What college path do I take to become an electronics engineer?

Question

I'll be attending Ohio State next year and they have electrical engineering and computer engineering, but they don't have electronics engineering. From my research on electronics engineering it's a mix of computer and electrical, but what would be a good major and minor so as to land a job as an electronics engineer after graduating?

Answer 1

Electrical engineering. Computer engineering is more centered towards the building and design of computers and computer systems. Electronics engineering is more like a subset of electrical engineering which is more broad. You'll still learn what you want to know about electronics. Electrical devices are things like resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Electronic devices are associated with things that are made with semi conductive material like diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits. Most electrical circuits are electronic circuits. The AC/DC converter that you use to recharge your cell phone is a simple electronic circuit. Your digital alarm clock,cd player, cell phone,stereo, and computer are all electronic circuits. So your major will still be electrical, but you will specialize in which types of circuits that you want to deal with. A first course on transistors will make things clearer. Transistors are the basic building blocks of electronic circuits, and electronic circuits fall into 2 categories: analog and digital. About 95% of electronic circuits nowadays are digital. A transistor is a device that does one of 2 things: it can be used as an amplifier or a switch. If it is used as an amplifier, it is usually performing an analog function. If it is used as a switch, it is performing a digital function. Transistors are hooked up with each other to perform complex tasks, and the more transistors, the more complicated the device, and the more things it can do. Your alarm clock, for example, has dozens of transistors in it acting as switches, while your computer has billions of transistors in it switching off and on to do all the things that a computer does.
All engineers use computers a lot. A computer engineer is more focused on designing computers and focuses more on actual programming to control how the chips in the computer function. An electronics engineer focuses more on learning how to use pre-written software to help them design simpler electronic circuits.
So your major will still be electrical, no need for a minor. You just need to decide which types of electronic circuits to specialize in.

Answer 2

Modern electronics are almost always going to entail IC (integrated circuit) chips, and the current trend in electronics is an increase computerization / digitization. For this reason, I'd recommend going the computer engineering route, and possibly minoring in computer science as this will help you when you sit down to program an IC chip.

Answer 3

laptop Engineering is plenty like electric powered Engineering, different than with a concentration on digital circuits; and laptop shape; yet not a form of programing (relative to CS). utility Engineering is plenty like laptop technological information; quite often programming; and not very plenty genuine engineering.

Answer 4

I am in computer engineering and from what I know, this is a mix between electrical and software.
You microelectronics, microcircuits, low level programming and alot of maths.. and also telecommunication.

Electronics... never heard of it.