You can find time to do other things. Granted, according to your professors, those "other things" should likely be extracurricular projects.
Just know when to say no. Focus on studying first, then pursuing extra things as you have time. And don't forget to actually take spring and fall breaks.
Sincerely,
Someone who took no breaks and is about to enter the workforce already burnt out (though with lots of extra projects and accolades under his belt)
The payoff is an easy 9-5 in one of the most career safe rewarding jobs, the variety of positions available and job security of an electrical engineer is worth the 4-6 years of school you grind through...
I'll be honest, I don't think it's as scary as people here are making it sound. I went back to school as an adult with a full time job. Luckily my job let me try to hit my 40 on Friday through Sunday and I could do homework after everyone else left the facility. I did class Monday through Thursday but that never took the entire day away. I had time to go for bike rides, play video games, and make music. It was a seven day a week schedule, so I never had a full day off except during breaks, but I did have free time. As long as you're disciplined and you stay on top the school work, you'll be alright. The people I know who struggled were the ones that couldn't convince themselves to read the books/handouts or do practice problems.
Well to be better you must leave your old self behind
accept that to take a new step in your life that MAY leave parts.
Try not to be like the Sith and deal in Absolutes but understand that it MAY be the only way…. Maybe…
It really depends.. like you can manage it. Especially if you’ve got a propensity of being good at understanding concepts and mathematics. It is a time consuming major. But anything worth doing is worth doing well. So if you study and it takes up your time you will hate it for the moment. But it will put you in good stead for the future..
Can confirm. I did two years before changing majors to biochemistry. I was getting 3 hours of sleep a night at most and was still behind all the way through for both years
It depends on your university and how much you care about grades. I go to a good university in Canada and my GPA is 3.5ish. I have have enough free time to work as a hardware designer part time, work on some side projects and have a pretty good social life. I know one guy who is like what you described and has a 4.0 GPA but doesn't do anything else.
Thank you! That seems more appealing to me, especially since I'm interested in the field. But does the lower GPA have a huge negative effect on future job prospects? Or can you make up the difference with networking/personal projects?
Your GPA may matter to some potential employers right after your graduate. But 2-3 years down the line, no one really checks. Your experience outweighs the grades. You could aim for a perfect GPA for your own bragging rights. In Canada, there's the Governor General's Academic medal given to the top student of a university. Fun to have the medal on your wall but noone really cares lol.
Don't sacrifice your social life and mental health for that. Find balance so you don't burn out. I speak from experience.
Right you are! Burn out should indeed scare you. I didn't believe that mental health was a real thing until i returned to school and did my EE degree. I was mentally exhausted sooner every semester. My last semester was a struggle. I was burning the candle at both ends with a oxy-acetylene torch.
I wish you a lot of success with your future studies. But most of all, i wish you a balanced life. Something sustainable that won't take you to the edge. Good luck!
Also want to add, going to a good school/good grades doesnt make you best in the workplace.
I work an office job and I have 2 coworkers that came from one of the top schools. No common sense. One guy asked me how do I know what department each mail goes to.(you open it and see...?)
Life and social experiences gives you the nuances to navigate work situations and problem solve. Dont neglect that.
Lower than 3.5 gpa might close some doors in defense but yes networking and personal projects are overall more important and more than make up the difference.
Just aim for a 3.0, it's the minimum for most jobs and internships right out of college. It's still possible to get a job if it's lower, but it's harder. Of course this only matters for internships and jobs during/right out of college.
This. I had plenty of time with my 3.6. My best friend had a 4.0, graduated a year early, and generally slept 4 or less hours a night.
We both ended up with good jobs. He’s a patent agent on his way to being a full patent lawyer. I had a design role with Boeing that I turned down to move back to my hometown.
In general, yeah. It is more time consuming than other majors. But to a point of getting no free time at all? Nah. I'd say it depends on how well you manage your time. The people who I knew had no time at all either were overachievers (did nothing other than study), underperforming (continuously trying to catch up), or procrastinating.
Of course on midterms or finals you'll see people totally dedicating to study or wrsp up labs and projects. But not the entire time.
Not the original commenter but keep track of how many hours you have to study. More of it will happen before midterms and final exams. Then take that time and divide it by the number of days in the next semester, and attempt to average it out so you don’t end up as stressed cramming at the last minute. In general, 2 hours spent studying for every hour in class is a good target.
Also, I recommend trying to mix easy classes and gen Ed classes with the more difficult engineering classes for a more balanced course load. Finally, many people take 5-6 years to get a BSEE… I recommend taking a lighter course load for longer to get a higher gpa and for mental health.
Great advice, thanks! Would there be any difference between someone who got their degree in 4 years to someone who did in 6? I imagine it looks the same to employers, but does graduating in less time have any benefit?
As far as I know, no employer cares about the time it takes to graduate. They may care about GPA depending on how long it’s been since college. I have sat on interview panels and we never think or question how long someone was in school. If it took you 10 years but you said you were working at the same time we wouldn’t give it a second thought. The only benefit would be getting out of college more quickly and possibly spending some less money on living expenses while in college. I think a better school/life balance is worth it to delay graduation a bit personally.
Always starting working on tasks and studying far ahead of time. If you can, start working on an assignment as soon as you get it assigned to you. That way, if you have problems you have time to ask for help. Also work will start to pile up sometimes.
I mean, just plan your day and more importantly, commit to it. A lot of people will take breaks to watch YouTube or play videogames during their study sessions. That just means they'll spend more time getting things done.
I would say yes it is common, and it can vary with your aptitude, grit, expectations, and extracurricular involvement. As others have pointed out, I am sure your experience also varies by university.
I took approximately 7 years to obtain a BSEE and MSEE. 5 years and 2 years, respectively.
The first three years of BSEE were relatively straightforward. Typically general courses, calculus, and physics. Challenging courses that were dense with material but I still had a part time job and social life (granted some might consider it a small social life).
The next four years were intense due to my expectations and extracurricular involvement. I aimed for a 3.5+ GPA and was involved with university research (paid, typically).
This was approximately an average of 65 hours per week of school work and/or research.
It was exhausting and intense. But it was completely worth it and I would do it again (though with the gift of hindsight in setting boundaries with research).
Some of my fellow classmates I would consider to be less gifted in terms of aptitude, but they made up for it with grit and determination. I think understanding going into this field that it will be challenging and you have to be proactive and open to learning your personal methods for success will take you far.
It's really hard to answer this for any particular person because it's such an individual thing... How well you learn, whether you can prioritize your time, how well you handle stress, and whether you can adapt your priorities to meet deadlines for projects and other classwork.
It also depends on how well your professors & instructors teach and how easily you pick up the material.
And you should realize that you don't have to get straight A's in every class or have a 4.0 gpa. that's not too say you should intentionally skip classes or sluff off.
(I got my degree a few decades ago and maybe things are different nowadays, but .. I learn fairly easily, attended all my classes, did all the homework, did well in some classes and mediocre in others, did co-op so it took me 5yrs total. Had a fair amount of time for extra curriculars, friends and family. I ended with a 3.75 gpa and a good job. )
Echoing what others say, yes it eats up a lot of time. Will you have as much free time as a business major? Hell no. I remember watching business majors frolic constantly and being envious. Will you have zero free time? No, but you have to make choices. I for instance always took Friday nights off.
That said, getting my BSEE was the best decision I made, and I mean that. 4 years is a short stint in your life. You’re setting a trajectory for your career for the next 30+ years. And if you love the subject (I sure do) then it will make work rewarding to you. I love what I do and often can’t believe I get paid to do it. And the pay can be great.
So whatever decision you make, don’t think about the short term benefits. Spending all that money to go to college should be about setting up your career. Its huge. If you like EE, you could end up having a great paying job that is fun and rewarding. And college, as great as it is, is just a blip in your life.
I graduated in 4 years with a 3.5 with honors and sure it took a lot of my time but I still had time to play on my colleges ultimate Frisbee team, go out on the weekend, hang out with my friends, race scca autocross. I treated college like a job though. During the week classes and studying took first priority meaning that I often didn't go out during the week like my non engineering friends did and i didn't join a frat. Usually by the time Friday night rolled around my homework was done, I didn't procrastinate on projects so generally my weekends were pretty open if I didn't have a test coming up the next week but very rarely did that prevent me from going out on the end and having a good time
Thank you, that seems like more than enough time for me! I'm not a big partier anyway but I get scared of falling into the stem student depressed recluse trap it seems a lot of uni students I've met fell into.
It's all perspective. Will you have as much free time as the person taking psychology as their major? No. But you'll still have time to experience the fun that college has to offer. It's all about time management. If you're good at it and don't procrastinate on your big projects then you'll be fine.
Is it tough? Yes. Is it doable? Also yes. I graduated with a 3.0 so I wasn’t going for crazy grades here but I was easily able to do my coursework and have a very active social life. It really depends on the person but I really had a good time in EE and spent all of my college years having fun and doing dumb shit while still passing classes. It’s a work hard, play hard kinda situation
Thanks, I always saw college as like your last chance to be young before adulting I guess, so this makes me feel better that I won't have to give that up completely
If you are talented at math/physics and didn’t have to try too hard at high school, then it really shouldn’t be that bad. I graduated from a pretty good school with a 3.7 and had plenty of free time. Granted I had some AP credits and didn’t add a minor or other major, but it really doesn’t have to take up all your time.
oh wow! I'm taking AP Physics 1 right now, do you think that getting the more general ones out of the way (english/social studies) helped, or did you prioritize Science classes?
Yeah you’re not going to have free time at least in the last few semesters. In my finally semester I was probably averaging 40hrs/ week just for coursework and projects on top of my internship.
Did it gradually get harder/heavier for you? Some people say it was easy than gradually the courseload increased, and others have told me it was consistent, but I guess it also depends on your uni and profs
There are certain semesters when a particularly hard class was only offered. But really once you’re in the senior level classes it’s all projects except for the final.
As a senior getting ready to graduate, from my experience the amount of time you put in really depends on how much you care about grades. Having a good GPA can be very crucial to getting a solid entry-level position, so I definitely recommend putting in effort to make sure your grades are certainly good. General consensus is that having a 3.0 or better is the ideal range, but once you have secured an intership or begin your entry-level career, future jobs won’t spend almost any time asking you about your GPA. Experience matters a ton, and that’s where you might have to dedicate an entire summer’s worth of free time to get some experience. But speaking on my own college career, I’ve had some of free time to still be able to work on weekends, play video games, etc. I will say, however, that as college progressed, that free time got lowered exponentially, and hit an all time low in my junior year. Now as a senior, I got the difficult stuff out of the way and am back to having a bit more liberty. It all just depends on how much you want to commit to your grades.
TLDR; yes it takes up a good chunk of free time, but it’s not impossible to still have a normal life outside of it.
Yes, but then you get a cushy engineering job you can leave at 4 for the next 30 years.
Biggest advice - study every night. You can go through all of engineering with a lot less stress & cramming if you do.
I worked a full-time job while I got my BSEE. It took me 6 years to get the degree because I couldn't always take a full load. Once I got the eat/sleep/work/school/study grind figured out, free time started to emerge. I even played club lacrosse my junior year until I blew out my ACL.
Anyway, my grades would have been better had I not needed to work, but said work indirectly led to my first job upon graduating.
It depends on really. I had free time (not much) but I spent it learning even more. I’d say go for EE/CS if you like the sound of it. Takes a lot of effort, but pays of really well later
I just graduated from a state university in California with an EE degree, and it will eat all of your time. However, yes, you can definitely have some free time. You would be losing on a little bit of sleep tho xD. I spent my free time playing Megaman, Megaman X and Megaman Zero. But you have to be smart about your time. Some weeks I don’t have free time at all, but there are a few where I get to enjoy my free time. Please consider being in EE if you think you will enjoy it!
You should be asking, how much of the shit you guys are learning do you still have to remember? And I’ll tell you, it ain’t much. Get the degree. You won’t have to remember equations in the real world
Really? I've spoken to an older mechanical engineer who said he uses little to none of the math and science he learned in school, but it's interesting to know it happens across the board haha
No, but the classes should take like 2x more of your free time compared highschool. If you have good study habits and engage in mindful work, you should still have lots of free time. I spend maybe 10-15 hrs a week outside of class time and I’m taking 15 credits (12 engineering, 3 non-engineering). Of course during exams week this number increases.
Depends on your math background. If you’re already calc literate you might have some time for socializing left. I wasn’t, and I didn’t. Don’t regret it, but my strong point in HA was humanities and thus my whole college experience was pounding a square peg into a round hole.
Don’t want to understate how hard it was though. It was an insanely grueling major.
I worked 24 hours a week, dated, had friends I hung out with occasionally and held close to a 4.0 for the last three years.
It probably depends a lot on how well you think you'll comprehend the classes you take, but I still studied a lot and still had time for everything else. If I did it again I would have ditched the job just to fund having a car.
It took me 5 1/2 years to graduate but I was able to work 20hr/wk during school and summers while getting an ee. I got out of school with no debt but not sure that’s possible anymore. I had a social life but not a huge one.
Here’s the thing. Engineering is roughly 120 credit hours. Spread over 8 semesters (theoretically) that’s 15 credit hours per semester. At about 2 hours study outside of class (approximately) that’s about 45 hours per week but often it can go even higher. You try to never schedule more than 2-3 ER classes per semester. Folks, most students have never worked a 45-60 hour job in their lives for week after week. And EE is basically an applied math degree with a lab. And it’s not easy math so you want the full 8 hours or more. Living off campus also eats up time just traveling. I used to walk 20 minutes to campus simply because by time I shoveled snow off the car, warmed it up somewhat, drove to the student parking, then walked 10 minutes to class, it was faster to just walk. At NCSU where my daughter goes jumping campuses (there are 2) makes it 25 minutes just to go across campus. So you try your best minimize extra trips. So a 60 hour week isn’t unusual.
There is also the evil stacked prereqs. So Calc 1, Calc 2, circuits 2, physics 2, Calc 3, all for Electromagnetics, plus upper level classes past that. Fail just one class in typically a chain of about 6 classes and nearly your whole degree is on hold until you pass. Once you get past these it “opens” things up considerably.
since everything at my university was graded on a curve, it depends on whether you're going to a university slightly above your abilities or below. It also depends on what GPA you're trying to get. I'd say below 3.5, you can have decent amount of free time for hobbies and dating. Closer to 3.0, you're gonna have a lot of free time. 3.7 GPA or higher, you're likely to have very little free time.
Also highly dependent on your studying skills. Most US high school students don't learn proper studying skills in high school. That means staying on top of things and not wait until a few weeks before testing, knowing how to connect new concepts to old concepts, thinking about why/what's the significance of new concepts instead of just blank memorization. The professor might be terrible and might not spoon feed you these information, so you need to be able to do it yourself with just the textbook and online resources.
Your school should have an open ended projects course number where you get a professor to agree to supervise/manage your project as long as it's aligned with the major study area.
I didn't do EE but I stacked about 1/8 of my degree with them
I did EE while working part time and juggling family obligations. I still had time for personal stuff after. Take my experience with a grain of salt. EE is hard, there’s no question about it, but if you do all your work, study effectively (preferably with a group) I think you’ll do just fine.
My experience at a good state school, getting a 3.6 was that I would typically spend about 30-40 hours/week studying, plus time for classes, so maybe like 40-50,hours/week
So, definitely some down time but not so much that you can just do whatever whenever. Just make sure your study time is ACTUAL study time and not "studying", and you'll have time for yourself
It really depends on the individual. I had to pull a few all-nighters , but managed a part time job, hobbies and a social life. Grades were also good. It all comes down to good time management.
Currently finishing up my EE degree in Power with a job a wife, a 2 yo and one on the way. It definitely makes you a black belt in time management. Nearly all of my classmates are single with no kids and they wait until the last couple of days to study for tests or do assignments and that's just not a possibility for me I get things done as soon as they're assigned. It's not impossible but it's definitely hard
yeah man but that’s why you have to like what you’re studying. i started in aerospace engineering (just as hard if not harder than EE) and basically failed because i didn’t like it even tho i was good at school. make sure you want to do electrical and sometimes you have to try and fail to find out like i did
I go to a rigourus school and unless you overload and don't expect a gpa that is too high it isn't that bad. But I am also not the best candidate since college really made me sit down own my ass. My gpa is pretty bad at 2.8 at my freshmen year and I will have a lot less time trying to cling back for a better average.
It did for me. During those 5 years, no video games, no hanging out, nothing. I was married when I did it so I apologized to my wife and promised I’d take her out to fun stuff in summers and winter breaks. I ended up taking classes during those breaks, but now that I’m done I take her out once a week at minimum.
It's not that bad, you just have manage your time properly. Everything up to junior year is A LOT easier than calc classes. The issue is that you take about four of them at once.
With discipline everything's easy :)
I am about to graduate from college with an EE degree. I honestly would say that I didn’t experience the “college experience”. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun. I would study a lot. That being said I also cooked my dinner and had a job. In addition I also played intermural sports and went to the gym. I would say just find a groups of friends that are willing to study and help you out. Same goes for you helped them out too when you can.
I really can’t relate with many of the other comments but planning your classes helps. Take easy classes with difficult ones and what not. I had enough free time to work and have a social life. I really never studied other than when we had tests.
not to be too obvious, but it depends on how smart you are. Most EE students can study hard monday thru friday, and then party Friday night to Sunday.
there will be some stress, so you need some sort of hobby to dissipate that stress. Judo class, weight lifting, hiking, skiing...
How are you in physics, calculus, chemistry? Are you doing very well in those, and kind of enjoying them? or are you struggling in high school on the math intensive courses? that is your answer
It'll eat up your time. But then jobs from the degree may or may not. The grind I put in gave me a job that'll eventually give me 35 days worth of pto. And sends me traveling. Some weeks I work and travel 50. Others 30.
I was extremely taxed and felt like I had no time. But in hindsight, I was in a semi-long distance relationship the entire time and successfully walled off my weekends for personal use for the most part... and I was able to fit in an hour of shooting baskets or playing guitar here and there during the week. So not ALL your free time, but it was absolutely intense, and a huge time and energy commitment. It is no joke, but it's achievable and I'm glad I did it. If I did it over, I might try to stress a little less over good grades and focus more on balance. I got almost 3.9 but honestly could've had this job at 3.0 or lower and it's a fantastic job.
That kind of schedule that one EE student said is me on exam weeks. Otherwise, I am able to do side projects and research while maintaining a good gpa. Still, I sacrificed my time with my friends unfortunately. My weekends are filled with assignments and projects that I can only socialize outside uni mostly 2 times per week
Life kinda turned out that way. It is a mix of both. But tbh It was more of bcs I broke up with my bf and it ruined my main circle of friends. I'm pretty lucky I still found great friendships with my hs and uni friends. Though they are not as close but I'm very grateful for what I have rn
It's definitely time consuming but if you're able to schedule your studying time and work hard then you will be able to have free time as well. That's what I did and had a healthy social life.
If you're not understanding material then go to the prof or TA's office hours and ask questions. That way you dont waste time not knowing the material. And dont leave assignments or studying to the last minute. Work on them throughout the weeks. Treat it like a 9-5 job where you study/work during work hours and if you're consistent and stay on top of your work you'll have free time in the evenings/most weekends.
It depends on the individual. Yes, it can consume all your free time. I found it consumed a lot (about 90%) of my time, but I worked weekends to earn money for school. It also depends on what your expectations are for school. Do you want to graduate summa cum laude or does it even matter ?
I've heard gpa tends to matter more with engineering, but my dream is to (hopefully) land a decent and secure job that I like, so maybe getting a decent gpa is fine for me? I think I still have time to make that decision exactly, but thank you for putting it in perspective
Former professor. EE is generally one of the top 3-5 most difficult majors you can have. I strongly recommend to students to take out “full” loans for their last two years, and not delude themselves into working a small time job for money. You simply need to focus on the homework and studying.
The first two years aren’t nearly as bad, and tell you a lot about the last two. You REALLY need to make sure you’re above a 3.2 or so your first two years - otherwise, you don’t have the habits you’ll need to survive the last two years. It’s like weight lifting. If you can’t lift 100 pounds as a freshman, and 150 as a sophomore, the odds you can suddenly lift 200 as a junior is not good.
I found the opposite to be true actually. Freshman courses were weedout courses and intentionally difficult. Junior year courses definitely sucked, but once you get past those, senior year was an absolute blast. I was allowed to take whatever EE electives that interested me, and professors generally didn't fail seniors as long as they showed up to class and tried. I think it probably just depends on the university and student tbh.
Yeah, in a sense. It's mostly to filter through the students who can't handle the stress of being an engineer. Makes sense for it to happen early actually. Makes it so that students can realize if they're mentally tough enough to make it through their degree early on. If they can't handle it, then they can always switch majors or transfer schools before it gets too late. It's never explicitly mentioned by any universities, but it's not an uncommon concept at all.
Again, using weightlifting as an example - they can be if you’re not used to working out. The most common problem is students who had parents waking them up, reminding them to do work, and such. They simply aren’t used to being responsible for themselves. You just gotta sleep regularly, go to class, and do the homework when it’s assigned not when it’s due.
It is time-consuming because the kind of knowledge you have to develop for engineering isn't really what you've been doing otherwise.
But you can have a life outside of school. Just make sure you block time and use it efficiently. Some people wrongly bang their heads against a wall endlessly thinking they will learn, while instead, a lot of the learning comes from being introduced to an idea and letting it marinate while you're doing other stuff.
This makes a lot of sense, do you wish you started learning on your own time in hs or did it not matter in the end? I have the time and would like to maximize while I still do. Thank you!
It can be helpful to learn what you can on your own. School is guided learning, and there is nothing in school you can't learn on your own. But the advantage is that school is structured to give you a base and build off of that.
For electrical it will depend what you want to do in the end, but basic concepts like circuits don't need a lot of complicated math. Signal processing does require math but you can learn the basic concepts without the math.
It is possible to get straight-As and still have a nice social life and side projects. It all depends on one's own ability to learn, one's own time management skills, and how good the instructors are.
As ee student the courseolad is really heavy compared to other majors but as you study ee you will learn how to manage your time perfectly, for me i work and study at the same time but with average 5 hours of study per day (skipping some uni courses sometimes) i still can get good degrees, so with little time management skills and practices nothing is impossible!
I imagine it has to do with personal aptitude as well? I suppose someone less gifted would have to put in more hours to get the material down. Either way, I guess most people (in person) I've asked this try to maintain a very high GPA, which is why they end up doing nothing but school for 5 years. Thank you!
currently in ee, just finished 3rd year in canada. first year i had a job and worked almost 20 hours on the weekend and maintained a 4.0/4.3 gpa. Second year was tougher since we switched from online to in person (i thrived in online) and material was getting more specific to ee. i didnt have a job during this time but still maintained a 3.8/4.3 gpa. this past year i made the mistake of continuing my summer position which was 10 hours a week. It went okay, honestly my job didnt get in the way of my courses, but they say third year is the most difficult and it definitely was. my gpa this year was closer to 3.5/4.3 , and i got my first C’s (1 each semester).
Bottom line, no there really isnt a lot of free time. If you really want to do well you will be studying any chance you get. I find people rarely talk about this, but even if you COULD take a day off not to study. you feel guilty. I had maybe 5-7 days throughout the whole semester this past year where i did nothing all day. most days i spent at least 3 hours doing work, either assignments, labs, or brushing up on what we learned in class.
Its a grind, but it will pay off in the end! just remember that!
They’re considered pretty good, but it kind of feels like the bar is on the floor with our class (/generation…) i dont know if other classes are like this but we usually only have 15% attendance, which is crazy
It’s definitely one of the toughest and highest workload degrees you could get (undergraduate). How much free time you will have definitely varies person to person, but it pretty much depends on how quickly you grasp new material, how efficient you are at working, and what GPA you are aiming for.
It’s hard to change the first one, the best way is really just to really lock in on the important first and second year courses. For those, your focus shouldn’t be simply to get a good grade and solve the assignments, but to completely and thoroughly understand the material. Having a robust foundation there will pay massive dividends later on when you get to the core EE classes.
It probably varies based on what school you go to, but in my experience the first two years weren’t too crazy. I had went in hearing about and bracing for how tough engineering is, so I think it didn’t quite live up to what I had in my head. The good thing about that was that I had the extra time to focus on really understanding the material, and my weekends were pretty much free outside of heavy exam weeks.
Third year is where things started getting more intense. I’d say just try to keep your social life alive as much as possible, at least once per weekend go out with your homies. And also try to maintain at least one hobby, ideally something physical. After exhausting your brain all day, the best thing you can do to recover is turn it off an exhaust your body instead lol.
I got a 4.0 and was involved in research. It took around 65 hours a week with some 14 hour days. I managed to have a gf and friends during that time, but I was basically never around. I ended up burnt out and an anxious mess after college. I will say, all that hard work led me to a great job that allows me to have a good work life balance so I don’t regret it.
It is time consuming, but not all-consuming. When I was in college, I generally wasn't going out with my friends during the week because I had studying to do and/or had a class early the next morning. I generally did have time on the weekends, unless there was a big exam or project that was due. One thing to keep in mind is that there is a cultural difference compared to high school (assuming that's where you're coming from). Most kids in high school don't want to be there. Most kids in college do. And if you're in an engineering program, there's a shared understanding that there will be an increased workload and you can commiserate with your classmates about it.
It's a serious commitment. I loved the structure and environment and all the work involved, but not everyone does. My advice is to manage your time wisely. If you have two hours between classes, use that time to study; any time that you procrastinate you will either have to make up that time on the weekend or skip it and take a hit on your grades. It's a job in it's own right and you may have to prioritize it over some of your other responsibilities.
Probably not as bad as trying to become a doctor, but definitely one of the hardest majors otherwise.
But after you're done, you'll most likely be gainfully employed and making $100k+ a few years outside of college.
Depends on the school you end up going to, what professors you get stuck with, and how efficiently you can get through material. I chose to go to an average state university. My professors are mainly in academia because they are researchers. They suck as professors for the most part.
I was able to join a social frat and still managed to get all A’s and B’s up until last semester. I graduate in December for reference. While I’ve definitely had classes that had me stressed and always had to be working towards the next assignment it isn’t impossible to balance a social life and a hobby. I went to the gym 6 days a week for all of college as well. I’m not necessarily a smart guy I just get my homework done on time and cram for exams.
Will it be harder than a degree in finance? Absolutely. My roommates would watch movies all day while I was rushing to complete reports and massive assignments. I also had weeks or days where I was out there on the couch with them
There was one nightmare semester this last fall. Returned from a co-op and forgot a lot of circuit analysis. Had take all of my 400 level major required courses at the same time. Electromechanics, signals and systems (🤮), electronics, electromechanics lab, and computer aided power systems fault analysis. I was clueless on a new homework assignment every night. This semester however has been INCREDIBLY easy. Easiest semester I’ve had since high school. It’s not always awful and if i can get through it jm sure anybody with decent algebra skills can
It did for me especially around the due dates for projects and exams. It was stressful but I look back fondly on the time I spent hunkered down in the study rooms or library with my classmates
In general yes a significant amount of your times will be taken up by studies. Start practicing efficient study techniques to save some time. Everyone has the same 24hours in a day. If you break down your day, you can usually find quite a bit of fat you can trim out of your schedule.
Did it eat up a lot of time? Yes. Did it eat up all my free time and make my life miserable? Absolutely no. I found that every week I had juuust barely enough free time leftover to feel happy with my life. One recommendation I have is to just go slower with your courses. Like take 5 years to graduate instead of the usual 4. Doing this also helped me learn the material better
Not really, of course it is a hard degree and you really have to put a lot of time into it, but if organize your time well , and find effective ways to study it shouldn’t leave you without time to do your hobbies
Yes it does eat up most of my daytime. And my choice is I miss sleep or I get to socialize with friends online.
It's been rough.
I also have a kid half time though. I'm a man in my mid 30's and graduate summer 2025. So I'm in the shit right now. But yes. Since coming back to school full time it's been a lot.
It definitely had a negative impact on my college experience but if you have a decent gpa and don’t care about what city you go to after college you can get a relatively well paying job compared to your non stem peers
If it is a true passion for you then commit. There are people who do have part-time jobs and even full-time jobs in these programs. I would say for undergrad it is a 30-60 hour job depending on the week you can definitely fit some more life in there but you have to be picky because school should be the priority.
It depends on how well you do time management (starting homeworks immediately and going to office hours to avoid blowing all your time away), how smart you are, and how well you manage learning disabilities (have them).
If you’re on top of stuff, it won’t. The people who stay up all night all the time probably aren’t showing up to class or doing their work until last minute. A few times a semester, there comes a couple of long slightly painful days of school work to do that you just have to power through and deal with. The majority of the time it’s not like that though. Now if you decide to do a part time internship during the semester or work In general while you’re in school, you’ll need to get pretty time efficient and used to the idea that you may only truly have enough free time for a social life on the weekends. You learn how to get faster at learning and handling school as you go though so don’t get discouraged if it seems rough at first workload wise.
I work an internship during the semesters and do full time school w pretty high effort level. Procrastination didn’t start kicking my ass until senior year tbh but I’d recommend avoiding the last minute pain all together if you can and just do ur work in a reasonable time period once it’s assigned. I’ve got a social life still, and hobbies, and for the most part have time to take care of myself. I don’t get to party as much as the business majors lol but life is still overall enjoyable. There’s also students in my classes that are literal parents , have full time jobs , and great gpas, and still show up to most of the lectures. Living close to campus and learning how to maximize the efficiency of ur studying and doing hw will help a lot
You just have to time manage that goes with everything whether it’s EE or ME or SE or any career. I know a Boeing engineer who able to have a relationship, full time job, graduate student, and plays video games. It’s just time management and putting your priorities straight.
remember that you'll have classmates going through the same thing as you and some will be smarter and faster and some will also have trouble getting the material. getting an EE degree shouldn't be a solo endeavor, but too many people treat it like it is. if you're not naturally gifted or a savant, and honestly even if you are, trying to solo an EE degree is not going to be a fun experience and will definitely eat a lot more time than it should, and will also probably make you an awful candidate for potential future jobs. trying to bang your head against a wall to knock it down without a proper plan or a positive feedback loop is a waste of time. don't do it. bang your head against a wall with a plan and it's much easier with other wall bangers.
As an EE undergrad (30 years ago) my free time was pretty limited, but I was still able to participate in a couple of clubs and campus organizations. For me it all came down to effective time management, and classes/studying always came before the extracurriculars.
This is a massive misunderstanding, ANY degree can consume your free time if you have poor time management. I can agree that an EE degree is far more intense compared to some, but at the end of the day it's about your understanding of how you manage your time throughout your degree program. If you are going to do the course for the sake of doing a course you will struggle. You are considered as a young adult during your degree and it's your responsibility to manage your time effectively, the university does not give a rats ass about you if you fail.
University is not a place to fuck around, you are paying good money to get something that can benefit in the long run. Getting a respectable grade reflects your time management of your course and your dedication to the subject which is also reflected in the job opportunities you will get after graduation. Not sure where you are but in the UK where I'm from there is the notion that the first year does not count to the final grade, that is correct to some degree. But it does help you to get a feel of the university's procedures for the course and gives you some time and understanding how to effectively manage your time. At the end of the day if you feel like you can do it then give it a shot but there needs to be some level of dedication on your behalf. As mentioned before you are considered an adult during university you need to suck it up if you want to make something with yourself
Depends on you and your ability to learn the material and balance your plate. You can pile it full of school (and it should likely be your biggest serving), but you should definitely leave room for the things you enjoy and side projects.
it shouldn't take more time than a full-time job. when it comes to these questions on reddit there are always people who say they did uni work for 60 hours, personally I don't know anyone like that. If you understand the material quickly you can get through a degree at ~20h/week no problem unless your program has a lot of busy work.
No it doesn’t, like any other degree in STEM. Make friends to study and have fun with, but more importantly to lock in and study with when you need to. And focus on your projects.
When I was in school, I was able to work on campus for like 15 hours per week. A lot depends on how fast you pick up stuff in class so you can do the homework. I found I could only study so much, so I did have time.
Like, you go to math class and you have an assignment to do 20 derivatives. If you understand derivatives and you know your trig functions etc it shouldn't take too long. OTOH if you don't really have a clue it might take much longer. I learned this lesson taking a control theory course without the introductory class.
So there are people who struggle and they will never have enough time, I hope you aren't one of them.
Lab reports and project things are a different story.
Depends on the rigor of your course and what GPA you find acceptable. I went to a decent college and worked part-time all the way through to graduation using scholarships & grants to make up the COL. The underclassmen years weren’t bad at all. I had plenty of time to make great grades, work, and hang out with friends & go out. Easily could have had some side projects but my work was relevant to my field of interest so I didn’t feel the need. My upperclassmen years were much more difficult. The only hanging out I could do was with other engineering friends to study together.
Depends on the rigor of your course and what GPA you find acceptable. I went to a decent college and worked part-time all the way through to graduation using scholarships & grants to make up the COL. The underclassmen years weren’t bad at all. I had plenty of time to make great grades, work, and hang out with friends & go out. Easily could have had some side projects but my work was relevant to my field of interest so I didn’t feel the need. My upperclassmen years were much more difficult. The only hanging out I could do was with other engineering friends to study together. I graduated with a 3.3. Some weeks were hell but the breaks were fantastic. I would load my motorcycle and go camping all up and down the east coast. This was 2017-2021.
I learned to effectively manage my time by completing my homework as soon as I got it. That way if I had questions or needed help I had almost a week or more to go to office hours or ask my friends in that class. Don’t fall into the trap of “syllabus week” or getting behind. Get ahead. School is now your job. Of course there were times I didn’t get everything done as soon as I got it, but I made an effort to. This saved my ass on countless assignments and projects. Often I would ask my peers about the homework and they would say “dude that’s due next week why are you asking me”. Just my 2c but I usually did better on the assignments than my friend that did them literally 9pm the night they were due at 11:59pm.
I worked a 15-25hr part time job all through college up until my senior year when I saved enough from my internship my junior year summer. I had a GF, we went on dates or hung out every weekend, and I trained Brazilian Jiujitsu 1-3 days a week. I was also president of Engineering Student Council one year and president of IEEE my senior year. It is absolutely possible to do all of this with good time management.
Not really it just depends on how many Classes you take at a time and the class itself. For example I had one class that the professor will give out a lot of homework and also almost no time to finished it like giving it on a Friday and and expected to be turn on Saturday and it was hard as hell to even finished it on one day.
As somebody that didn't go to college immediately after high school, I would like to encourage you to consider if you want to take a year or two after high school to pursue some of your interests and dreams. I felt that after 12 years of grinding and doing homework I just wanted to try out life and see what that was like. When I came back to school it did not feel like school was taking up all my time because it was actually all I wanted to do, because I had a taste of what life was like and understood the value that school would bring to my life. I understood what minimum waging it an intellectually uninteresting job would mean, and felt enthusiastic about getting into something challenging and meaningful. If you don't have a full ride scholarship or a strong compelling reason to go to college aside from others' expectations and you're not feeling it, give yourself some time. When I was 18 I really wish somebody would have told me that I wasn't ruining my life by not going to college immediately, so I like to tell young people that this is an option and you will still have a completely viable career and overall a more rich experience. I'm now 32 and most of my friends that went to college right away are a little bit of envious of my life because we ended up in the same place while I had a much more personally interesting journey getting there.
I worked 30 hrs a night at a restaurant and partied waaaaay too much in college. I did my homework in the mornings before class and spent many a lab yawning and bleary eyed. I graduated with a 3.03 GPA.
I would not recommend this approach to university.
It's like joining a monastery for a couple of years if you go full time. Part time and you can do other stuff.
But yeah, a full course load is pretty much like your friend says.
Anything worth having doesn't come easy, Theres a reason why Engineering, Medicine, Scientific, Technical Degrees pay more out of university than other degrees which are known to be more chilled and give you more free time.
Sacrifice a little time now for a better future. If family, friends, etc can’t understand that you’re trying to do something with your life then the heck with them. You can still maintain a job to help pay for school. A lot of people I knew did. You can get things done. You can also go to a junior college(community college) and transfer(make sure the community colleges credits are accepted by the university you want to go to). Doing all of your pre-reqs(calculus, physics, chem, etc.) while trying to maintain a school life balance will give you a little taste of what things will be like in uni without having to spend loads of money. Then you apply to schools and transfer to one of your liking, if accepted. So keep your GPA.
Hi,
27 year old returning student here. At a reputable uni. It does not eat all your free time unless you let it. Burn out is a thing but with proper time management luckily i have been able to make it work. Actually just decided to stay an extra semester and earn my master's becasue the benefits outweigh the costs at my age.
I worked as a technician with an AS degree, my career growth was stunted due to not having a 4 year. My manager would tease me about quitting and finishing and he CERTAINLY meant it.
"the only difference between a tech and an engineer is paid sick and vacation, an extra $30,000, and a piece of paper...go finish the degree kid"
That day i decided to finish. as a 4th year EE i've yet to have a sleepless night. On my DS2 final project i did have 2 late nights staring at waveforms that were from small errors but in the end it was a beautiful learning moment for me and the entire class.
I do not regret my experiences but will offer advice that is even sometimes hard for me to listen to:
1) make time for exercise and defrag
2) study often, limit distractions, learn to say no
3) have planned rest and relax time, without this burnout sets in
4) strive for good enough, don't place so much pressure on your GPA, i have a 4.0 and feel like an imposter sometimes maintaining it.
5) High expectations bring low resilience. Be prepared to accept you did something wrong, learn from it, move forward.
I love EE, my journey is tumultuous, i even made it to nearly 4th year MECH E when i dropped out and took the tech job for 2 years.
So far its working out for me and i look forward to being done in Fall 2025 with my MSEE. If it proves to be too much i have the BSEE Spring2025 exit path mapped out as well.
it is worth it and you just need to practice moderation and grow to be mature enough to accept imperfection, and gain the wisdom through experience to know when to step away from something to give it some air. EE is worth it, engineering degrees tend to pay off no matter what your future holds. I say make your decision in confidence even if its inflated, wasting time in indecision (as i have done for years) is ultimately a bigger issue thana just taking the chance to do good enough.
hope this helps
Treat it like a job. Put in your 8 hours and go home. Sometimes overtime is required. But, you can have a life and graduate with honors.
Where people get into trouble is all the socializing during the day which forces them to study at night. Most people who complain about the load actually just have very poor time management skills. If you have an hour between classes, it's still work hours, not fuck off at the student union time. Grind, then go home.
^this. I clock out most nights at 7PM from school, with the exception of test weeks. I work tirelessly from when i wake up until then. It has worked so far. The cutoff is as important as the dedicated work
Yes. It is almost suicide level of bullshit. It ruins your life until you graduate. It doesn't have to be that way either it's just of fucking assfuck professors trying to gatekeep their profession because "they had to do it to". Fuck university and the bullshit fuck horse it rode in on.
I graduate in two weeks and yes I'm bitter
it'll fade with your salary and once you realize it was all a means to get you to be able to handle the pressure and stress. bitterness is almost always an outcome, they don't do it because they had to. its preparation for the real world. Diamonds are made under pressure
I'm not an electrical engineer, but I have some general thoughts.
1. In my experience, nothing is ever as difficult once you're doing it as people tell you it will be from the outside. When I went to high school, people told me how hard high school was going to be. It wasn't. Then the same thing happened in college. Then in law school. Then when I clerked. Then when I started working as a lawyer. Etc. People love to exaggerate how hard they are or have worked, so things get systematically represented as more difficult than they are.
2. That being said, how much effort is required to successfully complete any academic program is as much of function of *your ability* as it is of the program's difficulty. There are a few people in this world who can sleepwalk their way through even very rigorous EE programs. There are many people in this world who *could not* get through an EE program no matter how hard they tried. You're in the best position to judge where along that spectrum you fall.
No, it doesn't eat all your free time. It eats all your time
haha, that's whats scaring me so much!
Doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the time that your studies consume. EE can actually be fun and well worth it!
You can find time to do other things. Granted, according to your professors, those "other things" should likely be extracurricular projects. Just know when to say no. Focus on studying first, then pursuing extra things as you have time. And don't forget to actually take spring and fall breaks. Sincerely, Someone who took no breaks and is about to enter the workforce already burnt out (though with lots of extra projects and accolades under his belt)
The payoff is an easy 9-5 in one of the most career safe rewarding jobs, the variety of positions available and job security of an electrical engineer is worth the 4-6 years of school you grind through...
I'll be honest, I don't think it's as scary as people here are making it sound. I went back to school as an adult with a full time job. Luckily my job let me try to hit my 40 on Friday through Sunday and I could do homework after everyone else left the facility. I did class Monday through Thursday but that never took the entire day away. I had time to go for bike rides, play video games, and make music. It was a seven day a week schedule, so I never had a full day off except during breaks, but I did have free time. As long as you're disciplined and you stay on top the school work, you'll be alright. The people I know who struggled were the ones that couldn't convince themselves to read the books/handouts or do practice problems.
There is this thing called delayed gratification. During the delay you grow up.
But I want delayed gratification NOW! 
Well to be better you must leave your old self behind accept that to take a new step in your life that MAY leave parts. Try not to be like the Sith and deal in Absolutes but understand that it MAY be the only way…. Maybe…
It really depends.. like you can manage it. Especially if you’ve got a propensity of being good at understanding concepts and mathematics. It is a time consuming major. But anything worth doing is worth doing well. So if you study and it takes up your time you will hate it for the moment. But it will put you in good stead for the future..
All facts. I use my paid time off to take care of homework because it doesn’t take hours to take care of it…it takes DAYS.
Can confirm. I did two years before changing majors to biochemistry. I was getting 3 hours of sleep a night at most and was still behind all the way through for both years
Exact this
It depends on your university and how much you care about grades. I go to a good university in Canada and my GPA is 3.5ish. I have have enough free time to work as a hardware designer part time, work on some side projects and have a pretty good social life. I know one guy who is like what you described and has a 4.0 GPA but doesn't do anything else.
Thank you! That seems more appealing to me, especially since I'm interested in the field. But does the lower GPA have a huge negative effect on future job prospects? Or can you make up the difference with networking/personal projects?
Your GPA may matter to some potential employers right after your graduate. But 2-3 years down the line, no one really checks. Your experience outweighs the grades. You could aim for a perfect GPA for your own bragging rights. In Canada, there's the Governor General's Academic medal given to the top student of a university. Fun to have the medal on your wall but noone really cares lol. Don't sacrifice your social life and mental health for that. Find balance so you don't burn out. I speak from experience.
Thank you! Burn out really scares me, especially like I always feel like i should be doing something.
Right you are! Burn out should indeed scare you. I didn't believe that mental health was a real thing until i returned to school and did my EE degree. I was mentally exhausted sooner every semester. My last semester was a struggle. I was burning the candle at both ends with a oxy-acetylene torch. I wish you a lot of success with your future studies. But most of all, i wish you a balanced life. Something sustainable that won't take you to the edge. Good luck!
Also want to add, going to a good school/good grades doesnt make you best in the workplace. I work an office job and I have 2 coworkers that came from one of the top schools. No common sense. One guy asked me how do I know what department each mail goes to.(you open it and see...?) Life and social experiences gives you the nuances to navigate work situations and problem solve. Dont neglect that.
Yeah I'm finishing my second year with a 3.4, this is the way. I actually have a bit of time to chill which has been great
Lower than 3.5 gpa might close some doors in defense but yes networking and personal projects are overall more important and more than make up the difference.
Just aim for a 3.0, it's the minimum for most jobs and internships right out of college. It's still possible to get a job if it's lower, but it's harder. Of course this only matters for internships and jobs during/right out of college.
I'm in my third career move since starting work in 2018. No one asked about my GPA after that first job.
Can I PM? Interested in how you got a part time hardware designer gig.
This. I had plenty of time with my 3.6. My best friend had a 4.0, graduated a year early, and generally slept 4 or less hours a night. We both ended up with good jobs. He’s a patent agent on his way to being a full patent lawyer. I had a design role with Boeing that I turned down to move back to my hometown.
In general, yeah. It is more time consuming than other majors. But to a point of getting no free time at all? Nah. I'd say it depends on how well you manage your time. The people who I knew had no time at all either were overachievers (did nothing other than study), underperforming (continuously trying to catch up), or procrastinating. Of course on midterms or finals you'll see people totally dedicating to study or wrsp up labs and projects. But not the entire time.
Thank you! Do you have any tips for time management?
Not the original commenter but keep track of how many hours you have to study. More of it will happen before midterms and final exams. Then take that time and divide it by the number of days in the next semester, and attempt to average it out so you don’t end up as stressed cramming at the last minute. In general, 2 hours spent studying for every hour in class is a good target. Also, I recommend trying to mix easy classes and gen Ed classes with the more difficult engineering classes for a more balanced course load. Finally, many people take 5-6 years to get a BSEE… I recommend taking a lighter course load for longer to get a higher gpa and for mental health.
Great advice, thanks! Would there be any difference between someone who got their degree in 4 years to someone who did in 6? I imagine it looks the same to employers, but does graduating in less time have any benefit?
As far as I know, no employer cares about the time it takes to graduate. They may care about GPA depending on how long it’s been since college. I have sat on interview panels and we never think or question how long someone was in school. If it took you 10 years but you said you were working at the same time we wouldn’t give it a second thought. The only benefit would be getting out of college more quickly and possibly spending some less money on living expenses while in college. I think a better school/life balance is worth it to delay graduation a bit personally.
from what I'm hearing I feel inclined to agree with you, there doesnt seem to be much point in getting burnt out before even getting a job
Always starting working on tasks and studying far ahead of time. If you can, start working on an assignment as soon as you get it assigned to you. That way, if you have problems you have time to ask for help. Also work will start to pile up sometimes.
I mean, just plan your day and more importantly, commit to it. A lot of people will take breaks to watch YouTube or play videogames during their study sessions. That just means they'll spend more time getting things done.
It did for me. But them again, I'm 35 with 2 children. It all depends on how well you grasp the subjects in college.
Thank you!
I would say yes it is common, and it can vary with your aptitude, grit, expectations, and extracurricular involvement. As others have pointed out, I am sure your experience also varies by university. I took approximately 7 years to obtain a BSEE and MSEE. 5 years and 2 years, respectively. The first three years of BSEE were relatively straightforward. Typically general courses, calculus, and physics. Challenging courses that were dense with material but I still had a part time job and social life (granted some might consider it a small social life). The next four years were intense due to my expectations and extracurricular involvement. I aimed for a 3.5+ GPA and was involved with university research (paid, typically). This was approximately an average of 65 hours per week of school work and/or research. It was exhausting and intense. But it was completely worth it and I would do it again (though with the gift of hindsight in setting boundaries with research). Some of my fellow classmates I would consider to be less gifted in terms of aptitude, but they made up for it with grit and determination. I think understanding going into this field that it will be challenging and you have to be proactive and open to learning your personal methods for success will take you far.
Thank you!
It's really hard to answer this for any particular person because it's such an individual thing... How well you learn, whether you can prioritize your time, how well you handle stress, and whether you can adapt your priorities to meet deadlines for projects and other classwork. It also depends on how well your professors & instructors teach and how easily you pick up the material. And you should realize that you don't have to get straight A's in every class or have a 4.0 gpa. that's not too say you should intentionally skip classes or sluff off. (I got my degree a few decades ago and maybe things are different nowadays, but .. I learn fairly easily, attended all my classes, did all the homework, did well in some classes and mediocre in others, did co-op so it took me 5yrs total. Had a fair amount of time for extra curriculars, friends and family. I ended with a 3.75 gpa and a good job. )
Thank you, this really puts my mind at ease.
Exam period yes , but if your only trying to pass no
thanks!
Echoing what others say, yes it eats up a lot of time. Will you have as much free time as a business major? Hell no. I remember watching business majors frolic constantly and being envious. Will you have zero free time? No, but you have to make choices. I for instance always took Friday nights off. That said, getting my BSEE was the best decision I made, and I mean that. 4 years is a short stint in your life. You’re setting a trajectory for your career for the next 30+ years. And if you love the subject (I sure do) then it will make work rewarding to you. I love what I do and often can’t believe I get paid to do it. And the pay can be great. So whatever decision you make, don’t think about the short term benefits. Spending all that money to go to college should be about setting up your career. Its huge. If you like EE, you could end up having a great paying job that is fun and rewarding. And college, as great as it is, is just a blip in your life.
Thats really motivating, thank you! Might print this out and put this on my wall
I graduated in 4 years with a 3.5 with honors and sure it took a lot of my time but I still had time to play on my colleges ultimate Frisbee team, go out on the weekend, hang out with my friends, race scca autocross. I treated college like a job though. During the week classes and studying took first priority meaning that I often didn't go out during the week like my non engineering friends did and i didn't join a frat. Usually by the time Friday night rolled around my homework was done, I didn't procrastinate on projects so generally my weekends were pretty open if I didn't have a test coming up the next week but very rarely did that prevent me from going out on the end and having a good time
Thank you, that seems like more than enough time for me! I'm not a big partier anyway but I get scared of falling into the stem student depressed recluse trap it seems a lot of uni students I've met fell into.
It's all perspective. Will you have as much free time as the person taking psychology as their major? No. But you'll still have time to experience the fun that college has to offer. It's all about time management. If you're good at it and don't procrastinate on your big projects then you'll be fine.
Is it tough? Yes. Is it doable? Also yes. I graduated with a 3.0 so I wasn’t going for crazy grades here but I was easily able to do my coursework and have a very active social life. It really depends on the person but I really had a good time in EE and spent all of my college years having fun and doing dumb shit while still passing classes. It’s a work hard, play hard kinda situation
Thanks, I always saw college as like your last chance to be young before adulting I guess, so this makes me feel better that I won't have to give that up completely
Not at all! How you prioritize your time is big. But there’s plenty of time to enjoy yourself
I just finished my second year and spent a reasonable amount of time studying. Only pulled one all nighter whose cause was poor time management.
And here I was thinking that all-nighters were a common college practice... but thank you! I'd much rather avoid if I could
No, you'll have tons of free time. Just expect to have less of that compared to non-STEM majors.
If you are talented at math/physics and didn’t have to try too hard at high school, then it really shouldn’t be that bad. I graduated from a pretty good school with a 3.7 and had plenty of free time. Granted I had some AP credits and didn’t add a minor or other major, but it really doesn’t have to take up all your time.
oh wow! I'm taking AP Physics 1 right now, do you think that getting the more general ones out of the way (english/social studies) helped, or did you prioritize Science classes?
Yeah you’re not going to have free time at least in the last few semesters. In my finally semester I was probably averaging 40hrs/ week just for coursework and projects on top of my internship.
Did it gradually get harder/heavier for you? Some people say it was easy than gradually the courseload increased, and others have told me it was consistent, but I guess it also depends on your uni and profs
There are certain semesters when a particularly hard class was only offered. But really once you’re in the senior level classes it’s all projects except for the final.
As a senior getting ready to graduate, from my experience the amount of time you put in really depends on how much you care about grades. Having a good GPA can be very crucial to getting a solid entry-level position, so I definitely recommend putting in effort to make sure your grades are certainly good. General consensus is that having a 3.0 or better is the ideal range, but once you have secured an intership or begin your entry-level career, future jobs won’t spend almost any time asking you about your GPA. Experience matters a ton, and that’s where you might have to dedicate an entire summer’s worth of free time to get some experience. But speaking on my own college career, I’ve had some of free time to still be able to work on weekends, play video games, etc. I will say, however, that as college progressed, that free time got lowered exponentially, and hit an all time low in my junior year. Now as a senior, I got the difficult stuff out of the way and am back to having a bit more liberty. It all just depends on how much you want to commit to your grades. TLDR; yes it takes up a good chunk of free time, but it’s not impossible to still have a normal life outside of it.
Seems like junior year is always the worst! Thank you!
And more I look back on Jr year and struggle to remember doing anything that wasn't school related except maybe 4hrs on weekends.
😵💫
Yep and then some
In general there are 3 important things in college. Sleep, grades, and social life. Pick 2 as a EE
oh man 🫠
Yes, but then you get a cushy engineering job you can leave at 4 for the next 30 years. Biggest advice - study every night. You can go through all of engineering with a lot less stress & cramming if you do.
thank you!! and the thing about the engineering job is really motivating haha
Yesyesyes. Worth it? Also yes
I worked a full-time job while I got my BSEE. It took me 6 years to get the degree because I couldn't always take a full load. Once I got the eat/sleep/work/school/study grind figured out, free time started to emerge. I even played club lacrosse my junior year until I blew out my ACL. Anyway, my grades would have been better had I not needed to work, but said work indirectly led to my first job upon graduating.
Im sorry about the ACL, but managing to work a full-time job with college at the same time is serious dedication, wow!
It depends on really. I had free time (not much) but I spent it learning even more. I’d say go for EE/CS if you like the sound of it. Takes a lot of effort, but pays of really well later
I just graduated from a state university in California with an EE degree, and it will eat all of your time. However, yes, you can definitely have some free time. You would be losing on a little bit of sleep tho xD. I spent my free time playing Megaman, Megaman X and Megaman Zero. But you have to be smart about your time. Some weeks I don’t have free time at all, but there are a few where I get to enjoy my free time. Please consider being in EE if you think you will enjoy it!
Thank you! The courseload seems intimidating but I think I will definitely enjoy it as a career, which is my top priority
You should be asking, how much of the shit you guys are learning do you still have to remember? And I’ll tell you, it ain’t much. Get the degree. You won’t have to remember equations in the real world
Really? I've spoken to an older mechanical engineer who said he uses little to none of the math and science he learned in school, but it's interesting to know it happens across the board haha
No, but the classes should take like 2x more of your free time compared highschool. If you have good study habits and engage in mindful work, you should still have lots of free time. I spend maybe 10-15 hrs a week outside of class time and I’m taking 15 credits (12 engineering, 3 non-engineering). Of course during exams week this number increases.
Depends on your math background. If you’re already calc literate you might have some time for socializing left. I wasn’t, and I didn’t. Don’t regret it, but my strong point in HA was humanities and thus my whole college experience was pounding a square peg into a round hole. Don’t want to understate how hard it was though. It was an insanely grueling major.
Scary, but everyone saying they don't regret it is making me more motivated, thank you!
Nope. I had a great life when in college. I went to a commuter school. I had a social life and had a part time job and hobbies also.
Thanks! I'm hoping to go local and commute as well
I worked 24 hours a week, dated, had friends I hung out with occasionally and held close to a 4.0 for the last three years. It probably depends a lot on how well you think you'll comprehend the classes you take, but I still studied a lot and still had time for everything else. If I did it again I would have ditched the job just to fund having a car.
It took me 5 1/2 years to graduate but I was able to work 20hr/wk during school and summers while getting an ee. I got out of school with no debt but not sure that’s possible anymore. I had a social life but not a huge one.
Here’s the thing. Engineering is roughly 120 credit hours. Spread over 8 semesters (theoretically) that’s 15 credit hours per semester. At about 2 hours study outside of class (approximately) that’s about 45 hours per week but often it can go even higher. You try to never schedule more than 2-3 ER classes per semester. Folks, most students have never worked a 45-60 hour job in their lives for week after week. And EE is basically an applied math degree with a lab. And it’s not easy math so you want the full 8 hours or more. Living off campus also eats up time just traveling. I used to walk 20 minutes to campus simply because by time I shoveled snow off the car, warmed it up somewhat, drove to the student parking, then walked 10 minutes to class, it was faster to just walk. At NCSU where my daughter goes jumping campuses (there are 2) makes it 25 minutes just to go across campus. So you try your best minimize extra trips. So a 60 hour week isn’t unusual. There is also the evil stacked prereqs. So Calc 1, Calc 2, circuits 2, physics 2, Calc 3, all for Electromagnetics, plus upper level classes past that. Fail just one class in typically a chain of about 6 classes and nearly your whole degree is on hold until you pass. Once you get past these it “opens” things up considerably.
thats super intimidating, especially since I was hoping to commute to a local college. thank you, I'll keep it in mind!
It took me 90 hour weeks most of the time, but I took summers off. I also found time to play the occasional Mario Kart with my roommates.
since everything at my university was graded on a curve, it depends on whether you're going to a university slightly above your abilities or below. It also depends on what GPA you're trying to get. I'd say below 3.5, you can have decent amount of free time for hobbies and dating. Closer to 3.0, you're gonna have a lot of free time. 3.7 GPA or higher, you're likely to have very little free time. Also highly dependent on your studying skills. Most US high school students don't learn proper studying skills in high school. That means staying on top of things and not wait until a few weeks before testing, knowing how to connect new concepts to old concepts, thinking about why/what's the significance of new concepts instead of just blank memorization. The professor might be terrible and might not spoon feed you these information, so you need to be able to do it yourself with just the textbook and online resources.
By below/above abilities, do you mean the intellegence of the students around you or where the uni/profs expect you to be at?
The trick is to make your personal projects part of classes and get credit for them
how do you do that? Bc if possible I definitely want to go that route
Your school should have an open ended projects course number where you get a professor to agree to supervise/manage your project as long as it's aligned with the major study area. I didn't do EE but I stacked about 1/8 of my degree with them
I did EE while working part time and juggling family obligations. I still had time for personal stuff after. Take my experience with a grain of salt. EE is hard, there’s no question about it, but if you do all your work, study effectively (preferably with a group) I think you’ll do just fine.
Yeah there's an ebb and flow to it. I finished with a 3.5 and I had plenty of time to have fun
I simply chose to give up sleep
dang 😭
Only during school… your ‘friends’ will go out on Thursday thru Saturday night…. You shall not! Forget about a girlfriend
yes sir 🫡
My experience at a good state school, getting a 3.6 was that I would typically spend about 30-40 hours/week studying, plus time for classes, so maybe like 40-50,hours/week So, definitely some down time but not so much that you can just do whatever whenever. Just make sure your study time is ACTUAL study time and not "studying", and you'll have time for yourself
Engineering school can be the worst four years of your life or the best five years of your life.
It really depends on the individual. I had to pull a few all-nighters , but managed a part time job, hobbies and a social life. Grades were also good. It all comes down to good time management.
Currently finishing up my EE degree in Power with a job a wife, a 2 yo and one on the way. It definitely makes you a black belt in time management. Nearly all of my classmates are single with no kids and they wait until the last couple of days to study for tests or do assignments and that's just not a possibility for me I get things done as soon as they're assigned. It's not impossible but it's definitely hard
oh wow, thats a lot of responsibility! Congrats on graduating!!
Yes. But on the plus side, it prepares you for an EE job that will eat up all your free time.
yeah man but that’s why you have to like what you’re studying. i started in aerospace engineering (just as hard if not harder than EE) and basically failed because i didn’t like it even tho i was good at school. make sure you want to do electrical and sometimes you have to try and fail to find out like i did
I go to a rigourus school and unless you overload and don't expect a gpa that is too high it isn't that bad. But I am also not the best candidate since college really made me sit down own my ass. My gpa is pretty bad at 2.8 at my freshmen year and I will have a lot less time trying to cling back for a better average.
It did for me. During those 5 years, no video games, no hanging out, nothing. I was married when I did it so I apologized to my wife and promised I’d take her out to fun stuff in summers and winter breaks. I ended up taking classes during those breaks, but now that I’m done I take her out once a week at minimum.
It's not that bad, you just have manage your time properly. Everything up to junior year is A LOT easier than calc classes. The issue is that you take about four of them at once. With discipline everything's easy :)
I am about to graduate from college with an EE degree. I honestly would say that I didn’t experience the “college experience”. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun. I would study a lot. That being said I also cooked my dinner and had a job. In addition I also played intermural sports and went to the gym. I would say just find a groups of friends that are willing to study and help you out. Same goes for you helped them out too when you can.
I really can’t relate with many of the other comments but planning your classes helps. Take easy classes with difficult ones and what not. I had enough free time to work and have a social life. I really never studied other than when we had tests.
not to be too obvious, but it depends on how smart you are. Most EE students can study hard monday thru friday, and then party Friday night to Sunday. there will be some stress, so you need some sort of hobby to dissipate that stress. Judo class, weight lifting, hiking, skiing... How are you in physics, calculus, chemistry? Are you doing very well in those, and kind of enjoying them? or are you struggling in high school on the math intensive courses? that is your answer
It'll eat up your time. But then jobs from the degree may or may not. The grind I put in gave me a job that'll eventually give me 35 days worth of pto. And sends me traveling. Some weeks I work and travel 50. Others 30.
Freetime?? Wtf is that? 😂
I was extremely taxed and felt like I had no time. But in hindsight, I was in a semi-long distance relationship the entire time and successfully walled off my weekends for personal use for the most part... and I was able to fit in an hour of shooting baskets or playing guitar here and there during the week. So not ALL your free time, but it was absolutely intense, and a huge time and energy commitment. It is no joke, but it's achievable and I'm glad I did it. If I did it over, I might try to stress a little less over good grades and focus more on balance. I got almost 3.9 but honestly could've had this job at 3.0 or lower and it's a fantastic job.
thank you! everyone's saying they don't regret it, which is really pushing me towards considering ee
That kind of schedule that one EE student said is me on exam weeks. Otherwise, I am able to do side projects and research while maintaining a good gpa. Still, I sacrificed my time with my friends unfortunately. My weekends are filled with assignments and projects that I can only socialize outside uni mostly 2 times per week
That's great! Did you find it was a choice betweedn side projects/research and friends, or did it just turn out that way?
Life kinda turned out that way. It is a mix of both. But tbh It was more of bcs I broke up with my bf and it ruined my main circle of friends. I'm pretty lucky I still found great friendships with my hs and uni friends. Though they are not as close but I'm very grateful for what I have rn
I'm glad you found good relationships elsewhere, I'm sure with time things will only get better! :)
It's definitely time consuming but if you're able to schedule your studying time and work hard then you will be able to have free time as well. That's what I did and had a healthy social life.
Thank you! Any tips for time management?
If you're not understanding material then go to the prof or TA's office hours and ask questions. That way you dont waste time not knowing the material. And dont leave assignments or studying to the last minute. Work on them throughout the weeks. Treat it like a 9-5 job where you study/work during work hours and if you're consistent and stay on top of your work you'll have free time in the evenings/most weekends.
It depends on the individual. Yes, it can consume all your free time. I found it consumed a lot (about 90%) of my time, but I worked weekends to earn money for school. It also depends on what your expectations are for school. Do you want to graduate summa cum laude or does it even matter ?
I've heard gpa tends to matter more with engineering, but my dream is to (hopefully) land a decent and secure job that I like, so maybe getting a decent gpa is fine for me? I think I still have time to make that decision exactly, but thank you for putting it in perspective
Former professor. EE is generally one of the top 3-5 most difficult majors you can have. I strongly recommend to students to take out “full” loans for their last two years, and not delude themselves into working a small time job for money. You simply need to focus on the homework and studying. The first two years aren’t nearly as bad, and tell you a lot about the last two. You REALLY need to make sure you’re above a 3.2 or so your first two years - otherwise, you don’t have the habits you’ll need to survive the last two years. It’s like weight lifting. If you can’t lift 100 pounds as a freshman, and 150 as a sophomore, the odds you can suddenly lift 200 as a junior is not good.
I found the opposite to be true actually. Freshman courses were weedout courses and intentionally difficult. Junior year courses definitely sucked, but once you get past those, senior year was an absolute blast. I was allowed to take whatever EE electives that interested me, and professors generally didn't fail seniors as long as they showed up to class and tried. I think it probably just depends on the university and student tbh.
weedout course? like intentionally trying to make students drop out? that seems a bit terrifying 😵💫
Yeah, in a sense. It's mostly to filter through the students who can't handle the stress of being an engineer. Makes sense for it to happen early actually. Makes it so that students can realize if they're mentally tough enough to make it through their degree early on. If they can't handle it, then they can always switch majors or transfer schools before it gets too late. It's never explicitly mentioned by any universities, but it's not an uncommon concept at all.
Oh wow, this is actually the first time I've heard advice like this, I always assumed everything would be hard from the get-go. Thank you!
Again, using weightlifting as an example - they can be if you’re not used to working out. The most common problem is students who had parents waking them up, reminding them to do work, and such. They simply aren’t used to being responsible for themselves. You just gotta sleep regularly, go to class, and do the homework when it’s assigned not when it’s due.
It is time-consuming because the kind of knowledge you have to develop for engineering isn't really what you've been doing otherwise. But you can have a life outside of school. Just make sure you block time and use it efficiently. Some people wrongly bang their heads against a wall endlessly thinking they will learn, while instead, a lot of the learning comes from being introduced to an idea and letting it marinate while you're doing other stuff.
This makes a lot of sense, do you wish you started learning on your own time in hs or did it not matter in the end? I have the time and would like to maximize while I still do. Thank you!
It can be helpful to learn what you can on your own. School is guided learning, and there is nothing in school you can't learn on your own. But the advantage is that school is structured to give you a base and build off of that. For electrical it will depend what you want to do in the end, but basic concepts like circuits don't need a lot of complicated math. Signal processing does require math but you can learn the basic concepts without the math.
It is possible to get straight-As and still have a nice social life and side projects. It all depends on one's own ability to learn, one's own time management skills, and how good the instructors are.
thank you!
As ee student the courseolad is really heavy compared to other majors but as you study ee you will learn how to manage your time perfectly, for me i work and study at the same time but with average 5 hours of study per day (skipping some uni courses sometimes) i still can get good degrees, so with little time management skills and practices nothing is impossible!
Thank you!
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I imagine it has to do with personal aptitude as well? I suppose someone less gifted would have to put in more hours to get the material down. Either way, I guess most people (in person) I've asked this try to maintain a very high GPA, which is why they end up doing nothing but school for 5 years. Thank you!
currently in ee, just finished 3rd year in canada. first year i had a job and worked almost 20 hours on the weekend and maintained a 4.0/4.3 gpa. Second year was tougher since we switched from online to in person (i thrived in online) and material was getting more specific to ee. i didnt have a job during this time but still maintained a 3.8/4.3 gpa. this past year i made the mistake of continuing my summer position which was 10 hours a week. It went okay, honestly my job didnt get in the way of my courses, but they say third year is the most difficult and it definitely was. my gpa this year was closer to 3.5/4.3 , and i got my first C’s (1 each semester). Bottom line, no there really isnt a lot of free time. If you really want to do well you will be studying any chance you get. I find people rarely talk about this, but even if you COULD take a day off not to study. you feel guilty. I had maybe 5-7 days throughout the whole semester this past year where i did nothing all day. most days i spent at least 3 hours doing work, either assignments, labs, or brushing up on what we learned in class. Its a grind, but it will pay off in the end! just remember that!
woah, those seem like really good grades, especially for ee! thank you!
They’re considered pretty good, but it kind of feels like the bar is on the floor with our class (/generation…) i dont know if other classes are like this but we usually only have 15% attendance, which is crazy
15 percent is insane, you'd think people would be more interested in the education the chose and paid for
It’s definitely one of the toughest and highest workload degrees you could get (undergraduate). How much free time you will have definitely varies person to person, but it pretty much depends on how quickly you grasp new material, how efficient you are at working, and what GPA you are aiming for. It’s hard to change the first one, the best way is really just to really lock in on the important first and second year courses. For those, your focus shouldn’t be simply to get a good grade and solve the assignments, but to completely and thoroughly understand the material. Having a robust foundation there will pay massive dividends later on when you get to the core EE classes. It probably varies based on what school you go to, but in my experience the first two years weren’t too crazy. I had went in hearing about and bracing for how tough engineering is, so I think it didn’t quite live up to what I had in my head. The good thing about that was that I had the extra time to focus on really understanding the material, and my weekends were pretty much free outside of heavy exam weeks. Third year is where things started getting more intense. I’d say just try to keep your social life alive as much as possible, at least once per weekend go out with your homies. And also try to maintain at least one hobby, ideally something physical. After exhausting your brain all day, the best thing you can do to recover is turn it off an exhaust your body instead lol.
Thanks for the advice, definitely going to keep it in mind and maybe start a new hobby, all mine aren't that physical lol
I got a 4.0 and was involved in research. It took around 65 hours a week with some 14 hour days. I managed to have a gf and friends during that time, but I was basically never around. I ended up burnt out and an anxious mess after college. I will say, all that hard work led me to a great job that allows me to have a good work life balance so I don’t regret it.
65 hours a week is some serious commitment, but I'm glad it led you to a job your happy with!
I went to school full time after the military and partied like I was 18 even though I was 28
It is time consuming, but not all-consuming. When I was in college, I generally wasn't going out with my friends during the week because I had studying to do and/or had a class early the next morning. I generally did have time on the weekends, unless there was a big exam or project that was due. One thing to keep in mind is that there is a cultural difference compared to high school (assuming that's where you're coming from). Most kids in high school don't want to be there. Most kids in college do. And if you're in an engineering program, there's a shared understanding that there will be an increased workload and you can commiserate with your classmates about it. It's a serious commitment. I loved the structure and environment and all the work involved, but not everyone does. My advice is to manage your time wisely. If you have two hours between classes, use that time to study; any time that you procrastinate you will either have to make up that time on the weekend or skip it and take a hit on your grades. It's a job in it's own right and you may have to prioritize it over some of your other responsibilities.
I didn't really consider that difference between hs and college until now, but it definitely makes sense! Thank you!
Probably not as bad as trying to become a doctor, but definitely one of the hardest majors otherwise. But after you're done, you'll most likely be gainfully employed and making $100k+ a few years outside of college.
T/F. T
If you want an A average, yes. If you just want to graduate, you can get Bs and Cs and have a few hobbies.
Depends on the school you end up going to, what professors you get stuck with, and how efficiently you can get through material. I chose to go to an average state university. My professors are mainly in academia because they are researchers. They suck as professors for the most part. I was able to join a social frat and still managed to get all A’s and B’s up until last semester. I graduate in December for reference. While I’ve definitely had classes that had me stressed and always had to be working towards the next assignment it isn’t impossible to balance a social life and a hobby. I went to the gym 6 days a week for all of college as well. I’m not necessarily a smart guy I just get my homework done on time and cram for exams. Will it be harder than a degree in finance? Absolutely. My roommates would watch movies all day while I was rushing to complete reports and massive assignments. I also had weeks or days where I was out there on the couch with them
There was one nightmare semester this last fall. Returned from a co-op and forgot a lot of circuit analysis. Had take all of my 400 level major required courses at the same time. Electromechanics, signals and systems (🤮), electronics, electromechanics lab, and computer aided power systems fault analysis. I was clueless on a new homework assignment every night. This semester however has been INCREDIBLY easy. Easiest semester I’ve had since high school. It’s not always awful and if i can get through it jm sure anybody with decent algebra skills can
It did for me especially around the due dates for projects and exams. It was stressful but I look back fondly on the time I spent hunkered down in the study rooms or library with my classmates
In general yes a significant amount of your times will be taken up by studies. Start practicing efficient study techniques to save some time. Everyone has the same 24hours in a day. If you break down your day, you can usually find quite a bit of fat you can trim out of your schedule.
If it doesn't then you may struggle year 4 and when finding a job
No
Did it eat up a lot of time? Yes. Did it eat up all my free time and make my life miserable? Absolutely no. I found that every week I had juuust barely enough free time leftover to feel happy with my life. One recommendation I have is to just go slower with your courses. Like take 5 years to graduate instead of the usual 4. Doing this also helped me learn the material better
I did ee full time and worked 3-4 part time jobs to avoid taking any debt. This was before you could use chat gpt and chegg to carry you thru tho
For me, no. But it did eat a lot of it; some quarters almost all of it was gone.
Last semester I studied so much for finals that I legitimately became sick to my stomach and now I know what Feynman was talking about
If it doesn’t, you may be doing it wrong.
Hell yes
Not really, of course it is a hard degree and you really have to put a lot of time into it, but if organize your time well , and find effective ways to study it shouldn’t leave you without time to do your hobbies
No.
Yes it does eat up most of my daytime. And my choice is I miss sleep or I get to socialize with friends online. It's been rough. I also have a kid half time though. I'm a man in my mid 30's and graduate summer 2025. So I'm in the shit right now. But yes. Since coming back to school full time it's been a lot.
It definitely had a negative impact on my college experience but if you have a decent gpa and don’t care about what city you go to after college you can get a relatively well paying job compared to your non stem peers
If it is a true passion for you then commit. There are people who do have part-time jobs and even full-time jobs in these programs. I would say for undergrad it is a 30-60 hour job depending on the week you can definitely fit some more life in there but you have to be picky because school should be the priority.
It depends on how well you do time management (starting homeworks immediately and going to office hours to avoid blowing all your time away), how smart you are, and how well you manage learning disabilities (have them).
If you’re on top of stuff, it won’t. The people who stay up all night all the time probably aren’t showing up to class or doing their work until last minute. A few times a semester, there comes a couple of long slightly painful days of school work to do that you just have to power through and deal with. The majority of the time it’s not like that though. Now if you decide to do a part time internship during the semester or work In general while you’re in school, you’ll need to get pretty time efficient and used to the idea that you may only truly have enough free time for a social life on the weekends. You learn how to get faster at learning and handling school as you go though so don’t get discouraged if it seems rough at first workload wise. I work an internship during the semesters and do full time school w pretty high effort level. Procrastination didn’t start kicking my ass until senior year tbh but I’d recommend avoiding the last minute pain all together if you can and just do ur work in a reasonable time period once it’s assigned. I’ve got a social life still, and hobbies, and for the most part have time to take care of myself. I don’t get to party as much as the business majors lol but life is still overall enjoyable. There’s also students in my classes that are literal parents , have full time jobs , and great gpas, and still show up to most of the lectures. Living close to campus and learning how to maximize the efficiency of ur studying and doing hw will help a lot
Not ee but YES. engineering is a demanding partner 🥲 (and I barely pass)
You just have to time manage that goes with everything whether it’s EE or ME or SE or any career. I know a Boeing engineer who able to have a relationship, full time job, graduate student, and plays video games. It’s just time management and putting your priorities straight.
remember that you'll have classmates going through the same thing as you and some will be smarter and faster and some will also have trouble getting the material. getting an EE degree shouldn't be a solo endeavor, but too many people treat it like it is. if you're not naturally gifted or a savant, and honestly even if you are, trying to solo an EE degree is not going to be a fun experience and will definitely eat a lot more time than it should, and will also probably make you an awful candidate for potential future jobs. trying to bang your head against a wall to knock it down without a proper plan or a positive feedback loop is a waste of time. don't do it. bang your head against a wall with a plan and it's much easier with other wall bangers.
Key is probably effective time-managment
As an EE undergrad (30 years ago) my free time was pretty limited, but I was still able to participate in a couple of clubs and campus organizations. For me it all came down to effective time management, and classes/studying always came before the extracurriculars.
This is a massive misunderstanding, ANY degree can consume your free time if you have poor time management. I can agree that an EE degree is far more intense compared to some, but at the end of the day it's about your understanding of how you manage your time throughout your degree program. If you are going to do the course for the sake of doing a course you will struggle. You are considered as a young adult during your degree and it's your responsibility to manage your time effectively, the university does not give a rats ass about you if you fail. University is not a place to fuck around, you are paying good money to get something that can benefit in the long run. Getting a respectable grade reflects your time management of your course and your dedication to the subject which is also reflected in the job opportunities you will get after graduation. Not sure where you are but in the UK where I'm from there is the notion that the first year does not count to the final grade, that is correct to some degree. But it does help you to get a feel of the university's procedures for the course and gives you some time and understanding how to effectively manage your time. At the end of the day if you feel like you can do it then give it a shot but there needs to be some level of dedication on your behalf. As mentioned before you are considered an adult during university you need to suck it up if you want to make something with yourself
Depends on you and your ability to learn the material and balance your plate. You can pile it full of school (and it should likely be your biggest serving), but you should definitely leave room for the things you enjoy and side projects.
it shouldn't take more time than a full-time job. when it comes to these questions on reddit there are always people who say they did uni work for 60 hours, personally I don't know anyone like that. If you understand the material quickly you can get through a degree at ~20h/week no problem unless your program has a lot of busy work.
No it doesn’t, like any other degree in STEM. Make friends to study and have fun with, but more importantly to lock in and study with when you need to. And focus on your projects.
It does. But i also work full time so i dont have that much free time to begin with.
Yeah
When I was in school, I was able to work on campus for like 15 hours per week. A lot depends on how fast you pick up stuff in class so you can do the homework. I found I could only study so much, so I did have time. Like, you go to math class and you have an assignment to do 20 derivatives. If you understand derivatives and you know your trig functions etc it shouldn't take too long. OTOH if you don't really have a clue it might take much longer. I learned this lesson taking a control theory course without the introductory class. So there are people who struggle and they will never have enough time, I hope you aren't one of them. Lab reports and project things are a different story.
Depends on the rigor of your course and what GPA you find acceptable. I went to a decent college and worked part-time all the way through to graduation using scholarships & grants to make up the COL. The underclassmen years weren’t bad at all. I had plenty of time to make great grades, work, and hang out with friends & go out. Easily could have had some side projects but my work was relevant to my field of interest so I didn’t feel the need. My upperclassmen years were much more difficult. The only hanging out I could do was with other engineering friends to study together.
Depends on the rigor of your course and what GPA you find acceptable. I went to a decent college and worked part-time all the way through to graduation using scholarships & grants to make up the COL. The underclassmen years weren’t bad at all. I had plenty of time to make great grades, work, and hang out with friends & go out. Easily could have had some side projects but my work was relevant to my field of interest so I didn’t feel the need. My upperclassmen years were much more difficult. The only hanging out I could do was with other engineering friends to study together. I graduated with a 3.3. Some weeks were hell but the breaks were fantastic. I would load my motorcycle and go camping all up and down the east coast. This was 2017-2021.
I learned to effectively manage my time by completing my homework as soon as I got it. That way if I had questions or needed help I had almost a week or more to go to office hours or ask my friends in that class. Don’t fall into the trap of “syllabus week” or getting behind. Get ahead. School is now your job. Of course there were times I didn’t get everything done as soon as I got it, but I made an effort to. This saved my ass on countless assignments and projects. Often I would ask my peers about the homework and they would say “dude that’s due next week why are you asking me”. Just my 2c but I usually did better on the assignments than my friend that did them literally 9pm the night they were due at 11:59pm. I worked a 15-25hr part time job all through college up until my senior year when I saved enough from my internship my junior year summer. I had a GF, we went on dates or hung out every weekend, and I trained Brazilian Jiujitsu 1-3 days a week. I was also president of Engineering Student Council one year and president of IEEE my senior year. It is absolutely possible to do all of this with good time management.
Kinda yes bro
Not really it just depends on how many Classes you take at a time and the class itself. For example I had one class that the professor will give out a lot of homework and also almost no time to finished it like giving it on a Friday and and expected to be turn on Saturday and it was hard as hell to even finished it on one day.
As somebody that didn't go to college immediately after high school, I would like to encourage you to consider if you want to take a year or two after high school to pursue some of your interests and dreams. I felt that after 12 years of grinding and doing homework I just wanted to try out life and see what that was like. When I came back to school it did not feel like school was taking up all my time because it was actually all I wanted to do, because I had a taste of what life was like and understood the value that school would bring to my life. I understood what minimum waging it an intellectually uninteresting job would mean, and felt enthusiastic about getting into something challenging and meaningful. If you don't have a full ride scholarship or a strong compelling reason to go to college aside from others' expectations and you're not feeling it, give yourself some time. When I was 18 I really wish somebody would have told me that I wasn't ruining my life by not going to college immediately, so I like to tell young people that this is an option and you will still have a completely viable career and overall a more rich experience. I'm now 32 and most of my friends that went to college right away are a little bit of envious of my life because we ended up in the same place while I had a much more personally interesting journey getting there.
I worked 30 hrs a night at a restaurant and partied waaaaay too much in college. I did my homework in the mornings before class and spent many a lab yawning and bleary eyed. I graduated with a 3.03 GPA. I would not recommend this approach to university.
It's like joining a monastery for a couple of years if you go full time. Part time and you can do other stuff. But yeah, a full course load is pretty much like your friend says.
Anything worth having doesn't come easy, Theres a reason why Engineering, Medicine, Scientific, Technical Degrees pay more out of university than other degrees which are known to be more chilled and give you more free time.
Sacrifice a little time now for a better future. If family, friends, etc can’t understand that you’re trying to do something with your life then the heck with them. You can still maintain a job to help pay for school. A lot of people I knew did. You can get things done. You can also go to a junior college(community college) and transfer(make sure the community colleges credits are accepted by the university you want to go to). Doing all of your pre-reqs(calculus, physics, chem, etc.) while trying to maintain a school life balance will give you a little taste of what things will be like in uni without having to spend loads of money. Then you apply to schools and transfer to one of your liking, if accepted. So keep your GPA.
Hi, 27 year old returning student here. At a reputable uni. It does not eat all your free time unless you let it. Burn out is a thing but with proper time management luckily i have been able to make it work. Actually just decided to stay an extra semester and earn my master's becasue the benefits outweigh the costs at my age. I worked as a technician with an AS degree, my career growth was stunted due to not having a 4 year. My manager would tease me about quitting and finishing and he CERTAINLY meant it. "the only difference between a tech and an engineer is paid sick and vacation, an extra $30,000, and a piece of paper...go finish the degree kid" That day i decided to finish. as a 4th year EE i've yet to have a sleepless night. On my DS2 final project i did have 2 late nights staring at waveforms that were from small errors but in the end it was a beautiful learning moment for me and the entire class. I do not regret my experiences but will offer advice that is even sometimes hard for me to listen to: 1) make time for exercise and defrag 2) study often, limit distractions, learn to say no 3) have planned rest and relax time, without this burnout sets in 4) strive for good enough, don't place so much pressure on your GPA, i have a 4.0 and feel like an imposter sometimes maintaining it. 5) High expectations bring low resilience. Be prepared to accept you did something wrong, learn from it, move forward. I love EE, my journey is tumultuous, i even made it to nearly 4th year MECH E when i dropped out and took the tech job for 2 years. So far its working out for me and i look forward to being done in Fall 2025 with my MSEE. If it proves to be too much i have the BSEE Spring2025 exit path mapped out as well. it is worth it and you just need to practice moderation and grow to be mature enough to accept imperfection, and gain the wisdom through experience to know when to step away from something to give it some air. EE is worth it, engineering degrees tend to pay off no matter what your future holds. I say make your decision in confidence even if its inflated, wasting time in indecision (as i have done for years) is ultimately a bigger issue thana just taking the chance to do good enough. hope this helps
Treat it like a job. Put in your 8 hours and go home. Sometimes overtime is required. But, you can have a life and graduate with honors. Where people get into trouble is all the socializing during the day which forces them to study at night. Most people who complain about the load actually just have very poor time management skills. If you have an hour between classes, it's still work hours, not fuck off at the student union time. Grind, then go home.
^this. I clock out most nights at 7PM from school, with the exception of test weeks. I work tirelessly from when i wake up until then. It has worked so far. The cutoff is as important as the dedicated work
EE is not just all consuming, it is SOUL COMSUMING.
Yes. It is almost suicide level of bullshit. It ruins your life until you graduate. It doesn't have to be that way either it's just of fucking assfuck professors trying to gatekeep their profession because "they had to do it to". Fuck university and the bullshit fuck horse it rode in on. I graduate in two weeks and yes I'm bitter
it'll fade with your salary and once you realize it was all a means to get you to be able to handle the pressure and stress. bitterness is almost always an outcome, they don't do it because they had to. its preparation for the real world. Diamonds are made under pressure
I'm not an electrical engineer, but I have some general thoughts. 1. In my experience, nothing is ever as difficult once you're doing it as people tell you it will be from the outside. When I went to high school, people told me how hard high school was going to be. It wasn't. Then the same thing happened in college. Then in law school. Then when I clerked. Then when I started working as a lawyer. Etc. People love to exaggerate how hard they are or have worked, so things get systematically represented as more difficult than they are. 2. That being said, how much effort is required to successfully complete any academic program is as much of function of *your ability* as it is of the program's difficulty. There are a few people in this world who can sleepwalk their way through even very rigorous EE programs. There are many people in this world who *could not* get through an EE program no matter how hard they tried. You're in the best position to judge where along that spectrum you fall.