Physics major to EE grad school; coursed required

shrouded
Fri, 03 Jan 2014 03:10:15 +0000

“i’m looking to go into either signal processing, electromagnetics, or optoelectronics. I’m deciding the particulars as I progress through my curriculum.”

Those are very different from each other. You can’t be sure until you’ve taken related courses and done their coursework/projects. I thought I might be interested in signal processing. I even took its graduate course, after its undergrad course. The prof. was good as well and I thought I might be able to do my thesis with him and maybe publish something. I ended up being in the top 10% of the class, but I thought ‘This is not what I’d want to do for the rest of my life’. I wasn’t passionate. I figured out I’m more interested in physics, and even took modern and quantum physics courses; and now I’m going to apply to 2 physics master’s programs as well as some in EE that are physics-based (like device physics and nano-electronics/photonics) So I’m doing the reverse of what you’re doing in a way! (unfortunately, going from EE to physics is not as easy as the reverse though! In most EE websites, there’s a short list of requirements for those with undergrad’s other than EE, and you “can” take the courses when you’re in grad school, but I haven’t seen an analogous list in any Physics Dept website for those from eng.)
Anyway, I suggest you definitely take a DSP class or two before applying for it. Optoelectronics, however, is again physics-based. Maybe even half of the EE prof’s in device research have PhD’s in physics/applied physics. For example, in this lab [Optics Group](http://cumsl.msl.columbia.edu/index.php/optics-group) I remember it was mentioned that half of the students are from EE, other half from pure & applied physics. If you enjoy physics, you might be more interested in such fields, and you already have a good background too.
The requirements of the EE grad schools for those with bachelor’s other than EE might not be more than 5-6 courses, but if you want to apply for a field you know little of, you’d better take more courses (maybe ‘signal & systems’ & 2 DSP courses) and do a little bit of reading to make sure that’s what you want to do in grad school.
Btw, you can check out other universities’ websites for the list of the required courses. I don’t think you have more than 3 courses left to fulfill the basic requirements.

Good luck!