Alright, so I'm a worried engineering student who just finished his first year at Mac. Currently, I've been accepted into the Electrical and Biomedical stream at Mac, and would just like some advice and insight on what kind of lifestyle a student in the program inherits. I'm sort of wary of the coming three years in Electrical/Biomed (especially 3rd year, 40 units?!) with the workload and all, and I'm thinking maybe I'm not built for it? While I used to love Chemistry and Biology in highschool (I was originally intending on enrolling into Life Science), first year University Chemistry has brought me back to reality in that you don't always do well doing things you enjoy. So can any current Electrical/Biomedical engineering students give me some insight on what I should expect second year, and maybe give me some tips on what to do to survive it? Please and thanks!

cant help you as im in the same boat as you, although not as worried. A bunch of us Biomed people should just make a solid study group. Also if your worried you could always look at the course descriptions and then read up in advance. Many city libraries hold textbooks, even for upper year electrical engineering.

It really comes down to just keeping up on your work. And if you're worried about units and number of courses, take some during the summer. I'm sure you could take some of the level I and II chem/bio courses early enough so that you can distribute the upper-year courses better.

Also, don't worry about not doing too well in something you thought you enjoyed. I came down to earth on other courses, and I'm getting crushed by the physics aspect of the ECE. You find things you like and don't like, and try to get through those that you don't and excel at those you do.

2nd year was a lot easier than first year, but I didn't do as well acedemically.. the courses to look out for (from my experience) are the two maths, EE2DI4(logic), and EE2EI5 (microelectronics).

Chem and bio were on ELM, so I can't link you to resources, but:

http://www.math.mcmaster.ca/~bprotas/MATH2ZZ3/

http://www.math.mcmaster.ca/~bprotas/MATH2Z03/

http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/coe2di4/2di4.html

http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/~junchen/EE2CJ4.htm

http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/~chihhung...EI5/ee2ei5.htm, user: EE2EI5Notes, pw: 2009Term2

http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/~sorina/courses/coe2si4/ user: 2si4, pw: 4is2eoc

The content will probably change for next year, but the essentials should stay the same... not sure how long those login informations will be valid though.

Also: http://maceng.clicdev.com/f/ is a good forum to sign up for because it has a lot of the stuff we did last semester, especially MATLAB assignments.


Studying ahead for this stream = damn good idea; you'll have more fun.

You'll be fine, jun chen is teaching again, he'll learn from the mistakes he made teaching us. And you guys won't have james chen for 2ei5. <3

Originally Posted by qwerty91

cant help you as im in the same boat as you, although not as worried. A bunch of us Biomed people should just make a solid study group. Also if your worried you could always look at the course descriptions and then read up in advance. Many city libraries hold textbooks, even for upper year electrical engineering.

Yeah, we should all def meet up sometime and exchange contact info so that we can contact each other if we ever have any questions or concerns. As for the level of difficulty, don't worry about it too much haha. If you've passed first year Engineering and gotten into Elec/Biomed, I'm sure you'll do very very well in second year. Also, as others have said, the key to doing well is staying on top of all of your course work and occasionally going the extra mile. It worked for me in first year and I'm sure it'll work for me in second year too.

Jun Chen... just hope he sticks to the same strategy for you guys. And for 2EI5, dont worry, you dont have james chen, so you wont see 30% class averages on tests.

2DI4 is fine, you need to really know previous tests, and you can get a good mark. 2SI4 and 2SH4 -> attend lectures

For math -> Good Luck.

Originally Posted by blackdragon

Jun Chen... just hope he sticks to the same strategy for you guys. And for 2EI5, dont worry, you dont have james chen, so you wont see 30% class averages on tests.

2DI4 is fine, you need to really know previous tests, and you can get a good mark. 2SI4 and 2SH4 -> attend lectures

For math -> Good Luck.

Agreed for SI4, disagree for SH4. Doyle just mumbled and threw mountains of pointless code at you. He made stacks and linked lists sound like these scary, ultra-intimidating things. Sorina made them piss easy. Hell, I don't consider myself a very strong programmer, but she made the course feel overall not too bad.

Chih-Hung "James" Chen is an idiot. I'm glad he's off on sabbatical and hope I never have to have another class with him. Awful. 30% midterm average, and that's with a 20% bonus.

hey i m in biomed going to third year.. 2nd year is pretty tough especially with comp eng 2DI4, 2SH4/2SI4(if you are not strong at programming), elec eng 2EI5, and the two maths.

First term was crazy with 4 lab courses.. 2 labs every other week.. so make sure you know how to manage your time...

and make sure you attend ALL classes because most of the profs give detailed ideas of the questions they are going to put on the midterm/final randomly as you go through the courses.

and study hard!!! best of luck

Alright, thanks for the responses guys! I guess a study group might be in order come September.

I'm currently enrolled in electrical engineering for second year, and I wanted to know if I can switch to elec/biomedical engineering without too much trouble. How would I do this, is there someone I can talk toor something? This would help a great deal, thanks.

Originally Posted by eng9090

I'm currently enrolled in electrical engineering for second year, and I wanted to know if I can switch to elec/biomedical engineering without too much trouble. How would I do this, is there someone I can talk toor something? This would help a great deal, thanks.

Just write a letter for why you would like to transfer into the program, (including your student number), and send it into the Associate Dean's Office (JHE A214) and it should take 1-2 weeks.

Just another question. I actually just got into Elec & Biomed and found that CHEM 1AA3 is full and I failed the prereq for BIOLOGY 1A03. Anyone have this problem?

JP

Originally Posted by eng9090

I'm currently enrolled in electrical engineering for second year, and I wanted to know if I can switch to elec/biomedical engineering without too much trouble. How would I do this, is there someone I can talk toor something? This would help a great deal, thanks.

Go to the engineering office in JHE! Email Sally Williams! Email Alexa Huang?

Elect&Biomed and Elect are basically identical with the exception of chemistry and bio for biomed.. elect takes 2fh3 and some other course at that time. Third year biomeds take 2fh3 so they're still pretty close. Third year is where everything starts to diverge.

Originally Posted by jp1390

Just write a letter for why you would like to transfer into the program, (including your student number), and send it into the Associate Dean's Office (JHE A214) and it should take 1-2 weeks.

Just another question. I actually just got into Elec & Biomed and found that CHEM 1AA3 is full and I failed the prereq for BIOLOGY 1A03. Anyone have this problem?

JP

I am in the same boat as you in regards to CHEM 1AA3. I emailed Sally Williams today but due to all the emails she is receiving at this time of the year, I don't expect a reply back anytime soon. Until then I guess I'll just have to rely on SOLAR and keep checking for a vacancy.

I made this to compare electrical and biomedical to electrical