Electrical & electronic engineering

mrac

Hi all, I am thinking of doing electrical & electronic engineering at UCC, and I was wondering if anyone did the course - (found it good/bad, better/worse than CIT, and also if there was a big computer science element to it) any help would be appreciated thx.

whatalanger

Just finished four tough years of this course. It can be a bitch of a course if you're not prepared to put the work in, well that's what i found anyway. Couldn't really compare it to any course in CIT as I don't know about them but the broad range of subjects covered by this course will give you a good grounding in most aspects of electrical and electronic engineering. As regards a computer science element to this course (I presume you mean computer programming by this), there is a bit of programming in C and C++ during first and second year, but after that it probably depends on where your interests lie.

cargrouch

Not a huge computer science element to it, but a lot of use of computers.
Avoid electronics options (except stuff related to electrical ie power electronics).

There are good jobs out there for electrical engineers, not for electronic engineers. I certainly wouldn't expect any boom in electronics employment in Ireland by the time you graduate. In fact I would put money on it being in an even more dodgy position.

It is (or was, at least) a very tough course, high workload. The average Leaving Cert points of my class would have been 520 or above, and we though it was tough. Of course, the sink or swim attitude of many of the lecturers may have been corrected since by the fall off in demand and entry points.

Jobswise in electrical, I suspect most of the electrical companies in Cork would consider CIT and UCC elec engineers equally. (Even possibly a bias towards CIT because of the amount of people in these companies who went there). Don't take my word on that, check it out if you can. ESB, ESBI would have a bias towards UCC I'd say. There is also a lot of engineers from UCC over the years who have joined consultancy firms such as Accenture, or gone to some of the big banks in London, Citibank being one. (Mucho moola in both these companies)

If you have any other questions, fire away. Don't have much time to access to internet these days so leave about a week for answers!

mrac

On the electrical side of things, would that be more on the side of power generation or electrical machines or where is the emphasis placed ?

Endymion

mrac wrote:

On the electrical side of things, would that be more on the side of power generation or electrical machines or where is the emphasis placed ?

can't speak for UCC but in general it would be power generation, or more to the point, the theory behind such things. "Electrical machines" would be electronics.

You asked about computer science, the electrical side of electrical and electronic eng will be about a millions miles from computer science. Maybe you should thing about something like computer and electronic engineering.

Teg Veece

The UCC course does feature a good bit of electrical machines also; DC motor, induction motor etc. The course itself is quite tricky compared to other college courses available but if you're into that whole area its well worth it.
One of the biggest benefits which it has going for it is the broad nature of the degree. It covers a very large range of topics which means that your not pigeon-holing yourself into a tiny niche industry which could be non-existent by the time you actually graduate.

Endymion

That's a bit deceptive. Yes broad range can be good, however the broader the range the more disconnected it is. Thus you may find yourself studying allot of stuff you

1) Don't like
2) find difficult
3) will be largely irrelevant when you come to specialise.

And everyone specialises into one or two areas once you start working. It's unlikely that you'll be pigeon holed in any electronics course to a degree which would render your knowledge worthless.

cargrouch

mrac wrote:

On the electrical side of things, would that be more on the side of power generation or electrical machines or where is the emphasis placed ?

You seem very informed for someone who hasn't hit first year yet! Power transmission, conversion, motors would be my guess. But I picked all electronic (signal processing, IC design) subjects and avoided the power and control stuff unfortunately.

If you look at the UCC website, there should be a Book of Modules page somewhere listing all the modules and their contents for a given year. The EE codes will all be EE1005 etc, but the course will also include say CS100x Computer science etc. So you will have to find the page on the dept website which has all the choices for a given year.

You can't do a "pure electrical", you will end up doing some electronics related stuff but the CIT and UCC courses both include some elements like that.

theCzar

Electrical: Generation/Transport of electricty, ie. as a power source, would also cover electric motors

Electronics: Use of electricity as a method of communication, whether electromagnetic wireless transmission or in semiconductors, plus others, probably, I've been out of the game a year!

I graduated last summer from Electronic engineering in UCD, its a pretty good course, although jobs in the industry are scarce, there are some. Ericsson seem to be the principle employer. seems like most of class went for further study, masters and PhDs.

Electronics/Electrical was one course until 4th year in UCD, where it split with 50% shared material and 50% specific to one or t'other.

I think that engineering general is a good college choice as its very flexible. While the electronics companies don't beat a path to your door, you can go into many other industries because most elec courses are broad with a strong foundation in maths and computer science. If you're interested in maths and physics, you could do a lot worse than an eng degree.

PS I've taken a job as a geophysicist, had never heard of such a thing when I finished my course, applied for a technician position in a French geophysical company, but they offered me this instead