I signed up to do Navy reservist as an ET but I waa AD for six years. I was wondering if you can do drill twice a month to earn extra income?
Is there also any other downtime to do coursework? I was admitted to USC Viterbi for their master's engineering program.
Would like input from people who are trying to balance a full time professional job, school and reserves life. My day job is also demanding on my time.
I am curious because my undergrad institution has deactivated alumni use of their .edu accounts 2 years after graduation.
I am interested in doing a start-up funding for a concept. What clubs or resources are available for DEN Viterbi students?
For example, I've thought about for a long time in developing a GPS-focused self-automated lawn mower but those products already exist. There is still other worthy pursuits like a home cleaning toilet robot powered by AI (yes, its an idea but you can laugh). The materials cost for any of these things are usually around 3k-10k. A project like a lawn mower would involve embedded software (GPS+micro controllers), analog and mechanical people (chassis, wheels, blades, waterproofing).
I don't even know if USC has these kind of resources. The closest I remembered at my undergrad is that we had business students that present an idea and were awarded funding. They worked in a team with engineering students to bring concepts to life for first-round funding. Their experience was mainly educational, because no real start-up ever happened.
My niece just graduated from this school and is looking for jobs. She is thinking about attending a graduate school for her MBA either Virginia Tech or UVa, but I advised her to build some experience first. She has been living with her parents and my brother has emphasized that he will be forced to kick her out within a year.
Her resume looks like this:
-Honors student at Liberty (Graduated Cum Laude)
-Summer internships in Richmond working as a junior analyst (consulting)
-Worked at Liberty as a student TA/grader for several business courses
I think she's just picky on jobs and is applying for the same roles that competitive entry-level applicants across Virginia are vying for. Granted its only been a few months since her graduation though she has been applying to over 200 places already and this is also given that she's got a picky filter.
I looked at the graduate employment and it seems like the majority of DEN students for MSEE are working at top companies already.
The undergrad school I graduated from did not have a lot of students into ASIC, FPGA and Digital Design specialization. The vast majority went into all of the major defense companies, other Fortune 100 companies (Proctor & Gamble, Volkswagen, Tesla, Black & Decker) a few to research labs like MIT Lincoln Labs and I only knew one person who went to NVIDIA. The school type was flagship public, but I wonder if the opportunities at USC are greater due to private university connections with the industry.
The field I work in is analog circuit design with some RF exposure. How difficult is it to transition from analog to digital design for companies like NVIDIA?
I worked with a student over the past year at Varsity and I always thought that he was just a normal student struggling at math. I had no idea he was some Ivy League applicant. He reached back to me and said he just got a 4 on AP Calculus AB, which is a superb high score. A few weeks ago, his mother messaged me pressuring me to make sure he did well, because she stated her son was applying to selective colleges like Rice University.
I did help him over the course of year however I noticed that he was coming from a wealthy family that had money for tutoring resources. A part of me thinks that tutoring should be accessible to anyone regardless of financial status. His other classmates who he said was struggling (not enough one on one attention from their teacher, crowded after school homework help) did not have the same resource as him.
I work for a company (think Blue Origin/Northrop/Lockheed) and have thought about getting into a development role. My engineering job is not as glamorous as people make it seem because while I do a lot of analysis and lab work, I don't get to design. What was not advertised in school is that engineering involves lots of compliance-based paperwork.
I want to transition to analog/digital design and USC actually offers these courses. Does anyone know how difficult for master's students to network and switch jobs? My undergrad self wants to build IC chips or circuit cards for rockets so either AMD, NVDIA or some other company focused on R&D.
I noticed that when I got the D-Clearance manager I don't have the option to even select the class I'm trying to enroll in. Anyone in DEN Viterbi been through this? It just seems odd that when I go to petition for that course it doesn't even exist as an option.
The school has a really impressive ranking at #21 in engineering and #28 overall, but I don't think most people where I used to live at were even familiar with USC.
From the US News and World data, the school was unranked from 1983 to 1995, it was broadly placed in the "2nd tier quartile" meaning that it was below other known universities at the time. By 1996 that changed when the university was ranked #44. Over the past two decades the school has seen a solid progress, occasionally it would be in the top 25 but overall it's been consistently a top 30 school. What actually changed in the perception of the school ? The rise of the university is similar to Northeastern which used to be ranked #140 and is now an elite top 50 school.
Internationally, USC has risen to #146 globally (QS World Ranking) and that's not bad compared to peer institutions like UCLA which is #31 globally.
I am looking to take out my family to some soup place but they're hard to find and not sure where they are even advertised. My wife is a big soup person, but my son not so much. He will only have soup that has meat and potatoes, while she loves vegetable barley.
I graduated about 2 years ago and was wondering how everyone was doing. I drifted apart from my college study buddies and remembered all those nights we spent tackling those engineering problem sets and cramming.
Places I definitely miss:
-The gym (you guys got nice equipment and facilities, a gym like that in my area is $110 per month).
-ITLL (where you got your insta-3D prints for free on any project).
-The Hill (expensive food, not always good but it was a nice hangout distraction).
Immediately after graduation I had four job offers and choose to move to a LCOL state. I miss Colorado and its mountains but at the time there were no engineering jobs for me in Denver. I still think its strange that while Boulder Engineering is highly respected, its usually multinational companies looking to recruit and asking you to relocate to places like Minnesota and not stay in-state.
My son is a rising senior and thinking about attending a college possibly in California. I did a quick research on the schools he was broadly interested in. The Cal Polys are definitely selective universities with Cal Poly SLO being the pickiest. He is interested in either business or engineering. Looking at Cal Poly SLO they boast recent graduates getting jobs at Google, Amazon, all of the top defense companies and their engineering starting salary is 112k. For some reason, Cal Poly SLO's median salary is higher than USC's engineering graduates at 108k.
When I looked at San Diego State they also have career fairs here. I'm not sure if the Merced/Riverside and possibly Santa Cruz schools have a disadvantage.
I've noticed that since moving to Huntsville, there are a lot of dining places that charge $40-$60 per meal. This is absurdly expensive especially for the state of Alabama.
For the respondents, below yes its a single meal. Looking for something good without breaking the bank when I go out on the weekends exploring the city.
This is obviously just for fun, but wanted to know how CA locals place USC. I'm from OOS and have no idea of the nuances for equivalent academics/ research prestige.
The way I understand it, the UCs are categorized into an unspoken soft 3 tiers, there's
Berkeley, UCLA - Tier I
San Diego, Davis, Irvine, Santa Barbara - Tier II
Santa Cruz, Riverside, Merced - Tier III
When I visited a general UC reddit, most CA commentators stated that USC is somewhere between Tier II and Tier III. Obviously people from UC Davis, Irvine and Santa Barbara will say their schools are superior but that is school pride in action.
My son is considering going to an engineering college and he wants to go to either Mines or CU Boulder. I remembered for a while growing up that DU was considered very prestigious. I asked him to look into DU and a quick Google search shows that DU is #117 nationally. Their engineering is so far down the list with all the bottom-tier engineering.
Not sure what happened. Even their admissions went up to 86% while Mines hovers at 61% and Boulder at 71% (but their engineering school is far more selective). IvyWise also states that the yield rate for last year is only 8.26%, a huge drop from what it used to be a decade ago. More applicants accepted to DU refuse to go. Why the change?
I work in a different state and just admitted to the University of Southern California for their online master's. I was told in orientation that this degree is identical to on-campus and the only difference is that online students are working engineers. They said that statistically the master's has a 40-47% admit rate so they screen applicants.
I do plan on going back to Virginia and have always wanted to do graduate studies at VT. Anyone been in a similar boat to this situation? There is a gov't job I want in Virginia that allows for full time graduate studies, so I was thinking of transitioning from my private company to federal but only if the PhD is possible.
Can research be substituted with industry experience in product development design? I don't publish papers but I do work with novel applications. VT is really a dream school for me, but I've always missed the chance so to speak. Back in 2020 I was admitted to VT but they weren't generous with financial aid so I went to my home-state school. Then later on, a faculty expressed interest in working with me for a master's but I got snatched by a company.
I am interested in UAH since its local but lately I've noticed something strange about UAH EE graduates - they tend to perform at a much lower bar compared to engineering graduates from other schools. For example, we've had fresh grads and student interns from Auburn and the difference between Auburn and UAH is night and day. Auburn students are on average, much smarter and can pick up skills faster. For a summer internship project, Auburn students outperformed all UAH interns. My manager has noticed this and is trying to outsource Auburn talent. We've also had students from UAB and UA and they were good as well, but Auburn students just stood out more for their creativity and problem solving. We gave 4 Auburn students a firmware project and all of them independently solved the problem by weeks 4-6. The way they defined the problem and their entire approach was very methodical, so I was impressed. I did my undergrad at UGA and the closest comparison to Auburn would be Georgia Tech.
I know its a local school but wondering career wise if I should be thinking about them?
I'm enrolling in the school remotely for the fall (DEN program, MSEE) and couldn't find any relevant PCB design courses offered at USC. At my previous undergrad, we had classes that covered the cutting edge in the industry like signal integrity/power integrity of circuits and we used Altium extensively. There was a class offered on my campus called "PCB for Design Manufacturing" and it was a junior-level class where we designed 4 board projects and tested them. The follow-up class was Signal Integrity. In my senior design capstone course, every single group did a year long project designing either a 4 or 6-layer board and we spent many months perfecting the circuit card for various companies that offered sponsorship. A lot of involved integrating a COTS part like an FPGA and learning about embedded programming. Amazingly when I got the industry these were the same exact skills they were asking for.
I thought USC's engineering was more centered on start-up culture and responding to industry needs, but looking at the catalog, I just see some standard EE courses. They do offer some circuits-level VLSI/CAD which is interesting.
Is there any PCB design course here or Signal Integrity? I just couldn't find what I was looking for in the course catalog.
I've been tutoring at VarsityTutors and its been alright, they only pay 18/hr and its usually for subjects like AP Cal AB/BC and AP Precal. Now that summer is starting, I've lost my side hustle of $300-500 per month.
My current job doesn't pay me enough to live in this city. I live in an apartment that is 2.4k per month and that's considered cheap but it eats away over two-thirds of my monthly earnings. Its very hard to find an apartment lower than that unless you qualify for low income.
Not sure where to go from here. I work in tech but don't make enough for living expenses.
I'm trying to get non-biased answers and wanted to see what locals thought. I did my BA from Argosy University which was for profit and closed down in 2019 and this was the only MBA program accepted my application (Liberty is also accreditted by ACBSP so that was a relief). I had a 2.9 as an undergrad and was working full time at various restaurants while dealing with at home problems. Argosy did 8 week classes but it lost accreditation.
I couldn't find any good reviews of Liberty's MBA specifically and am debating about coming over to campus. I would like info about the program, recruiting events and other info. From what I've seen posted online, MBA students complain of being accused of using AI by professors and a few people complain that the school does nothing for their careers. The online ranked #237 in the country out of 364 by US News and World.