Engineering school, and working full-time - F-Body Road Racing and Autocross Forums

For those of you that may have done this, what's the best way to approach this? I want to do an Electrical Engineering program, but it will be while I am working full time, my job will be 1+ hours each way from home, and I'm in the Air National Guard.

The only schools around me that have BSEE programs are Berkeley, which is about 80 miles away, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which is about 250 miles away. I'd prefer Cal Poly, because they have a blended BS+MS program, where you can work toward your BS and MS at the same time.

However, the distance is going to be the biggest problem, as the vast majority of the courses are in-residence only.

I will be able to test out of a bunch of the lower-level electronics/electrical courses, as I have been an electronics tech for eleven years, so that should somewhat shorten my total time required.

So, what am I looking at here to do this?

Second question on this subject, is what am I looking at in terms of all the math calsses I will need to take? I know that I will need statistics and calc, but what will I need to take to get there, i.e., algebra, geometry, trig, etc.?

I found out that Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's continuing Ed has online math, from basic to Algebra 2, so I'm going to do those to get my textbook math skills up to where I can test into higher-level math courses.

Thanks again guys.

John

Guardsman View Member Profile	Feb 23 2005, 08:23 PM Post #1
Member Group: Advanced Members Posts: 178 Joined: 4-February 04 Member No.: 178	For those of you that may have done this, what's the best way to approach this? I want to do an Electrical Engineering program, but it will be while I am working full time, my job will be 1+ hours each way from home, and I'm in the Air National Guard. The only schools around me that have BSEE programs are Berkeley, which is about 80 miles away, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which is about 250 miles away. I'd prefer Cal Poly, because they have a blended BS+MS program, where you can work toward your BS and MS at the same time. However, the distance is going to be the biggest problem, as the vast majority of the courses are in-residence only. I will be able to test out of a bunch of the lower-level electronics/electrical courses, as I have been an electronics tech for eleven years, so that should somewhat shorten my total time required. So, what am I looking at here to do this? Second question on this subject, is what am I looking at in terms of all the math calsses I will need to take? I know that I will need statistics and calc, but what will I need to take to get there, i.e., algebra, geometry, trig, etc.? I found out that Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's continuing Ed has online math, from basic to Algebra 2, so I'm going to do those to get my textbook math skills up to where I can test into higher-level math courses. Thanks again guys. John

pknowles View Member Profile	Feb 24 2005, 01:10 PM Post #2
Experienced Member Group: Advanced Members Posts: 1,427 Joined: 12-February 04 From: Huntingtown, MD Member No.: 193	There are alot of hands on engineering jobs, but there are a lot more that are not. I'm working on my PHD in mechanical engineering and half the time I'm working in the machine shop making some special part for my experiments. In fact the last couple months I've been welding and cutting steel to build a custom frame for a 12 foot tall, 30 foot long oscillating water tunnel that uses a 2.5 foot diameter piston to mimic oscillating wave motions. 10% of my time is designing stuff, 50% of the time I'm building or doing experiments, the other 40% is data crunching or writing technical papers. You don't need a PHD to get into all this, but all engineering jobs are not just sitting behind a desk drawing "Widget A" for 30+ years. Here's an eqaution for you Drawing slight variations of "Widget A" for 30+ years = (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/nutkick.gif)