asuraykk

I am a freshman of u of I ECE. I have heard ECE 290, 190, 440 and 329 are crazy hard.. Especially, ECE 190 and ECE 290... Is that true that it is too hard to have my own life? I'm so scared. Once, someone told me I have to spend 40 hours on ECE 290 per week.. Is it really true. It is crazy.. I looked at the curriculum. the class is only three credit hours.. I can't believe this.. Can anyone tell me how the course is like?? And make order of hardness of those classes??

lil_killer129

I don't go to UIUC; many of us don't. You might find more responses in the UIUC forum.

Brown man1987

Well.. if you can tell us what ECE290, etc. are, (eg. computer organization, digital logic, etc), we may be able to help you out. I know some ECE courses at Cornell such as Computer Architecture and Computer organization do indeed require such time commitments. But, this post would do best in a UIUC form.

easternboarder

I took ECE 290 (computer engineering) this semester--it's a legendary course b/c the professor who teaches it, Prof. Brown, demands the best of her students. Even if you are not interested in computer engineering/logic design, you will learn A LOT from her course.

ECE 190 (intro to computing systems), with the weekly machine problems, is a lot of work and tends to vary in difficulty from semester from semester.

ECE 329 (electromagnetic fields) and 440 (solid state physics) were redesigned by the ECE dept. this year and are easier now than previous versions of the course.

thecubswin

I took 190 this past semester and it was definitely my most time-consuming class. Typically, there was a machine problem each week. I would usually work on the MP about 5 hours Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, ditch my classes on Wednesday to debug it, and hand it in Wednesday night, minutes before the deadline.

However, this class was my first exposure to computer programming--I felt like it was easier for the students who already had a basic knowledge of programming.