engineering graduate school question

In general, I completely concur with this experience. It doesn't take a BSEE (or any?) degree to get ahead in life. The two wealthiest people I know didn't even go to college! (And "No", they weren't born with it.)

I also know a Ph.D. psychiatrist who delivers newspapers for a living. (I am not making this up!) And another brilliant MIT grad from the 60's who frankly has trouble keeping up with Microsoft Word.

I can also tell you that in Electronics / Communciations, it matters not what you learned or did six months ago in school. The field changes so fast, the stuff you were working on yesterday is probably already obsolete. Those with the aptitude, ambition, and ability to "keep up" are the ones who will prevail.

But I would take a slight exception on this one point: I believe manufacturing entities are much more likely to place (undo?) emphasis on higher education. I am fairly convinced this boils down primarily to liability containment issues, etc...

--which for the original poster, you're not going to get to right out of school anyway, so it's not relevant.

Is any of this helping??

Yeah. just what the world needs: more lawyers!? I'd rather be a broke, unemployed engineer than a rich lawyer anyday, thanks. -Clark

I worked with two engineers whe were pursuing their masters in night school, one in EE, the other CS (and I won't bother to mention the MBA candidates). The work they did for their thesis work was less challendging than the projects we were running at work, and they took too long at it, also.

I avoided the graduate school discipline by taking extension courses that seemed appropriate to my work (C Programming, Neural Networks, Kalmann Filtering, Fiber-Optic Communications, etc). I really missed an opportunity by not taking an early program in Network Architecture

- live and learn.

Whether or not you can get away with all that depends highly on the firm and position you occupy. I was lucky, in that I never needed many clothes. Or at least that is how I remember it. (US and Canada).

--
 
 
 
                        cbfalconer at maineline dot net

I know you know better than to strip attributions for material you actually quote :-)

--
 
 
 
                        cbfalconer at maineline dot net

Scooter Libby??

...sorry, could not resist. :)

-mpm

See, that's the sort of thinking that depresses engineering pay. I don't think there are many who would choose to be a broke, unemployed lawyer.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

This is my personal experience with hiring freshmen from school. As pointed by many, the grown up engineer is judged by his merits. One of the not so many merits of a freshman is the diligence demonstrated in obtaining the degree.

I know :) That sort of people can be good at paperwork though. Somebody has to do the boring part, too :)

That is exactly what we tried. It appeared that the percentage of the good guys with BSEEs is 1% vs somewhat 10% in MSEEs. It is just more economical to draw from MSEEs.

There is a zillion of possible methods for the spectral inversion depending on what exactly is required. Perhaps, the simplest is multiplying every second sample by -1.

For DSP, ADI BlackFin is the main workhorse. We also work with TMS 28xx and 55xx. As for the small MCUs, 68HC12 is the preference, and, indeed, we do some DSP work with it as well as with Atmel AVR.

Vladimir Vassilevsky

DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

He didn't really say what his main interest was, so it is hard to tell...

20 years ago, when I went for my Masters, I picked UCSB for two reasons

- one, the great location, and two - they were doing free electron laser research there, and I had an interest in laser launch systems for space travel.

Now, when I got there, I found out that one - you couldn't afford to live there, and two - the laser research was all going on in the Physics department, not the EE department, and the only faculty member in EE that had worked with them retired last year... ;-)

Charlie

Yes, exactly -- inverting every other sample is a very good answer. "FFT, reverse, iFFT" is probably about the worst you could do and shows no "practical" experience.

I only have experience with TI 55x DSPs, but I've always been told the ADI chips are somewhat friendlier to program, if a little slower.

---Joel

Nice. I was in the microwaves department (part of the "school of electrical engineering and computer sciences"), and ended up doing circuit modeling. It happened to involve components at GHz frequencies, but at least in the research I did the frequencies were pretty irrelevant -- they could have been

1-3Hz or 1-3THz rather than the 1-3GHz they were and my thesis would have been the same. (Much of the time, for numerical accuracy reasons, you ended up normalizing a lot of the data to, e.g., 1Hz or 1 rad/s anyway...)

There had been some early discussion of doing some cool RFID stuff, but unfortunately we weren't able to get funding for it. Circuit modeling was funded, so there I was...

What *did* you end up researching?

...

You over generalize. My boss in a small development lab threw me out (well,strongly urged me to leave). I was one of two technicians there -- the other had been with the firm since before I was born! The boss said that I was already doing the work of an engineer, I might as well bet the diploma and get paid like one. (One of the engineers there had no diploma beyond high school, but he was a real genius. George Gauthrin, AKA Crazy George, was the guy who invented the 60-dB low-distortion AGC that got us the Mercury capsule audio contract.)

Some fresh Ph.D.s I worked with were inclined to ignore the importance of the curved side on a 'lytic symbol, thereby making loud noises. One inserted a wood screw with my chisel-point soldering iron, then asked me what the plug and cord were for.

...

Jerry

P.S. "Worseless"; a good word. I like it!

--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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...

When I was am MTS at RCA Labs, the division president, when he was escorting a visitor, would stop me in the corridor and introduce me as "The only staff member we have with a steam-driven pencil sharpener." (He neglected to add that I was one of the very few staff members without an advanced degree.) I then gave the obligatory explanation that in order to avoid tending a boiler, I ran it off the compressed-air supply. The visitor and I would then shake hands and go on our ways.

If I decide to abandon retirement, I'll ask you for a job.

Jerry

--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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I do not know if this poster is malicious, but I ran into problems trying his site. I had to force quit my browser to continue.

Bill

-- Support the troops. Impeach Bush. Oh, I forgot about Cheney.

Apologies for any problems you may have experienced. The main page uses a java applet to handle the remote-control session with the receiver. It is known to work well on Netscape/Mozilla and IE on Win32 using JRE1.4.x and on Netscape/Mozilla on Solaris; I don't have many reports of how well it works on MacOS/OS X, Linux or other X-windows OS implementations.

What browser/OS were you using? Did you look at the Java Console messages in your browser?

Your newsgroup posting headers include domains 'prodigy.com' and 'yahoo.sbc.com'; are you using some kind of bundled browser/Internet access software that may be conflicting with Java on your machine? I also see reference to Microsoft Entourage (I am not familiar with that client).

It is difficult to provide a client-side realtime browser- embedded control method without using Java or undesirably Microsoft-specific active controls (which I'm not using).

If anyone has problems, I'd appreciate a report.

Regards,

Michael (msg _at_ cybertheque _dot_ org)

It worked for me, as far as I went, but it is klunky.

Don

Many smart people who are interested in making money do go to law school because it is a better road to wealth than engineering or science is.

Bill

--
Iraq: About three Virginia Techs a month

I was using Safari and got into an infinite loop.

Bill

-- Support the troops. Impeach Bush. Oh, I forgot about Cheney.

AH, well, I didn't... ;-)

I took the oral exam route, so no thesis needed. You see, I didn't have a BSEE going in, just a BS Psych, so I wanted all the course work I could get.

First thing I learned - If you had a choice between Course A in the undergrad classes, or course B in the grad classes, ALWAYS TAKE COURSE B! The material was more interesting, the grading was easier, the coursework more practical, and it was more fun. I almost flunked out before learning that...

Of course, it helped that I had been a hobbyiest and technician for a few years before doing this...

Charlie