<p>We attended the admitted students day last Wed, and the engineering spokesperson indicated that compsci 's enrollment was ‘tight’ and might be difficult to get into (without 3.6 + gpa or something rather high).</p>
<p>I wondered if someone who might know from experience or otherwise can comment. maybe I misunderstood her?</p>
<p>son is a prospective freshman in compE but was wondering about how easy it would be to go into compsci in case he wanted to do this down the road. </p>
<p>I know UIUC has some special rules for going from one major to another , it seems.</p>
<p>I’m a freshman at UIUC in compE like your son. I too am thinking about transfering majors. I never heard that it was tight to get into CS, not really sure what the spokesperson is talking about. I’m assuming that your son would want to transfer into the engineering CS. For that he would need to have taken
CS 125 and CS 173
MATH 220 or 221 and MATH 231
CHEM 102 and 103
At least one course from Physics sequence (PHYS 211, 212 and either 213 or 214)
With at least a B- average and a gpa of B- average. Honestly its not that hard if your son works at it.
Here is a link that could help:<a href=“https://agora.cs.illinois.edu/display/undergradProg/Transferring+into+CS+from+other+UIUC+departments[/url]”>https://agora.cs.illinois.edu/display/undergradProg/Transferring+into+CS+from+other+UIUC+departments</a></p>
<p>I am likewise a freshman in CompE. From what my advisor told me, I wouldn’t worry too much. Transferring into CS might be diffucult be difficult. The main differences are in the early level classes. CompE gets an ECE core(which includes a lot of programming) whereas CS gets a lighter CS core. Also compE will require you to take some computer systems classes and lower level hardware classes. But after you get through the core, you can take a very large range of CS electives as your ECE technical electives. Also most probably the most important CS class (Data Structures) is take by both.</p>
<p>One of my parents works at Factset, and when I talked to some of employee’s there, they said to stick CompE atleast in the beginning. My advisor said most CompE majors get CS jobs. And according to them you can always go CompE to CS, but you can’t go back. </p>
<p>Therefore if you aren’t sure, I recommend staying CompE. After you try some earlier classes you can transfer if your grades are high enough. If not you can just blast through the ECE core and take your pick of CS electives. And then job hunt for a CS job. Basically by your Senior year it won’t matter.</p>
<p>“most CompE majors get CS jobs”
I didn’t know that. But what about Electrical? I’m guessing it’s not so hard to change from Computer to Electrical? How are they different in the job market?</p>
<p>Well, I would like do disclaim what I said by admitting than everything I know is from upperclassmen, my advisor, and advice from my parents and their peers in the industry. </p>
<p>Hardware Design is a pretty small field, especially vs. CS which is just enormous. UIUC is an excellent school for Computer Engineering, which can help with find a hardware job. But mostly CompE’s go into lower level CS stuff, like architecture, compilers, OS’s, and other things, or if they want, they can just go into for high level things. </p>
<p>The Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering are similar in the beginning. I think only 2 classes separate them for the first two years. (Discrete Math and Data Structures). They are the same department, and I think transferring between them is completely fluid as long as you will graduate on time. EE is much broader than CompE. After your ECE core, you have your choice of more ECE electives to specialize in a very large variety of specializations. Then you culminate with a Senior project (Also true for CS but not for CompE). CompE is basically EE with your extra electives chosen for you plus some required CS. And the electives that are pre-chosen for CompE mostly double as ECE/CS classes. I think theoretically you could do the CompE curriculum in the EE department, minus a few of the CS classes that don’t double over as ECE. As for EE jobs, I don’t know anything about that.</p>
<p>Basically you define yourself with you technical electives later on. I also had similar thought about switching to CS, and this a combination of everyone’s advice.</p>
<p>good input. thanks. if anyone else has something to say on this topic, I’d appreciate it.</p>
<p>also, at the risk of hijacking my thread, poke, bcguy, or anyone else, how have you found your student support at UIUC? Poke alluded to his or her advisor above. By student support, I mean …</p>
<p>*profs
- class instruction (how well do the communicate the material (I have heard stories of language problems) </p>
<p>-and office hours (how generous are they with their time w/ UGs students? I have heard stories , admittedly mostly from smaller LACs which are trying to sell their school, that the big instititions like UIUC are there primarily for research and only secondarily for UG students. How true is this?</p>
<p>*TAs
how well do they communicate and how available are they for help?</p>
<p>*Advisors; do they take a personal interest in the student</p>
<p>*tutors</p>
<p>@OP</p>
<p>I’m not sure how easy it is to transfer., I recommend that your son figure out how easily he can transfer ASAP, the dropout rate for ECE is ~50%, and the majority of ECE majors do not graduate in 4 years. The first two ECE courses you’ll take(ECE 110 and ECE 190) are weeder courses. For example, 50% of the people in ECE 190 failed the programming half of their midterm because their program wouldn’t compile.</p>
<p>I know several people that did so in the past, but according to what you said, it seems like transferring into the CS department has become harder.</p>
<p>I emailed one of the advisor and they said that “the engineering CS program is rather full of students right now and it is getting more competitive to get in.” Intercollege transfer for CS is now a 3.8 because of the heavy volume of CS students coming in last year/this year. Hope this help!</p>
<p>BCGuy and Pokemaster - How would you describe the challenges with ECE 110? I keep hearing it is a weedout course. Did you take it last semester or this semester? Your insight for a fall 2011 CE freshman would be appreciated.</p>
<p>OK. seems like we have two different things going on…one suggests that we need to choose now and the other says later might be ok to choose between, generally said, ‘software and hardware’.</p>
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<p>and</p>
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<p>Danjulieo</p>
<p>ECE 110 is not difficult in terms of content at all. Some people find it challenging, because it might be your first technical class and it is completely different for anything they did in high school. Alot of people struggle in the beginning because of the adjustments, but if you are struggling towards the middle/end of ECE 110, ECE might not be for you. That certainly isn’t a blanket statement, and I’m not trying to be mean, but frankly the course content isn’t all that difficult. It’s not a weedout course, because alot of people in different majors take it. My advisor described it as a “easy” and a “baby” course. ECE 190 is much more of a weedout class, especially if you an inexperienced programmer.</p>
<p>The Dropout rate for ECE is very high, but the department isn’t as selective as the others. Transferring into ECE is easier that transferring into CS. I do think that ECE is harder than CS, atleast in the beginning. I think ECE makes a point to weedout people in the beginning. The way ECE 190 is graded really suggests that. The people in the top 60% percentile of the class are awarded at least a B-. After that the remaining 40% is a straight scale. The professor also informed us that last semester an A was about a 85%. This kind of creates a binary result. You either do decent (B- or above), or you are forced to suffer from uncurved test results. Also ECE 190 has its own drop data that was well past the campus drop date. I think there were people dropping as recent as 2 weeks ago.</p>
<p>^So you wouldn’t recommend trying to take them both in the same semester I take it? Just curious, as the my.ece.uiuc.edu page had that option when checking out freshmen year courses. It seemed interesting, but you definitely make it sound like you should just do one a semester. Thanks!</p>