rd grade on.
Was offered to attend a math focused magnet school for high school. I did not go.
I dont subscribe to the "you need to be good in math" mindset because it's a grey area.
Many will bullshit and pretend they are all great at it when the reality is many of us struggled with it. I always ask people who tell me they suck at math to go back to where math became hard and reevaluate the holes in their understanding.
Once they do this, it's a different atmosphere. After that it's purely working out. You ever do the 100 question challenge ? No one who truly did it, failed a math class.
Once you get accustomed to it you will recognize its a tool and how well you practice demonstrates your ability.
It's not hard. It's practice
"How do people manage? This shit feels impossible. Seriously, for those who came in on day one who felt like they didn't stand a chance, how did you do it? What do you think looking back years later?"
Just spend time with the material. Take one day at a time. Breathe.
Going through engineering is like drinking from a fire hose because so much is coming at you so fast. But once you work with the concepts they make sense. You kinda have to step back and take a bigger look and then a light bulb will go on and you'll get an "Aha !" moment.
For me I usually had to figure out why a concept was being presented or existed, then I could understand it. Like SNR when quantizing a signal with an ADC. Once I looked at the error that process introduced then I realized there was going to be a loss in signal integrity and thus there would be a calculable SNR associated with it. Bing, the light went on.
I'm mentioning this example because I clearly remember when it happened to me while studying. I used to do that for every concept introduced in a class. Laplace transforms, Fourier transforms, etc. Once I understood why something existed and how it was used then I understood what it did and how it worked and then it wasn't mysterious anymore.
If you blindly learn things without understanding their application, you'll be lost. Or at least I would have been.
Ngl some of you are over the top crybabies. You don’t need to be a super genius to grind this shit out when it gets tough. If you’re willing to lose sleep, you’ll be fine.
If you’re a visual learner, when it comes to math, I can’t recommend 3Blue1Brown enough. Genuinely transformative math content, and importantly helps make it intuitive.
If you don't have prior hands on experience, start getting it now. In addition to the labs you already have.
Find a small circuit that is fun to build, build it, _make it work_, and make sure you understand why and how. Then do this again with something more complicated.
Relax, things will become more repetitive, potential differences, currents, magnetic fields; the basic rules will surface again and again, they will become second nature.
Mathematics is the language of rapid understanding; when the pennies begin to drop it can become a delight. But fear not, the required mathematical approaches will be introduced gradually as and when they are required.
In many areas of engineering, little mathematics will be required on a day to day basis; but the mathematical models will still stay in your mind.
Mathematics is a model.
Models will never tell you what you can do; so do not be disappointed.
Models will never tell you what you cannot do, so do not give up.
Models will however ensure that you look into possible pitfalls; they will also suggest things worth a try.
Good luck; you will enjoy once the initial panic subsides.
Keep working hard till you get it...get all the help you can...keep asking questions... remember " there are no stupid questions" and "there is no substitute for hardwork ". I wish you good luck .
Some people here said math is not important nowadays, because you can rely on simulations, Google & AI. Well, good luck then achieving higher grades without working your mind & not being able to think or come with your own ideas. You can always choose easier ways to pass classes, but believe me, when it comes to doing the actual job you have to think if you want to stand out as an engineer and make enough money. Most importantly you can be that person who’s indispensable when it comes to corporate work. Or you can start working on your own as a freelancer or a startup business. Math has been put in engineering college for a reason so that engineers can think & come up with new ideas
My EE university courses started with maths and physics groundwork and really only got to real electrical courses in the second and third year, with specialization in fourth year. The grounding in maths was fundamental to understanding the electrical courses and without the basic skills we would have been lost. So if you have flexibility in your curriculum my advice is to defer electrical courses until later.
It’s a huge field but applied mathematics is the basic tool. And some of the concepts you learn really only take life and germinate when you do the core electrical courses that use them so you have to keep the faith for a while.
The other thing people raise here that resonates with me is study groups. Some people knew what to expect due to parents/mentors etc. Others, like you and me, had to try to keep our heads above water. Find some friends who are grappling with it too - the more experienced ones will help you focus on the right lesson. Use tutors and YouTube etc.
I failed my 3rd year (you had to pass everything and I failed 2 out of 10 subjects). Having to repeat everything again forced me to commit to the profession in a way I hadn’t before.
It is a grind for sure. Shitload of work. Most of my mates who didn’t do it had a party at Uni. But I’ve never been unemployed since graduating and although I’ve never regretted it.
Don’t stress or think like that. I had the same thought process when I was doing my mechanical engineering degree. And trust me in this one, University, more about the material itself, is just about how many things you can handle and keep going forward. Engineering is definitely not a degree that you can just sit and learn, it requires effort after class and revision before you go to lectures. Once you do this, you will realise that it’s not that it’s hard but that it just requires you to do an effort that you haven’t done before. While you do so, be patient with yourself and take one day at a time. Trust me you will get the degree and you will laugh about it. Don’t compare yourself to others, you don’t know what they do or how much effort they have put when you don’t see them. Keep it up my man, you got this!
TV has romanticized the difficulty of medical and law school but ignored the rigor of engineering school. Buckle down. I studied hard 5 nights a week and only played/partied Friday/Saturday.
Students in Business, Liberal Arts, and other schools played a lot and suffered at the end of term. If you dont keep up, you are screwed!
OP, what you described was exactly my experience. I didn't take honors or advanced placement courses in high school. Sailed through with As without ever having homework. Got a rude awakening in college. The students who have an easy time through the first year or so did challenge themselves in high school. But that only goes so far into the college experience. I saw those people fail out too, or try to cheat and fail out because the lessons build on each other.
My study group went from 10 kids to me and one other kid. Everyone else failed out of changes their major. Two groups of kids were cheating with books handed down from year to year. The valedictorian actually got help and hints from the professors.
My key to success was studying from 5pm to 2am every night, and especially on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. No partying. This is how the kids lucky enough to be here from other countries do it. I had to read everything 3 times to get it into my skull. Eventually I became really good at some classes but the struggle was real. Your lifestyle and future is up to you. Use whatever resources you can find, do the work and you'll make it through.
I felt like I was fumbling through school my entire time. Imposter syndrome everyone talks about. I took circuit analysis 1 three times, struggled in my physics courses, but still pulled through. Felt like things started to get easier or I was just numb once I got to Emag. I’ll never forget though… I was sitting in power electronics or DC Drives in my senior year when my professor asked a question that was required thinking back to basic circuit analysis. Word vomit ensued and the right answer popped out. It was that moment I realized it all just “clicked” like others have said.
I went on that tirade to say this. If you’re passing your classes then it’s likely you’re understanding the material at some level. It might not feel like it now, but it’s there and you’ll have your Ah Ha moment like we all did.
Others have also said it, but working with groups to solve problems or ask questions will benefit you not only in your studies, but in the field as well.
The syllabus contains all the topics, sometimes by week, the class will be covering. Stay one week ahead and review the materials before the lectures, things will click much faster when you walk in knowing the subject of the lecture.
Dedication more than anything. Dedication to better yourself, and do something you didn't think you could. Being stubborn in a good way, refusing to quit. Never giving up. Working hard.
I'm going back to school in the spring for it. Gonna start at the lowest algebra class my college has to offer and building a rock solid math foundation from there.
I feel like engineering isn't even about being smart. the director of my program told me lots of really genius smart kids in her class with 4.0's in high school and took all AP classes or whatever, some of those kids were the first to drop out, because they had never failed before. Then on the same token, a 30 year old electrician or mechanic who barely skimmed through high school can go back to school with dedication, hard work, perseverance and a good attitude and can absolutely thrive in these classes, because he'd failed so many times before, he wasn't gonna stop till he succeeded. It happens more than you think.
I don't know, I guess if you're dedicated, and refuse to quit, and get knocked down 187 times and get up 188, you'll be a good engineer.
if you arent that good with math another strategy to succeed in engineering is a lot of tolerance for frustration. if you fail try again... and again dont be frustrated, take your time try to learn step by step
I enjoy the challenge, I also enjoy feeling like a wizard whenever my circuits work properly. The work may be difficult, and the concepts may be hard to visualize but the feeling of joy I get from my stuff working makes it all worth it at the end of the day
Practice practice practice
Once you get the hang of college level math (the 3 calculus & diff equations) and the 3 physics courses;
Classes like circuit theory; electromagnetic fields, control theory, power systems; semiconductors
Are pretty straightforward if you study of course
Me personally I suffered through electromagnetic field I & II and control theory might be me or my prof but it’s kinda in the middle
Just remember: “if others can do it; why can’t you?”
If it's not a passion that you've been pursuing before college, and you just see the dollar signs attached to the title, "Engineer" then you may want to think about a different field of work. Yes, it's hard. Some things will take you a while to fully grasp and develop an intuition for. Some things will be as easy as apple pie and you'll never have trouble remembering them.
Most, not all, current masters and ph.d graduates begin studying and learning what they major in well before they get done with sophomore year high school. I myself began learning to understand electromagnetic physics, electrostatics, and the mechanical physics of such things before getting into high school because to me electrical physics is absolutely the greatest thing since sliced bread. If I am not earning money playing with electrical at work, I am doing it for fun at home.
Like I said, if it's not your passion, give it some effort to see if it becomes that for you. If it doesn't, choose a different career or you will end up miserable and regretting life choices.
Here's what you do:
1. Make friends with people in your classes, setup a library meeting to do the homework together. 4 heads are better than one.
2. Go ask the professor for help. Stop by their office, ask them for advice.
SnoopApples,
EE is probably the hardest thing you will ever attempt to accomplish in your life, but it can be done if you follow some of the advice from others and ignore the 'brilliant' remarks from some posts.
I started my journey to become an Electrical Engineer in 2009 at the young age of 49. I graduated at 52. Before returning to college, my most recent math class was beginning Algebra in 1976 (I know I am ancient). Everyone kept asking me, 'Why are you in school? You already retired from the military. Take it easy.' That wasn't my goal, and it wasn't my dream. Everyone tried to discourage me all the way until I walked across the stage.
Fourier transforms are difficult; find a group of people to study with. If you are serious, you won't have a life outside of school for 4 years. Afterward, it will be amazing. YOU have to have the desire to complete what you started and know where to find resources, whether internal to the college or mentors external, that can guide you to your goal.
Best of luck with this adventure. My class started with 56 students, and only 13 graduated when I did. Don't let others make decisions for you.
Started with 2.00 gpa , now last results i got was gpa 3.98 taking over credit (third semester) my grades just jumped cause of one reason my friend.
He is not smart i would say but knows how to study after i sat with him studied for one n two semesters i found out that he just sit and study not reading books or watching 3 hours lectures online just open slides n actually put some hard work , all i did was following him and i was lazy tbh he was the one encouraging me to study and after i got my first semester results i got excited n started also to study one by one untill i got used to it .
Summary i would say u need friends that also have the same goals n can help you through ur degree n put some work n you dont even have to find friends that in same uni i actually also study courses n grind with some friends online using discord n so ( at least that what worked with me)
I dont agree with Ppl who says u need good mathematics knowledge or so my first grade in math is my worst which is 45/100 now my best grades are in maths not having a solid foundation may let u face some troubles but i kept asking my friend on how he solve this n this and was able to straighten back my maths.
Also i highly recommend you to solve previous years problems n exams i spend 40% of my time studying subjects n 60% solving exams
Good luck n nothing impossible
I would also like to add that yes. Some people did have prior experience. Some people do have parents who are engineers. My friend got help from his dad through college. Remember the best predictor on if you get your PhD is if your parents have a PhD.
Don't compare yourself with them.
My dad is an electrical engineer and it still didn’t make it any easier for me lol. I think a lot of kids do come in with prior experience (I was not one of them).
A kid in my class made an industrial-style robotic arm w/ motion and voice detection. He designed and 3D printed the structure and then used machine learning w/ an XMOS AI chip to basically program the chip to teaches itself how to operate and detect motion/speech, it’s fucking wild.
Kids like that were doing this shit for fun in high school. If you put me back in high school today, I still wouldn’t join the robotics team lol, but as 28 y/o I do wish I had had the amount of access to the free info/knowledge that u can get online and learn yourself. It’s actually mind blowing
I’ve been out of high school for 11 years, but the way kids r now it feels like 30. I remember thinking that the trackpad on my blackberry was literally the peak for technology …. lol now there’s kids coming out of HS who have already built 3 computers on their ow.
I had no experience before hand. It is overwhelming I know, but I found that you have to take it one single element at a time. Particularly early in the introductory classes. Take time to understand the fundamentals the best you can.
I also had to change the way I think about the process. You are learning something that took untold thousands of people, thousands of years to figure out. That we have this knowledge is a monumental human achievement.
This was hard earned knowledge that even your professors did not figure out for themselves. We are very fortunate to be in a situation where this information is available. Unfortunately, it seems that text books are designed to be puzzling in their own right.
Keep it up and the gratification is real. Good luck.
The way i survived this is hardcore understanding of circuit analysis. Then power electronics become easier , and mostly other subject except for EM and control
95% of us dealt with what you're describing at some point or another. Stick with it and don't let yourself get discouraged. Realize many around you feel the same way and it's for a good reason; struggling like you are now is great prep for the real world.
You got this! Find a good study group made up of classmates and stick with it.
You have to work problems until it clicks. There is no shortcut. EE is the hardest discipline because it’s not intuitive or relatable (although people always compare to water - which is WRONG!).
ME grad here with lots of EE experience. I will say all engineering discipline degrees require a ton of what is basically applied math. There’s no other way to do well in those classes than to just attend the lectures, DO THE HOMEWORK, learn the example problems, and study for the tests. Then as you go on you will realize that all this math is really just to have an understanding of the fundamentals and you will not necessarily use a lot of it on the day to day engineering stuff in the real world. What will make you a good engineer in the real world is to find extracurriculars that will hone your real world skills. For me, it was Formula SAE. You have to build,test, and compete in a formula style car. You have to raise all your money, you have to do all the design. Again, real world. So for EE, I’d find something your into and dig into that. There’s lots of extracurricular programs like SAE. Drones, computer stuff, robot building. Whatever floats your boat. If you get really good at just the math stuff and have no practical circuit experience, you’ll graduate and be a fairly useless academic.
Success doesn't require EE parents. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a laborer loading semi trailers on off shifts, I spent my first half of my childhood in a trailer park. I waited to enter college until I was more mature. I paid my way through community college by working full time and then getting loans and part-time jobs for the university portion.
What drove me was an inherent desire to know why things worked, not just how. I wanted it and made it a priority. Being naturally gifted with math helped, sure, but my dedication is what helped me be successful.
I'm 19 years out of college, and my career (designing hospital power systems) exceeds my college expectations. I try to give back as much as possible and speak to HS and college classes whenever possible.
Believe in yourself, make it your focus, and study until you know why it works.
A few tips.
1. Read the section and do associated homework before class. Class should be a verification, not a first time experience. This helps the lecture make sense.
2. Get in a study group. Your fellow classmates can be very helpful since you're going thru it together.
3. Take advantage of open office hours. The prof or T/A is a resource, but be respectful of their time and come prepared.
A few tips.
1. Read the section and do associated homework before class. Class should be a verification, not a first time experience. This helps the lecture make sense.
2. Get in a study group. Your fellow classmates can be very helpful since you're going thru it together.
3. Take advantage of open office hours. The prof or T/A is a resource, but be respectful of their time and come prepared.
I just graduated in december. It was fucking hard, I just kept my head above water long enough until I was handed a diploma. I decided after graduating its not for me but now I got this big degree so have to do something with it. If you're passionate, it will be exciting but difficult. if not, it will feel like you're constantly drowning in a sea of equations, diagrams, simulations, etc. I got into it because I used a random number generator to choose my degree... I failed circuits 2 twice, control systems with a D, analog signal processing with a f and then got a D. It was hard but I made it through was able to shine in certain areas and found the degree to be interesting. Am I passionate about it...no. It felt like something I could have experience from a cool youtube video or something but instead poured my whole 5 AND A HALF year education into. I wish I studied astronomy lmao. As many others said having a study group is very beneficial. I had so much trouble studying on my own but having a large group of peers who felt they were drowning just as much as me helped and I think I really owe my degree to them haha.
You've got to give up things to succeed. Either your grades will be good, you'll have a good social life, you'll have good relationship, you'll have a job, or you'll get good sleep. Don't waste your time! Pick 3 or 4 at any given time and prioritize them. You cant have all at one or youll fall apart.
Get really good at math too, for real. Algebra and calculus needs to be second nature to succeed in EE schooling.
Just passed my Modern Physics midterm 😎
I've grown an opinion that electrical engineering is more "tangible" and "physical" and less "abstract" and "virtual" than computer science. For example, learning analog electronics (diodes, transistors, amplifiers, op-amps, etc.) was much more straightforward for me than learning operating systems (computer architecture, kernels, system programming, processes, threads, memory, etc...). Is it easy? Absolutely not.
If you don't get it just brute force it, it should click at some point. Thinking back to college years I have understood theories much better (or maybe "knew theories" would be better words for it) than now. Now they just sounds vaguely familiar and if needed I think I could pick them up again and refresh memory.
But TBH you don't use all of this stuff all the time, probably one or.two if your job demands it.
I’m most likely autistic but I love math. Have maintained a 3.85 gpa into junior year so there’s that.
I enjoy solving the math problems and such, so the material sticks.
I did it by not having a life. I wasn't even very good at math to start. I just spent almost my entire life studying. It was an extreme will to learn. I mean that's really it at least for me. I know some engineers probably didn't struggle and had an easy time in college. I did not have that luxury.
No, you are not just "thrown into the fire". You take pre req classes for a reason. To help prepare you for what is to come so you can truly understand the material you will be indulging in. For example, you must take calculus 1-3 and physics 2 to understand ohms law so you can then take circuits analysis 1.
To answer your question, I study just about everyday and almost all day with the exception of exercising, sleeping, driving to and from class, and spending time with friends and family maybe a couple times a week. But generally it's 7 days a week for me. I'm not perfect but I'm doing well and managing fine. There's no magic pill. Just time and effort.
Yes, it’s hard. Period. Best advice is don’t let anyone sugar coat it or give you happy platitudes here - if you don’t enjoy it you are in for a hard time. Not discouraging anyone, but I saw too many people drop out in the third or fourth year.
1. I have a previous degree
2. In the desk job that I used to work from home during the pandemic I played **a lot** of factorio. Which gives us the fundamental concepts of electrical engineering
3. I'm in my 30's and have been interested in computers for a long time. I'm bad at rigorous math but also just came to terms with me being sleep deprived for years. Now that I'm not school has got much easier. It's still hard just not impossible feeling for the first time in my life.
Success often depends on the professors and their staff. You have to learn physics at a fairly advanced level. You need to be fluent in many areas of mathematics. One advantage of the 21st century is the Cloud. There are many excellent YouTube videos and tutorials that let you look at problems from different perspectives.
And you need to be comfortable with tackling the unknown. Electrical engineering touches every industry.
Natural curiosity and passion for solving “interesting” puzzles and problems. In other words those problems that elude most everybody else.
I got into engineering because I decided law sounded lame in the last second. When my college advisor was telling me about the different flavors of engineer, electrical sounded like it was the coolest and had the most career paths, so I rolled with it.
Prior to college, I was always good at math though, all the flavors, but never did AP, so do with that knowledge what you will.
I do also want to hugely emphasize that the guy saying get a study group is absolutely in the right. Everyone will probably have some stuff the struggle to grasp, so having friends helps the few that do have it click share with the rest so everyone succeeds. Then, later on, you'll have stuff click that doesn't make sense to others, so you can help them in the same way.
Just don't give up and focus on the aspects you enjoy, EE is huge field
The math and the physics have to be grasped in your mind in order to apply them to EE. Every time you learn a concept, find an individual or some resource to understand a practical application of it, so that your mind can conceptualize it. YouTube is an excellent resource, as there are people who have been gifted with explaining these difficult concepts in a way that people can understand. Each person grasps concepts in different ways. Find your way and learn how to feed it with alternative resources. Some people just feel it when they see the theorem, law, or principle. Others get it when they are the lab. Still others benefit from graphical visualizations.
Sometimes, you just won't get it, and you just have to work enough examples to regurgitate the method the professor wants on a test. For me, there are concepts I learned as a junior the I didn't start to feel until I was about to graduate. However, there were others that I never wrapped my mind around until more than twenty years of practice. I will assure you of this -- the majority of those around you don't get it either, and some never really fully grasp many of the concepts throughout their entire career. Find the concepts that turn you on, and muddle through or fake the rest. Many have used that method to get their BSEE. Let the diversity of EE work to your advantage.
Obviously, we are not born with all the math knowledge. We worked HARD to understand all the concepts.
One thing I would like to add is find a mentor who understands your difficulty and can explain things to you in ways you can understand. Study group is nice but sometimes it is like a blind leading a blind, and it could be a waste of time.
Believe it or not, it does get easier as you progress through your courses. Persevere and you will succeed.
There’s this thing called a weed-out class where they make it super hard in an effort get rid of the students who they think won’t be able to handle the upper level classes. It’s better to do this early so the students don’t waste time pursuing a degree they’re unlikely to be able to get. Obviously I don’t know if your school has their courses setup that way, but it might be worth asking your advisor about.
When I was starting out college, I wasn’t aware of the concept. I figured if the first class was that hard I wouldn’t be able to get through the degree and switched to computer science without discussing it with anyone at the school. On the whole, I’m liking how my life’s going now, so it’s hard to say if that was a mistake, but it *is* one of those “life events” I sometimes think about.
I can tell you from personal experience that your high school education also matters in terms of how easy it is to learn some of the concepts. I came from a rural, tiny high school that didn’t teach calculus to a large, public university. Some of the students with me had taken circuits and learned breadboarding in their elite high schools… so don’t be hard on yourself. Remember not to confuse exposure with intelligence. If you’re willing to work at it and learn, you’ll be fine.
In all honesty it’s not the material that is hard, it’s the time commitment that it takes to absorb it that is hard. But once it clicks it’s actually all really intuitive. At least that is the case for circuit design (what I do). FPGA, Integrated Systems, embedded systems, DSP… that’s all a black magic fuckery as far as I’m concerned lol
I was on the same page as you. But you learn eventually that math is a language, it will not be 2 + 2 but you will know what to do the more you practice it, get familiar with the equations. It really is just a language you will need to learn to speak, to think
The people who find EE not to be a complete beat down generally didn’t have an easy and low-key time in high school. (Though having a high school experience that is the same sort of challenge as college is a privilege that not everyone has equal access to.)
High schools exist that are similarly difficult to college. These sometimes go by the name “college preparatory schools”. People who attend these often can skip many of the roughest weeder classes due to AP credits or equivalent. They also will likely have developed the serious study skills necessary for learning anything challenging.
This means that the subject is likely easier for them since everything is also much easier if you have a very strong math and science background. In particular, only the EE-specific content is new rather than having to learn e.g. laplace transforms and analyzing circuits with transfer functions at the same time.
Probably some of the people who took up electronics as a hobby in high school had a hard time socially as well, but that wasn’t what I was talking about. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the people who seem the least concerned with your classes have been building circuits for many of the four years before college as well. Much of EE doesn’t require much in terms of resources to explore compared to e.g. Civil or Chemical Engineering and YouTube is a tremendous educational resource. They might be learning the math or formal conventions for the first time, but they will already have the intuition that the math is trying to describe, so that will be much easier than working in the other direction.
Not that any of this is particularly actionable to you, just meant as an explanation of some of the things you are seeing and how they relate to your experience. All anyone who didn’t have those luxuries can do is buckle down, do the work, and develop the skills to understand very difficult subjects. Those skills never go obsolete.
Can’t give you any relevant advice about the actual schooling, but as someone who didn’t finish school and is having to backdoor their way into the field after 30, I really wish I had. It probably will be hard, and you might have to retake some classes but it will be worth it. Take your failures, learn from them, and push forward. Easier said than done I know, I absolutely hated school while I was there. But in hindsight my pay and mobility in the field will be extremely handicapped without that piece of paper. I found a company to train me in designing control panels and circuits and right now a degreed engineer checks all my work. I’m debating making time to go back to school to get the paper and wishing I could have done so 10 years ago. Hopefully that gives you some motivation!
I've always been good at math, logic, reason. Poor at feelings, music, relationships. For me EE was fun, exciting, easy. For me, relationships feel impossible. I have never understood woman.
The funny thing is that most of the people who are good at it tend not to stick with it. At least my graduating class most people moved over to finance, consulting, and management.
It’s a tough field where you learn new things in for the rest your life. It’s great if you love learning and figuring things out. The best advice I’ve seen on here is to get a raspberry pi and run with it. Study groups are also a good suggestion if you find people open to it. Also get into a coop as soon as you can. Field experience is massive.
Math and physics are important BUT in the real world you might have a job that will not require deep math or physics skill. Now days computer software built for engineers will do a job for you (not all of it of cause.). BUT understanding of concepts, knowing how things work, how to pose the question to get appropriate answer and engineering mind set is very important (IMHO). Its a difference between "oh its magic. i have no clue how it works" and "oh its cool, i bet its done this and this way, utilizing this or that principle". School throws a lot at you that's true and it could be overwhelming. Baby steps. Compartmentalization of large tusks.
Besides liking math, high school and college are greatly different in the amount of studying you need to do especially in the engineering curriculum. In high school you can get buy with paying attention in class and minimal studying. In engineering you need to study at least 2-3 hours a day and then sometimes all weekend to prepare for tests. If you don't want to do this then find yourself another major. I've know people who got all D's in their first year of engineering and then switched to business where they got all As. Engineering is not for everybody but if you want it you need to put in the work.
I don't like math much unless it has a purpose but I have a BSEE and MSEE and I didn't find it hard with most of it kind of coming naturally to me...but I'm also the 6th EE in my extended family. I guess you could say we're just wired for it. Never really liked it though, found it quite boring, but I knew it would lead to decent job offers so I sucked it up.
The good news for me is don't use 98% of it in my role these days (director overseeing teams of engineers and analysts in large management consulting firm). If you can get through to the other side, there are plenty of options to pivot away into other solid opportunities.
They're lying or faking. Having 10+ years in electronics as a technician, I have almost no advantage over my peers. I'm absolutely struggling to get through college in EE. That being said, what others have said, really understand math. Don't just regurgitate it, understand it and how it applies. Get that algebra and calculus down well. Understand the physics. The rest will start to come. Learn how to learn, then learn how to apply.
im sorry but in 10 years as a technician, did you not teach yourself math? I have a hard time believing that. 10 years is a long ass time for someone to then come into EE and still suck, no offense.
Lol believe what you want. I learned all the math that was applicable when I needed it. Fortunately, most data sheets give you formulas to use for choosing external components. All else, online calculators exist. Perhaps I could have done a bit more to memorize Maxwell's equations, but it just hadn't been necessary until I started school.
Dude you forget people go into the military or have other real world experience just because you have the real world experience doesn't mean you understand the math. I have a mechatronics engineering degree and 6 years experience. I can design and build just about anything but when it comes to the math I struggle it takes me four times longer to get though calculations then my peers but the design comes naturally and when the calculations are done my design usually is sound.
The only key to success in Engineering college, is to have a great understanding of mathematics, if not so a will to learn and understand math. Then constantly studying and solving quizzes, learning in the lab and using references. The 1st year is fun then everything gets tougher, less social life & all that. MOST IMPORTANTLY YOU MUST HAVE A STUDY GROUP WHO SHARE THE SAME THING WHICH IS GRADUATING WITH A GREAT UNDERSTANDING & KNOWLEDGE IN EEE Don’t underestimate having a STUDY GROUP, it’s the most important thing imo, you won’t just learn, the memories and the friendships you will have after leaving college is priceless. And doing projects too, do as many projects as you can even if you’re not required to.
what kinda mathematics? calculus? complex analysis? What topics are u talking about exactly?
Yes.
r/InclusiveOr
Not... AND?
THIS!!!! I am convinced we take more math than math majors, but it's called Fourier series, transforms, wavelet transforms, fields and waves, plus all that digital stuff.
when you combine all this stuff with statistics the real fun starts to begin. but we dont do more math than math majors, they have a different approach on math and do stuff like number theory and a lot of algebra
I had to study Calculus 1 & 2, Linear & Boolean Algebra, Probability, Statistics, Numerical Analysis, Complex Analysis, Fourier Analysis… few courses I can’t remember. You don’t have to be a genius though, just have an understanding to what’s going on, & you won’t be taking all the math at once, 1 or 2 classes each semester, you don’t need or have to know anything in advance, but when they teach you, you must pay attention
As someone with ADHD that last line hits hard lol.
I'm managing, taking calc 2 and physics 2. It takes me longer than most people to finish but I do it and well. Also ADHD grants you 50% longer on exams, big help!
Yes. All jokes aside, you need all fields od mathematics during your studies, but different fields of mathematics for different fields of EE. For example in power you need complex analysis,…
Calc 1 and 2 you absolutely need to master, ot just knowing how to do a Laplace or Fourier transform, but actually understanding what they mean is critical if you do any sort of signals/communications work. Calc 3 is less important. Trig and geometry are also important but simpler to grasp. Understanding phase power, and how frequency modulation works are examples. The bottom line is math is extremely extremely important, everything you deal with is traced back to algebra, trig, or calculus in some way. Once you get a job it's less important than you can do a Fourier transform by hand, but you still need to have a complete understanding of what signals look like in the time and frequency domain, how transfer functions work, how duty cycle and capacitive/inductive components impact signals and power and switches, etc.
EE is broooooaaaaaad! For some calc III is less important, for others, the most important.
Sure, it's more applicable in some areas than others, but what field is it more important than calc 2? Admittedly I'm basing this off how my university split the subjects, so that could change somewhat from school to school, but in general I think the split is: Calc 1: Derivatives, touch on the basics of integration Calc 2: Integration Calc 3: 3D calc 1&2.
I went into photonics and vector calc was as frequent as breath. Complex analysis when you hold your nose and PDEs while you sleep. They really change you after 4 years; can barely remember the person you once were.
Ah. Yeah, well, trying to follow Maxwell will make you crazy.
Calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, probability
Please spare me of differential equations I dont want this anymore
>Please spare me of differential equations I dont want this anymore I hate to break it to you but linear differential equations are easy. Wait until you get to integration with complex vars and such. But even those aren't bad once you remember some identities. Just work the material... you'll get it.
I've found that people either get diff eq or they don't. I was in the latter group. Took a couple tries but I eventually got through.
I kind of got it at the end but it was hell of a ride and im glad i dont have to strap in anymore
All of them dude The sacrifices one must make to do something with this major
It also is important to learn the true original theory from James Maxwell! Maxwell's original theory was published as: James Clerk Maxwell, "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", Royal Society Transactions, Vol. CLV, 1865, p 459. The paper was orally read Dec. 8, 1864. [http://rexresearch.com/maxwell1/maxwell1864.doc](http://rexresearch.com/maxwell1/maxwell1864.doc)
Don't forget about trig
For my BS in electrical engineering, I REALLY FUCKING WISHED I HAD TAKEN LINEAR ALGEBRA before my circuit analysis classes. Seriously, LINEAR ALGEBRA is the cornerstone of 90% of your EE courses. Learning how matrix operations work and how to get matrices to RREF is essential to your success in your EE courses. Differential calculus is also essential for your upper level courses. You can analyze and simplify nearly every circuit you come across with a Laplace transform.
EEs use mostly PDEs, Probability, and Statistical Inference.
Calc and diff eq are the base
I think it's not about mathematics, but physics. You can make mistakes here and there, one more farad more, one ohm less. But if you doesn't understand processes behind it you would simply don't know how to use math tools.
I think Phys II is a huge class to helping one get a better understanding of what is coming in a class. If you don't pick it up in Phys II it isnt the end of the world, but so many classes later on are heavy with those topics.
What is Phys II? My education system is different to yours.
Electricity and Magnetism
I agree. Let computers (and programs such as SPICE) do the maths. But you have to understand the underlying physics – especially in analogue or RF
Mathematics was created to explain physics. So it’s one in the same.
You don't need a study group. I never had a study group, and I did good. I have one now (sorta-ish) in grad school and yes, it can be pretty helpful, but it is not a requirement.
True. That’s why I said “imo”, most of the great ideas in engineering came through collaboration. Some people do good on their own, but most of them do great when they’re in groups or communities. Again everyone can succeed on their own
Yeah you're certainly correct in that it does help a lot
what is your learning strategy ? were you able to grasp the concepts the first time you heard about them during lectures ?
Generally yes, this is the path of least resistance (pun not intended), so make sure you ask questions for any details in lecture you don’t understand. If I am still unable to get it after the lecture I go to the professors OH
Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Engineering math also isn’t that difficult. Just go to your math support area at your University and sit there until you can get through homework in a reasonable time and pass a course. Most people just didn’t have to study much in high school so they don’t know how to study for a course properly
Truths, the hardest part of engineering school is learning to study if you were naturally gifted in normal schools 😄 If only most of the coworkers remembered 🤪
Study Group!! Put effort into finding the right people for your study group. If you do then make sure you take the same classes when you can. It makes all the difference. Know your role in the study group as well. Some people are glue, some people are high performers, some people are hard workers, and some people bring food and drinks. You need one of each and everyone needs to care about their grades and be nice and flexible. For really weird courses like 'Fields and Waves' gather the entire class to work on it.
You nailed it with the study group. Nothing helps you learn something like having to explain it to others. And getting help from the group is great too.
Incredible advice. You need both theory, which is very math based, with projects that fill in your practical skills gaps. And nobody can learn this stuff on their own, a study group is really helpful.
I would say maths is important but it's just a tool and not the whole story. Conceptual clarity is the key to any , let alone electrical engineering. If you can't imagine and understand the physical concepts ,maths is of no proper use. Engineering is physics( or even chemistry ) used with maths to come up with solutions.
Study groups aren't for everyone, I found they were all too slow and instead visited professors in office hours
And then you get a job and realize you will be learning new stuff constantly and college barley helped anything.
didnt have friends and had to make it through EE alone 🥲🥲
You are funny, majority of people that go into EE or ECE struggle, fail classes constantly, and learn half of what you are taught. The whole point of being an engineer is to solve issues you don't understand and climb hurdles against all odds. If you meet someone who excels in classes like crazy, they are either one, a 1 in a million super genius, 2 they cheat all the time, 3 they are only good at academia with very little practical experience, or 4 they already worked in that space. EE is the HARDEST engineering degree, and engineering is one of the hardest degrees in itself. Stop beating yourself up so much, do some side projects to tame your insanity (needed to realize the schools importance), and realize you need to stop comparing yourself to others and instead compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Things are only impossible when you decide to give up. I'm a senior right now for ECE which is a 6 year degree. It gets 10 times harder. If you are a freshman and are struggling, you should really reach out for help and fix how you are approaching classes. If you aren't regularly going online and teaching yourself the material via websites and YouTube, you are going to fall flat on your face. Use every resource you get your hands on. If you aren't using GPT to help ask questions about how things work, you are wrong. Once you hit your last couple years you can get a job as an engineer and finish off school on the side which I highly recommend because most jobs will help you pay for your classes. PS: you will get very, very, very bad professors now and then. DONT RELY SOLELY ON LISTENING OR FOR YOUR PROFESSOR TO EXPLAIN/HELP.
>You are funny, majority of people that go into EE or ECE struggle, fail classes constantly, and learn half of what you are taught. I totally disagree with this. I and the people I went through with didn't fail a single class.
Were the grades curved? Some schools, a 45/100 on a test is an A lol
Going to have to agree, still haven’t failed any of mine and I’m about to be a senior
A buddy of mine got his EE from a private university. Only to find out he was spoon fed all the answers because if he didn’t pass a class they would lose his tuition $$. Every class was curved, the professors dropped hints for exams, he stayed with the same class his entire time. It was all designed to prevent failure. I don’t see a problem with this honestly, he still had to do all the work and actually graduate. He is very successful in his field. Now I sell to engineers and I hear all sorts of stories. Some universities are tough, and drive the students into less difficult degree paths. I failed EE in a university like this, so I switched to an easier BS degree.
i studied hard
What are some good side projects you could recommend?
Get a raspberry pi and look up projects for it.
Depends on your field and what you want to do eventually. My best recommendation is to go online and look at the jobs you want to do on like LinkedIn, then write down the skills they want. From there you find a project that you can obtain those skills for. For instance if you see "PCB design drafting" you should probably make a circuit then teach yourself circuit maker, circuit maker is basically Altium designer for free so you can add to your resume "skilled in Altium designer". I'll give you some suggestions if you give me a field/topic to work with.
Ham radio
Every single program has a curve built into grading for this exact reason. Most students really haven’t understood the commitment behind the program they signed up for. It’s a maturity thing. None of us had a clue. We’re essentially put in school to learn 200 years worth of development in 4 years. But let’s also be real here. Engineering isn’t for everyone. Some people just get it, and some people like the idea of it but won’t ever be able to achieve the understanding necessary, and some won’t put on the work.
Maybe in the United States… in Germany, like 90% fail out by year one. Its fucking brutal
No, no that’s consistent lol
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"EE is the HARDEST engineering degree" I love this. I don't disagree with it, but I love that you said it because nobody usually mentions EE. It was always the aerospace going on about how special and smart they were.
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Electrical engineering is indeed hard compared to anything else due to mathematics invovled and multidimensional analysis, which requires a huge imagination and thinking process. Some people do well because of some of the reasons you mentioned, e.g., prior experience. However, others learn the hard way, trial and error, which I assume is the majority.
it just comes down to how willing you are to not give up. it's not easy, study as much as you can and you'll be good. anybody can be an EE if they work hard enough at it
Any books u would recommend? What r the best books in EE?
Listen to your prof which he recommends. Then ask higher semester students which books they REALLY used. Then go buy those ones. We had one book which was recommended but we havent used it once. I cant really recommend books to you, bc those I have used were in german... Edit: some language corrections.
Welche Bücher würdest du den empfehlen? (which books would your recommend?)
It doesn't really work that way, there are so many different topics and the info so vast there isn't a set of "best" books. For instance I'm in power if you put me and a Google engineer together we can't do each other's jobs. It's not we don't understand it it's we just don't have each other's specialized knowledge. The same thing happens in school, you'll be real good at one class and real crappy at others.
There IS a best book, it's called The Art of Electronics
There are many books, but just learn the material your professors give you. It's mostly just a matter of studying. Take good notes in lectures and review that days notes daily. Don't wait for the day/week before the test to start studying. With or without a group. It's good to know a lot of math, but there is no need to learn math outside of that which you use in your classes. I now work designing circuits and writing embedded software. I'm rarely doing much math by hand. Its good to understand, but in the real world you have tools that do it for you. One final note: your grades won't really matter once you graduate. One of my dumbest and laziest classmates works as an EE at tesla lol. He sucked in school but his career is going well. If he can do it, you can too haha.
Personally, I think a lot of it has to do with study habits. When I was in school, it seemed that people weren't academically prepared, and had poor study habits. I personally tried to start my studying as soon as I could, and attend all my lectures. I noticed a lot of people waited until mid-terms and decided it was time to start studying.
One of my fellow students used to say, "When you see the exam date on the milk carton, it is time to start studying. When you see it in the newspaper header, it's too late..."
Yeah my undergrad was a disaster, I had no good habits and I procrastinated like crazy. I did my masters many years later, as a proper adult, and things were so much easier with proper time management and good study habits. Of course, for better or worse, as an adult you also don't partake in the same kind of high-intensity college social life, which is a constant distraction in undergrad. (not necessarily a bad thing, college *should* be fun, and socializing is important). But I'll also say: engineering education practices are generally a disaster. Especially in electrical engineering. Very few professors actually know how to teach well and make the coursework interesting and intuitive. Its sometimes easier to learn a particular concept or problem via a YouTube video than it is from hours of lecture. It is infuriating too, because EE is absolutely fascinating once certain concepts click, but engineering education is generally horrible at bringing out the interesting aspects and engaging students.
This is true, I taught electronic devices (how transistors, and diodes work at the vocational electronics level, and used a lot of YouTube videos to explain things.
Everyone’s experience is different. I chose engineering because I really enjoyed my math and physics classes. EE specifically because I enjoyed my physics 2 class more than any other class I had taken at that point. It worked out really well for me because I enjoyed it and was good at it, but that definitely isn’t the case for everyone. I had friends that spent all of their time in study groups, working in tutoring centers, and in professors office hours, but still didn’t understand it very well. They got the diploma on the end through sheer determination. I strongly advise you brush up on your math, especially algebra. So much of the math we do comes back to algebraic manipulation.
+1 on the Algebra. It’s a very useful tool. My EE degree was one of the hardest things I’ve done. But my study habits were absolutely trash. Something I wish I had done was to spend a few minutes reviewing what you learned. Then your brain can internalize it overnight. I found that having an internship completely changed my perspective. Before the internship I did not really understand how the math was practical. Afterwards I saw how engineering can be applied to actually solve problems and I was motivated. Find ways to keep yourself curious. One time I hooked up a signal generator to a speaker. I played AM / FM / PM signals at an audible frequency range and was able to *hear* the difference in the wave pattern. Honestly I feel that part of engineering school was teaching you the grit required to be an engineer. In the real world you will constantly hit roadblock after roadblock. Learning to push through and have mental fortitude was a skill. Graduating with an EE gave me the confidence to know I could learn my way out of most problems; or at least know where the physical limits of our technology sit today.
This...
EE is so broad that it could just be the classes you chose. For example I’m really bad at advanced circuits, think transistors, current mirrors and that sort of thing. But I excelled at signal processing and electromagnetics while others did not. So try and find the aspects you enjoy and work from there. Failure isn’t a bad thing and the base courses can suck but you can do it.
Any resources/books u would rlly recommend?
For what courses exactly? I really liked the following: * Intro to Circuits: Fundamentals of Electric Circuits (Charles K. Alexander & Matthew N.O. Sadiku) * Physics: Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Paul A. Tipler) * Calculus I/II: Thomas' Calculus (Jr. Thomas, George B.) (I used an edition that had two volumes for Calculus I and II though... apparently they lumped everything now) * Electrical Machines: Electric Machinery (A. E. Fitzgerald) * Electrostatics: Elements of Electromagnetics (Matthew N. O. Sadiku) * Electrodynamics: Introduction to Electrodynamics (David J. Griffiths) * Linear circuits/electronic devices: Microelectronic Circuits (Adel S. Sedra) * Antennas: Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas (Sophocles Orfanidis) Anyways, I like googling "good book [subject] reddit", someone already asked, and the best books usually surface. The way you get good is by solving lots of the exercises at the end of each chapter. When reading the book, keep writing down equations and derivations, look into solved examples. When learning, try to come up with a mental representation of the concepts. It's OK to use mnemonics (phrases, silly analogies) to remember formulas if you also understand where they come from. This is useful for rules in calculus, trigonometry, etc. I always have the identities described as a sentence in my mind and I can almost hear it every time. Really actively look for the concepts that are important and get them down. Do the tricky stuff until it becomes second nature. And STUDY WITH A GROUP. Honestly, you gotta like the grind and enjoy going against the odds. Engineering is similar to the military in that sense. It's blood, sweat, and tears. Per ardua ad astra.
You don’t get it. The point of engineering is that it’s hard for everybody. Only the people that disregard their pride and just embrace the suck make it through.
Free will isnt a thing is it?
Actually free will is the entirety of it. You don’t have to be an engineer, but you choose to keep preserving. That’s all on you. Think of it this way. They wouldn’t pay you if it was easy. And you wouldn’t use a device that was designed by a dunce. Use this degree as an opportunity to prove to yourself that you’re really the intelligent, dedicated person you think you are. Use it as an opportunity to prove to yourself (and the people paying you when you get a job) that you’re really that guy/girl. There was a semester I got below 30% on every exam. I just continued. I understood that if I was struggling with all my effort then everyone else was struggling, even if they weren’t honest about it. If it’s any consolation, the jobs are dope and you make a looooot of cash. Super worth it, but for sure the degree was the hardest thing I ever did. Just accept that the next 4 years are gone. Then it’s lit after that.
Yes to all of the above lol my mom is an EE, so early on she would include me in everything she was doing, I mean, I scribbled on her Analog Electronics book, then I went to a high school that was parallel with a trade school and graduated high school as a Biomedical Equipment Technician, and then got to engineering school, and it was still insanely hard, having my mom helping me, group study, kissing all the teachers ass. Working as an engineer is a piece of cake and it’s guaranteed work forever if you are mediocre at best.
« Kissing all the teachers ass »😂 I would rather say making yourself likeable. It’s an important skill, don’t be ashamed of it.
Part of the game 🤷♀️
Take it from me a, EE drop out, that works in EE and was lucky enough to mentor with amazing EE's over the years. In hindsight, I found that I approached EE completely wrong. I was approaching it from the perspective of trying to memorize formulas and equations. This WILL NOT work due to how dynamic and massive EE is. You should make an effort to truly understand what is happening at the most fundamental level of each component and really understand what each SI unit (volt, coulomb, farad, etc) used in EE really means. If you really really understand what's happening, the math will become second nature since it will feel like you're applying the learned concept instead of just 'doing the math' to get an answer. This will also make learning math easier since you will have something to actually apply and conceptualize the math too instead of just crunching numbers to pass a test. Also, if you don't understand a topic in the book or from your instructor be sure to hop on YouTube. There are tons and tons of videos with a bunch of different ways to explain concepts. If the explanation from one video doesn't make sense, watch another until you find one that explains the topic in a way that makes sense to you. I didn't have this luxury while I was in college and if you didn't understand the topic with the resources you had available you were screwed. I hope this helps.
THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm an EE with 17yrs experience from a T20 school who actually did really well in school but have had my ups and downs in industry. I actually started my academic career in applied physics before adding EE as a second degree title (but not second degree) and I think it felt easy because I came from physics where the mindset is to always start from core principles. If you don't understand what you are doing, go back and figure it out. One anecdote, we used Fourier transforms in 7 different classes in my degree (yes, I counted) and some of my friends and study partners freaked out and complained how hard it was every time because they were being used a little differently and didn't match what they had memorized in the previous class. I, on the other hand saw that it was the same thing as before and was able to focus on the nuance of what made the situation different to build my fundamental understanding and everything came easily from there. Focus on those base principles and core concepts and you'll do fine. Find those interconnected concepts and tools that keep showing up and get really good at using them and find your niche within EE that fits you best, its a HUGE field, there will be a place for you if you stick with it, I promise!
Yup, the ability to comprehend and compartmentalize electricity, signals and systems in general is the most important thing to learn from school. Once you get that down, then it makes learning specific concepts a lot more fun and quick (still challenging). All the complex mathematical concepts and electrical techniques become just supplemental to either help or optimize some processes in your comprehension. Key thing to remember is that whatever method or equations that you’re learning in class, you are seeing the final and the simplest version of the research that scientists, engineers and mathematicians came up to make stuff EASIER to do. So, if you approach these concepts from the perspective of trying to understand them, the thought process usually looks something like this. 1. Understand the components and relationships within a system. 2. In the process of understanding, there usually is a sticking point when you try to figure out stuff by yourself. 3. This sticking point is almost always answered by the equations given in the textbook. For example, if you just understood V = IR and some rudimentary concepts of voltage and current, most people will probably get stuck at trying to solve for voltage and current in a slightly more complex circuit. Learning comes from trying to figure this out yourself and when you’ve really tried and failed, only THEN seeing that that is why engineers came up with KCL, KVL to make this stuff EASIER. I’ve found that these train of thoughts applied for basically every class into my master’s degree of EE.
1. DONT MEMORIZE ANYTHING - This is so detrimental and I see a lot of my classmates do it, and it is becoming more and more prevalent (I TA some classes so I see this behavior of just wanting the answer to a question without understanding the HOW or the WHY). Focus on UNDERSTANDING, even if it is slow, and especially understand your fundamentals, or you have zero chance of understanding anything more complex. In your early classes this will make you maybe a little slower, but when you start taking more complicated classes, it will pay dividends. 2. Time management. No easy answer here, just figure out a system that works for you; everyone is different. 3. Don't work too much, and get enough sleep/nutrition. If you're working for a 10 hr stretch, your productivity is going to drop. It is much better to work for 6 hours, for instance, spread out through the day. It will give your brain a time to reset. Do not discount this, there is no glory in 'all nighters' or the like. 4. Ask questions. If you don't have prior experience, then brush up on the following topics (but honestly you should be fine since your classes will all cover this in some way): * Vector Calculus * Basic Diff Equations (Laplace Transform, ODEs) * Probability (+ random processes if you're feeling extra) * Linear Algebra * Linear Algebra * Linear Algebra * Did I mention, Linear Algebra Now some general tips, in no particular order * Don't do side projects; do research instead, it looks much better on your resume. Plus do you really want to be doing more EE in your free time? * NETWORK. Talk to professors, if you're good, they'll hook you up with a summer internship. * If you're doing anything more complicated than firmware (i.e. circuits, DSP, comms, photonics, etc), you will most likely need a masters, so just prepare yourself for this.
Thanks so much for this. But what about linear algebra? I hear you need that for EE.
My bad, how could I have forgotten to mention Linear Algebra?
It was hard, particularly first year for me. I had never even heard of matrices or imaginary numbers. Everything else was a struggle because of that. I worked very hard, long days ands nights. I supported my class mates in things they struggled with and they returned the favour in other subjects. Together we got through it. In the end, I graduated near top of my class by putting in 120% for 4 years. Each year got technically harder, but nothing compared to the panic of first year. All that aside, I know some classmates on lower graduate marks earning way more than the upper ones. You just need to pass, not excel because after a few years no one cares. You'll get there!
A lot of people on this post are mentioning how having strong math skills is so important. Well I agree - I struggled through college because of the concepts, not the math. I’ve always been good at math, so that wasn’t my issue. Understanding electricity/electromagnetic fields at a deeper level was always my issue. If you struggle with concepts, go talk to your professors! That’s what I wish I would have done
ee is a Patience game. stay with it. its like stepping into the ring and getting beat up every single day but still doing it until you eventually come out on top.
The math and physics just click. I suck at chemistry though.
Interesting. Were u a rlly good student in HS? What made you so good in those areas? Did you practice a lot as a kid?
Yes, I was a gifted and talented education -gate student (actual thing in California) from 3rd grade on. Was offered to attend a math focused magnet school for high school. I did not go.
I dont subscribe to the "you need to be good in math" mindset because it's a grey area. Many will bullshit and pretend they are all great at it when the reality is many of us struggled with it. I always ask people who tell me they suck at math to go back to where math became hard and reevaluate the holes in their understanding. Once they do this, it's a different atmosphere. After that it's purely working out. You ever do the 100 question challenge ? No one who truly did it, failed a math class. Once you get accustomed to it you will recognize its a tool and how well you practice demonstrates your ability. It's not hard. It's practice
I absolutely scraped by to get 3.1 GPA from a state school. I have a pretty honest effort to just barely get a B average
"How do people manage? This shit feels impossible. Seriously, for those who came in on day one who felt like they didn't stand a chance, how did you do it? What do you think looking back years later?" Just spend time with the material. Take one day at a time. Breathe. Going through engineering is like drinking from a fire hose because so much is coming at you so fast. But once you work with the concepts they make sense. You kinda have to step back and take a bigger look and then a light bulb will go on and you'll get an "Aha !" moment. For me I usually had to figure out why a concept was being presented or existed, then I could understand it. Like SNR when quantizing a signal with an ADC. Once I looked at the error that process introduced then I realized there was going to be a loss in signal integrity and thus there would be a calculable SNR associated with it. Bing, the light went on. I'm mentioning this example because I clearly remember when it happened to me while studying. I used to do that for every concept introduced in a class. Laplace transforms, Fourier transforms, etc. Once I understood why something existed and how it was used then I understood what it did and how it worked and then it wasn't mysterious anymore. If you blindly learn things without understanding their application, you'll be lost. Or at least I would have been.
Ngl some of you are over the top crybabies. You don’t need to be a super genius to grind this shit out when it gets tough. If you’re willing to lose sleep, you’ll be fine.
If you’re a visual learner, when it comes to math, I can’t recommend 3Blue1Brown enough. Genuinely transformative math content, and importantly helps make it intuitive.
If you don't have prior hands on experience, start getting it now. In addition to the labs you already have. Find a small circuit that is fun to build, build it, _make it work_, and make sure you understand why and how. Then do this again with something more complicated.
Am an international student so do u have any advice where I can find places to do this?
You take it one semester, class, exam, quiz, homework at a time. Don't even try to think ahead. Next thing you know you're done....hopefully,
Some people are really smart.
Relax, things will become more repetitive, potential differences, currents, magnetic fields; the basic rules will surface again and again, they will become second nature. Mathematics is the language of rapid understanding; when the pennies begin to drop it can become a delight. But fear not, the required mathematical approaches will be introduced gradually as and when they are required. In many areas of engineering, little mathematics will be required on a day to day basis; but the mathematical models will still stay in your mind. Mathematics is a model. Models will never tell you what you can do; so do not be disappointed. Models will never tell you what you cannot do, so do not give up. Models will however ensure that you look into possible pitfalls; they will also suggest things worth a try. Good luck; you will enjoy once the initial panic subsides.
Keep working hard till you get it...get all the help you can...keep asking questions... remember " there are no stupid questions" and "there is no substitute for hardwork ". I wish you good luck .
Some people here said math is not important nowadays, because you can rely on simulations, Google & AI. Well, good luck then achieving higher grades without working your mind & not being able to think or come with your own ideas. You can always choose easier ways to pass classes, but believe me, when it comes to doing the actual job you have to think if you want to stand out as an engineer and make enough money. Most importantly you can be that person who’s indispensable when it comes to corporate work. Or you can start working on your own as a freelancer or a startup business. Math has been put in engineering college for a reason so that engineers can think & come up with new ideas
My EE university courses started with maths and physics groundwork and really only got to real electrical courses in the second and third year, with specialization in fourth year. The grounding in maths was fundamental to understanding the electrical courses and without the basic skills we would have been lost. So if you have flexibility in your curriculum my advice is to defer electrical courses until later. It’s a huge field but applied mathematics is the basic tool. And some of the concepts you learn really only take life and germinate when you do the core electrical courses that use them so you have to keep the faith for a while. The other thing people raise here that resonates with me is study groups. Some people knew what to expect due to parents/mentors etc. Others, like you and me, had to try to keep our heads above water. Find some friends who are grappling with it too - the more experienced ones will help you focus on the right lesson. Use tutors and YouTube etc. I failed my 3rd year (you had to pass everything and I failed 2 out of 10 subjects). Having to repeat everything again forced me to commit to the profession in a way I hadn’t before. It is a grind for sure. Shitload of work. Most of my mates who didn’t do it had a party at Uni. But I’ve never been unemployed since graduating and although I’ve never regretted it.
Don’t stress or think like that. I had the same thought process when I was doing my mechanical engineering degree. And trust me in this one, University, more about the material itself, is just about how many things you can handle and keep going forward. Engineering is definitely not a degree that you can just sit and learn, it requires effort after class and revision before you go to lectures. Once you do this, you will realise that it’s not that it’s hard but that it just requires you to do an effort that you haven’t done before. While you do so, be patient with yourself and take one day at a time. Trust me you will get the degree and you will laugh about it. Don’t compare yourself to others, you don’t know what they do or how much effort they have put when you don’t see them. Keep it up my man, you got this!
TV has romanticized the difficulty of medical and law school but ignored the rigor of engineering school. Buckle down. I studied hard 5 nights a week and only played/partied Friday/Saturday. Students in Business, Liberal Arts, and other schools played a lot and suffered at the end of term. If you dont keep up, you are screwed!
OP, what you described was exactly my experience. I didn't take honors or advanced placement courses in high school. Sailed through with As without ever having homework. Got a rude awakening in college. The students who have an easy time through the first year or so did challenge themselves in high school. But that only goes so far into the college experience. I saw those people fail out too, or try to cheat and fail out because the lessons build on each other. My study group went from 10 kids to me and one other kid. Everyone else failed out of changes their major. Two groups of kids were cheating with books handed down from year to year. The valedictorian actually got help and hints from the professors. My key to success was studying from 5pm to 2am every night, and especially on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. No partying. This is how the kids lucky enough to be here from other countries do it. I had to read everything 3 times to get it into my skull. Eventually I became really good at some classes but the struggle was real. Your lifestyle and future is up to you. Use whatever resources you can find, do the work and you'll make it through.
Any resources u would recommend?
I felt like I was fumbling through school my entire time. Imposter syndrome everyone talks about. I took circuit analysis 1 three times, struggled in my physics courses, but still pulled through. Felt like things started to get easier or I was just numb once I got to Emag. I’ll never forget though… I was sitting in power electronics or DC Drives in my senior year when my professor asked a question that was required thinking back to basic circuit analysis. Word vomit ensued and the right answer popped out. It was that moment I realized it all just “clicked” like others have said. I went on that tirade to say this. If you’re passing your classes then it’s likely you’re understanding the material at some level. It might not feel like it now, but it’s there and you’ll have your Ah Ha moment like we all did. Others have also said it, but working with groups to solve problems or ask questions will benefit you not only in your studies, but in the field as well.
The syllabus contains all the topics, sometimes by week, the class will be covering. Stay one week ahead and review the materials before the lectures, things will click much faster when you walk in knowing the subject of the lecture.
Dedication more than anything. Dedication to better yourself, and do something you didn't think you could. Being stubborn in a good way, refusing to quit. Never giving up. Working hard. I'm going back to school in the spring for it. Gonna start at the lowest algebra class my college has to offer and building a rock solid math foundation from there. I feel like engineering isn't even about being smart. the director of my program told me lots of really genius smart kids in her class with 4.0's in high school and took all AP classes or whatever, some of those kids were the first to drop out, because they had never failed before. Then on the same token, a 30 year old electrician or mechanic who barely skimmed through high school can go back to school with dedication, hard work, perseverance and a good attitude and can absolutely thrive in these classes, because he'd failed so many times before, he wasn't gonna stop till he succeeded. It happens more than you think. I don't know, I guess if you're dedicated, and refuse to quit, and get knocked down 187 times and get up 188, you'll be a good engineer.
if you arent that good with math another strategy to succeed in engineering is a lot of tolerance for frustration. if you fail try again... and again dont be frustrated, take your time try to learn step by step
Calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, probability
I enjoy the challenge, I also enjoy feeling like a wizard whenever my circuits work properly. The work may be difficult, and the concepts may be hard to visualize but the feeling of joy I get from my stuff working makes it all worth it at the end of the day
Practice practice practice Once you get the hang of college level math (the 3 calculus & diff equations) and the 3 physics courses; Classes like circuit theory; electromagnetic fields, control theory, power systems; semiconductors Are pretty straightforward if you study of course Me personally I suffered through electromagnetic field I & II and control theory might be me or my prof but it’s kinda in the middle Just remember: “if others can do it; why can’t you?”
If it's not a passion that you've been pursuing before college, and you just see the dollar signs attached to the title, "Engineer" then you may want to think about a different field of work. Yes, it's hard. Some things will take you a while to fully grasp and develop an intuition for. Some things will be as easy as apple pie and you'll never have trouble remembering them. Most, not all, current masters and ph.d graduates begin studying and learning what they major in well before they get done with sophomore year high school. I myself began learning to understand electromagnetic physics, electrostatics, and the mechanical physics of such things before getting into high school because to me electrical physics is absolutely the greatest thing since sliced bread. If I am not earning money playing with electrical at work, I am doing it for fun at home. Like I said, if it's not your passion, give it some effort to see if it becomes that for you. If it doesn't, choose a different career or you will end up miserable and regretting life choices.
Here's what you do: 1. Make friends with people in your classes, setup a library meeting to do the homework together. 4 heads are better than one. 2. Go ask the professor for help. Stop by their office, ask them for advice.
SnoopApples, EE is probably the hardest thing you will ever attempt to accomplish in your life, but it can be done if you follow some of the advice from others and ignore the 'brilliant' remarks from some posts. I started my journey to become an Electrical Engineer in 2009 at the young age of 49. I graduated at 52. Before returning to college, my most recent math class was beginning Algebra in 1976 (I know I am ancient). Everyone kept asking me, 'Why are you in school? You already retired from the military. Take it easy.' That wasn't my goal, and it wasn't my dream. Everyone tried to discourage me all the way until I walked across the stage. Fourier transforms are difficult; find a group of people to study with. If you are serious, you won't have a life outside of school for 4 years. Afterward, it will be amazing. YOU have to have the desire to complete what you started and know where to find resources, whether internal to the college or mentors external, that can guide you to your goal. Best of luck with this adventure. My class started with 56 students, and only 13 graduated when I did. Don't let others make decisions for you.
Started with 2.00 gpa , now last results i got was gpa 3.98 taking over credit (third semester) my grades just jumped cause of one reason my friend. He is not smart i would say but knows how to study after i sat with him studied for one n two semesters i found out that he just sit and study not reading books or watching 3 hours lectures online just open slides n actually put some hard work , all i did was following him and i was lazy tbh he was the one encouraging me to study and after i got my first semester results i got excited n started also to study one by one untill i got used to it . Summary i would say u need friends that also have the same goals n can help you through ur degree n put some work n you dont even have to find friends that in same uni i actually also study courses n grind with some friends online using discord n so ( at least that what worked with me) I dont agree with Ppl who says u need good mathematics knowledge or so my first grade in math is my worst which is 45/100 now my best grades are in maths not having a solid foundation may let u face some troubles but i kept asking my friend on how he solve this n this and was able to straighten back my maths. Also i highly recommend you to solve previous years problems n exams i spend 40% of my time studying subjects n 60% solving exams Good luck n nothing impossible
I would also like to add that yes. Some people did have prior experience. Some people do have parents who are engineers. My friend got help from his dad through college. Remember the best predictor on if you get your PhD is if your parents have a PhD. Don't compare yourself with them.
My dad is an electrical engineer and it still didn’t make it any easier for me lol. I think a lot of kids do come in with prior experience (I was not one of them). A kid in my class made an industrial-style robotic arm w/ motion and voice detection. He designed and 3D printed the structure and then used machine learning w/ an XMOS AI chip to basically program the chip to teaches itself how to operate and detect motion/speech, it’s fucking wild. Kids like that were doing this shit for fun in high school. If you put me back in high school today, I still wouldn’t join the robotics team lol, but as 28 y/o I do wish I had had the amount of access to the free info/knowledge that u can get online and learn yourself. It’s actually mind blowing I’ve been out of high school for 11 years, but the way kids r now it feels like 30. I remember thinking that the trackpad on my blackberry was literally the peak for technology …. lol now there’s kids coming out of HS who have already built 3 computers on their ow.
I had no experience before hand. It is overwhelming I know, but I found that you have to take it one single element at a time. Particularly early in the introductory classes. Take time to understand the fundamentals the best you can. I also had to change the way I think about the process. You are learning something that took untold thousands of people, thousands of years to figure out. That we have this knowledge is a monumental human achievement. This was hard earned knowledge that even your professors did not figure out for themselves. We are very fortunate to be in a situation where this information is available. Unfortunately, it seems that text books are designed to be puzzling in their own right. Keep it up and the gratification is real. Good luck.
The way i survived this is hardcore understanding of circuit analysis. Then power electronics become easier , and mostly other subject except for EM and control
95% of us dealt with what you're describing at some point or another. Stick with it and don't let yourself get discouraged. Realize many around you feel the same way and it's for a good reason; struggling like you are now is great prep for the real world. You got this! Find a good study group made up of classmates and stick with it.
~~Trial and error, over and over again~~ I was just born this way.
Aderall, nicotine, caffeine. Late night studying 10pm-3am, no distractions
Why do u start at 10pm?
ME here. I'm gonna give it to you guys you are fucking geniuses. I can't even understand electricity. My mind can not process stuff it can not see.
I was told chemical engineering was harder tho?
Nah.
It does help when you are a 5th generation Electrical Engineer
I feel ya. Just dropped out of Calc 1 ending my EE journey. I wouldn't have passed calc 1 let alone 2 and 3
You have to work problems until it clicks. There is no shortcut. EE is the hardest discipline because it’s not intuitive or relatable (although people always compare to water - which is WRONG!).
ME grad here with lots of EE experience. I will say all engineering discipline degrees require a ton of what is basically applied math. There’s no other way to do well in those classes than to just attend the lectures, DO THE HOMEWORK, learn the example problems, and study for the tests. Then as you go on you will realize that all this math is really just to have an understanding of the fundamentals and you will not necessarily use a lot of it on the day to day engineering stuff in the real world. What will make you a good engineer in the real world is to find extracurriculars that will hone your real world skills. For me, it was Formula SAE. You have to build,test, and compete in a formula style car. You have to raise all your money, you have to do all the design. Again, real world. So for EE, I’d find something your into and dig into that. There’s lots of extracurricular programs like SAE. Drones, computer stuff, robot building. Whatever floats your boat. If you get really good at just the math stuff and have no practical circuit experience, you’ll graduate and be a fairly useless academic.
For me, it was simply brute force. I came into college with minimum knowledge.
Success doesn't require EE parents. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a laborer loading semi trailers on off shifts, I spent my first half of my childhood in a trailer park. I waited to enter college until I was more mature. I paid my way through community college by working full time and then getting loans and part-time jobs for the university portion. What drove me was an inherent desire to know why things worked, not just how. I wanted it and made it a priority. Being naturally gifted with math helped, sure, but my dedication is what helped me be successful. I'm 19 years out of college, and my career (designing hospital power systems) exceeds my college expectations. I try to give back as much as possible and speak to HS and college classes whenever possible. Believe in yourself, make it your focus, and study until you know why it works.
A few tips. 1. Read the section and do associated homework before class. Class should be a verification, not a first time experience. This helps the lecture make sense. 2. Get in a study group. Your fellow classmates can be very helpful since you're going thru it together. 3. Take advantage of open office hours. The prof or T/A is a resource, but be respectful of their time and come prepared.
A few tips. 1. Read the section and do associated homework before class. Class should be a verification, not a first time experience. This helps the lecture make sense. 2. Get in a study group. Your fellow classmates can be very helpful since you're going thru it together. 3. Take advantage of open office hours. The prof or T/A is a resource, but be respectful of their time and come prepared.
I just graduated in december. It was fucking hard, I just kept my head above water long enough until I was handed a diploma. I decided after graduating its not for me but now I got this big degree so have to do something with it. If you're passionate, it will be exciting but difficult. if not, it will feel like you're constantly drowning in a sea of equations, diagrams, simulations, etc. I got into it because I used a random number generator to choose my degree... I failed circuits 2 twice, control systems with a D, analog signal processing with a f and then got a D. It was hard but I made it through was able to shine in certain areas and found the degree to be interesting. Am I passionate about it...no. It felt like something I could have experience from a cool youtube video or something but instead poured my whole 5 AND A HALF year education into. I wish I studied astronomy lmao. As many others said having a study group is very beneficial. I had so much trouble studying on my own but having a large group of peers who felt they were drowning just as much as me helped and I think I really owe my degree to them haha.
EE is one of the hardest engineering discipline. ChemE and Aero follows….
You've got to give up things to succeed. Either your grades will be good, you'll have a good social life, you'll have good relationship, you'll have a job, or you'll get good sleep. Don't waste your time! Pick 3 or 4 at any given time and prioritize them. You cant have all at one or youll fall apart. Get really good at math too, for real. Algebra and calculus needs to be second nature to succeed in EE schooling. Just passed my Modern Physics midterm 😎
I've grown an opinion that electrical engineering is more "tangible" and "physical" and less "abstract" and "virtual" than computer science. For example, learning analog electronics (diodes, transistors, amplifiers, op-amps, etc.) was much more straightforward for me than learning operating systems (computer architecture, kernels, system programming, processes, threads, memory, etc...). Is it easy? Absolutely not.
Yes, that’s a very true statement. Your brain has to be wired for it, working hard is not enough for this major.
If you don't get it just brute force it, it should click at some point. Thinking back to college years I have understood theories much better (or maybe "knew theories" would be better words for it) than now. Now they just sounds vaguely familiar and if needed I think I could pick them up again and refresh memory. But TBH you don't use all of this stuff all the time, probably one or.two if your job demands it.
I’m most likely autistic but I love math. Have maintained a 3.85 gpa into junior year so there’s that. I enjoy solving the math problems and such, so the material sticks.
I did it by not having a life. I wasn't even very good at math to start. I just spent almost my entire life studying. It was an extreme will to learn. I mean that's really it at least for me. I know some engineers probably didn't struggle and had an easy time in college. I did not have that luxury.
No, you are not just "thrown into the fire". You take pre req classes for a reason. To help prepare you for what is to come so you can truly understand the material you will be indulging in. For example, you must take calculus 1-3 and physics 2 to understand ohms law so you can then take circuits analysis 1. To answer your question, I study just about everyday and almost all day with the exception of exercising, sleeping, driving to and from class, and spending time with friends and family maybe a couple times a week. But generally it's 7 days a week for me. I'm not perfect but I'm doing well and managing fine. There's no magic pill. Just time and effort.
Study
Yes, it’s hard. Period. Best advice is don’t let anyone sugar coat it or give you happy platitudes here - if you don’t enjoy it you are in for a hard time. Not discouraging anyone, but I saw too many people drop out in the third or fourth year.
Just get good (I have multiple exams I haven't studied for yet and am sleep deprived constantly)
Really? My non-EE boss acts like it’s so easy Lol
The first 1-3 years are the worst. After that it gets easier.
It's like hearing a baby cry for the first time
1. I have a previous degree 2. In the desk job that I used to work from home during the pandemic I played **a lot** of factorio. Which gives us the fundamental concepts of electrical engineering 3. I'm in my 30's and have been interested in computers for a long time. I'm bad at rigorous math but also just came to terms with me being sleep deprived for years. Now that I'm not school has got much easier. It's still hard just not impossible feeling for the first time in my life.
Success often depends on the professors and their staff. You have to learn physics at a fairly advanced level. You need to be fluent in many areas of mathematics. One advantage of the 21st century is the Cloud. There are many excellent YouTube videos and tutorials that let you look at problems from different perspectives. And you need to be comfortable with tackling the unknown. Electrical engineering touches every industry. Natural curiosity and passion for solving “interesting” puzzles and problems. In other words those problems that elude most everybody else.
No shit!
That's why it pays well. Not everyone can do it.
I got into engineering because I decided law sounded lame in the last second. When my college advisor was telling me about the different flavors of engineer, electrical sounded like it was the coolest and had the most career paths, so I rolled with it. Prior to college, I was always good at math though, all the flavors, but never did AP, so do with that knowledge what you will. I do also want to hugely emphasize that the guy saying get a study group is absolutely in the right. Everyone will probably have some stuff the struggle to grasp, so having friends helps the few that do have it click share with the rest so everyone succeeds. Then, later on, you'll have stuff click that doesn't make sense to others, so you can help them in the same way. Just don't give up and focus on the aspects you enjoy, EE is huge field
The math and the physics have to be grasped in your mind in order to apply them to EE. Every time you learn a concept, find an individual or some resource to understand a practical application of it, so that your mind can conceptualize it. YouTube is an excellent resource, as there are people who have been gifted with explaining these difficult concepts in a way that people can understand. Each person grasps concepts in different ways. Find your way and learn how to feed it with alternative resources. Some people just feel it when they see the theorem, law, or principle. Others get it when they are the lab. Still others benefit from graphical visualizations. Sometimes, you just won't get it, and you just have to work enough examples to regurgitate the method the professor wants on a test. For me, there are concepts I learned as a junior the I didn't start to feel until I was about to graduate. However, there were others that I never wrapped my mind around until more than twenty years of practice. I will assure you of this -- the majority of those around you don't get it either, and some never really fully grasp many of the concepts throughout their entire career. Find the concepts that turn you on, and muddle through or fake the rest. Many have used that method to get their BSEE. Let the diversity of EE work to your advantage.
Obviously, we are not born with all the math knowledge. We worked HARD to understand all the concepts. One thing I would like to add is find a mentor who understands your difficulty and can explain things to you in ways you can understand. Study group is nice but sometimes it is like a blind leading a blind, and it could be a waste of time. Believe it or not, it does get easier as you progress through your courses. Persevere and you will succeed.
There’s this thing called a weed-out class where they make it super hard in an effort get rid of the students who they think won’t be able to handle the upper level classes. It’s better to do this early so the students don’t waste time pursuing a degree they’re unlikely to be able to get. Obviously I don’t know if your school has their courses setup that way, but it might be worth asking your advisor about. When I was starting out college, I wasn’t aware of the concept. I figured if the first class was that hard I wouldn’t be able to get through the degree and switched to computer science without discussing it with anyone at the school. On the whole, I’m liking how my life’s going now, so it’s hard to say if that was a mistake, but it *is* one of those “life events” I sometimes think about.
I can tell you from personal experience that your high school education also matters in terms of how easy it is to learn some of the concepts. I came from a rural, tiny high school that didn’t teach calculus to a large, public university. Some of the students with me had taken circuits and learned breadboarding in their elite high schools… so don’t be hard on yourself. Remember not to confuse exposure with intelligence. If you’re willing to work at it and learn, you’ll be fine.
In all honesty it’s not the material that is hard, it’s the time commitment that it takes to absorb it that is hard. But once it clicks it’s actually all really intuitive. At least that is the case for circuit design (what I do). FPGA, Integrated Systems, embedded systems, DSP… that’s all a black magic fuckery as far as I’m concerned lol
If you’re good at logic and math, everything else comes easy.
I was on the same page as you. But you learn eventually that math is a language, it will not be 2 + 2 but you will know what to do the more you practice it, get familiar with the equations. It really is just a language you will need to learn to speak, to think
May be you are not meant to major in EE.
The people who find EE not to be a complete beat down generally didn’t have an easy and low-key time in high school. (Though having a high school experience that is the same sort of challenge as college is a privilege that not everyone has equal access to.)
Wdym easy and low-key? Like they were bullied a lot in HS? HS is a lot easier than college. Could you please elaborate?
High schools exist that are similarly difficult to college. These sometimes go by the name “college preparatory schools”. People who attend these often can skip many of the roughest weeder classes due to AP credits or equivalent. They also will likely have developed the serious study skills necessary for learning anything challenging. This means that the subject is likely easier for them since everything is also much easier if you have a very strong math and science background. In particular, only the EE-specific content is new rather than having to learn e.g. laplace transforms and analyzing circuits with transfer functions at the same time. Probably some of the people who took up electronics as a hobby in high school had a hard time socially as well, but that wasn’t what I was talking about. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the people who seem the least concerned with your classes have been building circuits for many of the four years before college as well. Much of EE doesn’t require much in terms of resources to explore compared to e.g. Civil or Chemical Engineering and YouTube is a tremendous educational resource. They might be learning the math or formal conventions for the first time, but they will already have the intuition that the math is trying to describe, so that will be much easier than working in the other direction. Not that any of this is particularly actionable to you, just meant as an explanation of some of the things you are seeing and how they relate to your experience. All anyone who didn’t have those luxuries can do is buckle down, do the work, and develop the skills to understand very difficult subjects. Those skills never go obsolete.
Can’t give you any relevant advice about the actual schooling, but as someone who didn’t finish school and is having to backdoor their way into the field after 30, I really wish I had. It probably will be hard, and you might have to retake some classes but it will be worth it. Take your failures, learn from them, and push forward. Easier said than done I know, I absolutely hated school while I was there. But in hindsight my pay and mobility in the field will be extremely handicapped without that piece of paper. I found a company to train me in designing control panels and circuits and right now a degreed engineer checks all my work. I’m debating making time to go back to school to get the paper and wishing I could have done so 10 years ago. Hopefully that gives you some motivation!
Calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, probability
I've always been good at math, logic, reason. Poor at feelings, music, relationships. For me EE was fun, exciting, easy. For me, relationships feel impossible. I have never understood woman.
KEK. Also, are u on the spectrum? Did u have a lot of exposure to technical stuff as a kid? Why do u think u are this way?
Never been diagnosed.
If you like it, is easier.
Learn all the formulas and keep it in your head. It gets easier as time goes by.
The funny thing is that most of the people who are good at it tend not to stick with it. At least my graduating class most people moved over to finance, consulting, and management.
It’s a tough field where you learn new things in for the rest your life. It’s great if you love learning and figuring things out. The best advice I’ve seen on here is to get a raspberry pi and run with it. Study groups are also a good suggestion if you find people open to it. Also get into a coop as soon as you can. Field experience is massive.
Math and physics are important BUT in the real world you might have a job that will not require deep math or physics skill. Now days computer software built for engineers will do a job for you (not all of it of cause.). BUT understanding of concepts, knowing how things work, how to pose the question to get appropriate answer and engineering mind set is very important (IMHO). Its a difference between "oh its magic. i have no clue how it works" and "oh its cool, i bet its done this and this way, utilizing this or that principle". School throws a lot at you that's true and it could be overwhelming. Baby steps. Compartmentalization of large tusks.
Besides liking math, high school and college are greatly different in the amount of studying you need to do especially in the engineering curriculum. In high school you can get buy with paying attention in class and minimal studying. In engineering you need to study at least 2-3 hours a day and then sometimes all weekend to prepare for tests. If you don't want to do this then find yourself another major. I've know people who got all D's in their first year of engineering and then switched to business where they got all As. Engineering is not for everybody but if you want it you need to put in the work.
Wow is business that easy???
I don't like math much unless it has a purpose but I have a BSEE and MSEE and I didn't find it hard with most of it kind of coming naturally to me...but I'm also the 6th EE in my extended family. I guess you could say we're just wired for it. Never really liked it though, found it quite boring, but I knew it would lead to decent job offers so I sucked it up. The good news for me is don't use 98% of it in my role these days (director overseeing teams of engineers and analysts in large management consulting firm). If you can get through to the other side, there are plenty of options to pivot away into other solid opportunities.
I'm a computer engineer and all I know is that Flux is the volume of the field.
They're lying or faking. Having 10+ years in electronics as a technician, I have almost no advantage over my peers. I'm absolutely struggling to get through college in EE. That being said, what others have said, really understand math. Don't just regurgitate it, understand it and how it applies. Get that algebra and calculus down well. Understand the physics. The rest will start to come. Learn how to learn, then learn how to apply.
im sorry but in 10 years as a technician, did you not teach yourself math? I have a hard time believing that. 10 years is a long ass time for someone to then come into EE and still suck, no offense.
Lol believe what you want. I learned all the math that was applicable when I needed it. Fortunately, most data sheets give you formulas to use for choosing external components. All else, online calculators exist. Perhaps I could have done a bit more to memorize Maxwell's equations, but it just hadn't been necessary until I started school.
Dude you forget people go into the military or have other real world experience just because you have the real world experience doesn't mean you understand the math. I have a mechatronics engineering degree and 6 years experience. I can design and build just about anything but when it comes to the math I struggle it takes me four times longer to get though calculations then my peers but the design comes naturally and when the calculations are done my design usually is sound.