Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - does being a computer engineering major limit what research you can do?

thankyousir · 08-09-2008, 11:41 PM

I am going to msu this fall with my major being computer engineering, and I think I will want to do research both now and in graduate school. I really like the electrical side of computers the down and dirty stuff, not the higher level software layer. I like to program, I like the computer science aspect of electrical engineering but not when it is the focus.

This is why I signed up to do computer engineering. because it seems to be electrical engineering with a few extra classes from computer science. However, it seems like electrical engineering gets all of the cool research opportunities, Photovoltaics, Power, Biomedical, Neural engineering, etc, and it still gets the chance to study computer related topics like VLSI, Control, RF, etc. I would like to have the widest variety of areas to do research since I am not quite sure what will be interesting to me down the road, a lot of stuff does.

Although it seems like these arenas of research aren't necessarily blocked to computer engineering majors, it seems like their "jack of all trades" characteristic (or the opposite, being too focused in studying computer architecture) , makes doing research more limited.

I am not super worried about this, because I am just a freshman, but I don't want to head down the wrong road, if I already have an idea of the road I want to go down.

I will ask my counselor about this but I am asking TFP too, to see if anyone has any insight.

08-09-2008, 11:41 PM	#1 (permalink)
thankyousir Upright Location: Michigan	does being a computer engineering major limit what research you can do? I am going to msu this fall with my major being computer engineering, and I think I will want to do research both now and in graduate school. I really like the electrical side of computers the down and dirty stuff, not the higher level software layer. I like to program, I like the computer science aspect of electrical engineering but not when it is the focus. This is why I signed up to do computer engineering. because it seems to be electrical engineering with a few extra classes from computer science. However, it seems like electrical engineering gets all of the cool research opportunities, Photovoltaics, Power, Biomedical, Neural engineering, etc, and it still gets the chance to study computer related topics like VLSI, Control, RF, etc. I would like to have the widest variety of areas to do research since I am not quite sure what will be interesting to me down the road, a lot of stuff does. Although it seems like these arenas of research aren't necessarily blocked to computer engineering majors, it seems like their "jack of all trades" characteristic (or the opposite, being too focused in studying computer architecture) , makes doing research more limited. I am not super worried about this, because I am just a freshman, but I don't want to head down the wrong road, if I already have an idea of the road I want to go down. I will ask my counselor about this but I am asking TFP too, to see if anyone has any insight.