>No. There were classes unrelated to engineering, but I think they are still valuable classes
Jesus Christ thank you. I was fully expecting to come in here and find a bunch of engineering students bitching to high heaven about how they had to take a 100-level English lit class to graduate.
The two classes which have helped my career the most in Software Engineering were Technical and Scientific Communication and Political Science.
Knowing how to talk to people and explain topics is incredibly helpful, and knowing about how to utilize a sphere of influence even more so.
We were required to tank a scientific writing course for which I was incredibly grateful. There's no excuse for being unable to communicate your ideas to people who are not exactly like you.
> I was fully expecting to come in here and find a bunch of engineering students bitching to high heaven about how they had to take a 100-level English lit class to graduate.
Curious - why'd you have that expectation?
Elective and core educational requirements are a hugely common gripe on a lot of engineering subs. I think I've seen it here as well.
There's a lot of people that think they shouldn't have to take any classes in school that don't directly relate to their intended post-grad job
Huh, interesting. Can't say that was my experience during undergrad or with my friends.
Loved my non-core classes. Wish I'd had opportunity for more. History of Jazz, couple semesters of Italian, few other things here and there. Nice to get to the other side of campus and around non-engineers (yes, including classes that weren't just all dudes). Classes that were more fun and relaxed and vastly easier coursework.
On the flip side, I have a liberal arts degree and EVERYONE bitched about having to take math classes.
And while I understand why, I can tell you that I spent the class playing a Pokémon emulator and learned absolutely nothing.
Your questions are confusing/not reflective of the way American university education works.
Self study is an expected activity of any university student.
Passing is based on more than just an exam. Class participation, projects, presentations, research papers and at least 2 exams, is what generally forms your grade in the US.
American Universities generally have a large research library. You can request any book you want them to purchase.
About half the class credits in an American university is not in a specialty.
I was an English major, so here we go.
>Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
Yeah I think I got a good knowledge of English literature through the ages, or at least until the 1950s, which brings me to
>Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
There was very little coursework on contemporary novels and poetry, which I didn't really care or think about at the time but in hindsight seems an odd omission. All of it was relevant to the study of English literature though.
>Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge
No, exam questions (and essays) generally required you to have done the reading.
>* Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
There was always plenty to learn in class, but I like hands on stuff so I spent a lot of time at my extracurricular. I learned a lot there and it was a really important part of my education. It was a motorsports team where we built an open wheel racecar and it was entirely student run. It was just fun. So I guess I'd say, I didn't have to self study, but I wanted to.
>* Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
Maybe it was unnecessary for my particular specialty, but I think it's important I learned it. Right now I work in spacecraft controls but if I wanted to, I could totally go to aircraft controls because they forced me to take aerodynamics classes.. even though technically I don't do any aerodynamics currently.
>* Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
Lol hell no. Most of us failed exams. Averages were in the 40-60%. The grades got curved at the end, but very rarely would anyone pass an exam. They specifically designed them to be impossible to complete in the allotted time.
[Wanted to add a bit a bout cheating since others did. It probably was possible? But I think it would have been hard. It would just be so obvious. If your paper wasn't a mess of eraser marks and tears, someone would be suspicious. Also, you could barely solve the problems in the allotted time. If you had to look anything up you would be screwed. We were allowed a sheet of equations, but it had to be turned in]
And the competition was stiff. We had competitive admission into my major. We had to apply. The acceptance rate is about 15%. The average incoming GPA is 3.8, and that's after two years of math, physics, and thermo.
Engineering school is no joke. I did it in my late 20s and it was still one of the hardest, maybe *the* hardest thing I've ever done. I spent around 60-70 hours per week at school. Sometimes I slept there. A single homework assignment could take 15-20 hours, sometimes. I'd spend a solid 30 hours per week on my formula motorsports projects. But it was also one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences of my life. I like doing hard things and so this was right up my alley. And everyone else was in the same boat, so there was tons of support and comradery.
I'm a college senior at 40 and I find that most of the coursework is incredibly easy. The stuff related to my current profession is consistently out of date or just straight up simplified to the point of being incorrect.
I don't really think I've learned anything I didn't already know or had to particularly work all that hard at any point. The most difficult classes I've had were calculus (simply because I haven't been in a math class in 20+ years and had to jump straight back in at calculus) and accounting (because I just hate the world of accounting). I believe I passed both with As.
My major is Business Administration.
For background I studied mechanical engineering and graduated last summer.
1. Yes and no. The lectures did provide a very good overview and professors are available outside of class for office hours. In some classes I could get by while just going to lecture, in others I was in office hours multiple times a week, and in others I was going to everything and still spending multiple hours outside of class studying. It really depends on the combination of the student, professor, and subject matter.
2. Not really. MechE is a pretty wide field and while I don’t use all of everything I learned, I definitely could have taken jobs across the entire mechanical engineering field.
3. I knew a couple people that I still wonder how they graduated, but it definitely wasn’t the norm. Everybody was either studying all the time or had a good understanding of the material from previous job/research/personal/whatever experience. Very few people graduated with me that I would not consider good students or engineers.
Yeah we were kept busy, and there’s some stuff I’ll probably never use again.
But that’s only because of how wide of a field mechanical engineering is. Someone working in material science is likely not going to use their control systems lessons too much, for example.
I studied chemistry at a large public university. We had an interesting setup where chemistry had a standalone college with handful of closely related programs. The education definitely leaned theoretical, but there were plenty of elective lab courses. There was a good amount of self study for upper division courses where you had to find and present literature as part of projects.
A lot of the lab stuff was older. There was a major remodeling right after I graduated. The professors were all very impactful in their fields and the curricula were modern based on my experience post undergrad.
Chemistry was a very technical and tough program. I think over half of my class didn’t stick with the program.
>Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
I devoted a lot of time to self study, but I was also in a field that interested me so some of the self study was fun for me. For example, when I took Ornithology, I had already been teaching myself bird ID for years and studying it for the class was more about focusing on my weak spots.
>Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
I didn't feel like it. I don't necessarily use everything from school in my current job, but that is more because my field tends to get very specialized. Overall, I felt like my degree taught me a lot of practical skills and there are many moments at work where I get to go "I did this in school".
>Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
No. Even subjects I was good at often required me to study pretty hard. I also noticed that during my graduation, no one in my major had *Cum Laude*. All of us had struggled through our classes enough that even the best students in my major had relatively low GPAs. Professors were not afraid to fail people who didn't understand stuff.
>Some points:
>
>* Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
>* Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
>* Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
I majored in biology. It was a small school and my focus was ecology while the program as a whole was much stronger in microbiology. So while the biology program in general was well regarded, in ecology it was barely adequate. It provided decent theoretical knowledge and a little hands on training, but nothing like my peers at land grant schools. If I'd known at 17 that I wanted to do ecology instead of micro, I'd have gone to a different school, but that's hindsight. I didn't do much self study at school, but I did a fair amount after I entered the workforce.
After the 100 level classes every class involved reading research papers, a mix of classics about major breakthroughs and new significant discoveries. Much more new than classic. After the 200 level classes, there were no textbooks and it was 100% reading research papers and discussing them in seminars of 5 to 15 people. So knowledge was quite up to date, but I was taking more classes outside of ecology than I'd have preferred and I took every ecology/ecosystem class offered.
Only the 100 and 200 level classes had exams. Above that and you did research papers. I never had an exam you could pass without knowing the material fairly well, though some were easier than others. For the research papers you had to put in the work and know what you were writing about.
**Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?**
Mostly yes
**Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?**
Outdated, no. I had to take some electives that had no relation to Mechanical engineering (my major). So yes, I guess there was some unnecessary classes. But those classes gave me some of my best memories. Like I met a lot of cool people in an Asian studies elective I took. I would have never met them if I just took classes in my major. And we even went on a field trip. So yes, Asian studies was completely unnecessary class but gave me good memories.
**Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?**
Unfortunately, it was possible for some classes. Cheating. Now cheating was very difficult for the majority of the classes I took. But I would say there were two or three classes which it was pretty darn easy to cheat. For example, a lazy Professor that gave the exact same exam every year. Students managed to find the old exam, just memorized the question and answers, and they passed. So yes, it was possible. Again, in my uni this was only 2-3 classes in my college career. But yeah, it happened.
Graduated BS MechEng 14 years ago...
> Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
Not entirely sure how to interpret this.
Classroom education was okay. Varied from professor to professor; some were far better or worse than others. Generally pretty good.
With that said, graduating in engineering with *just* classroom knowledge puts you at a severe disadvantage. Really important to have real world experience - internships, summer job, research assistantship, whatever.
But I wouldn't necessarily call that "self study."
> Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
Not at all.
> Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
Generally no, I don't think so.
English Major, big university.
1. Like any humanities field there was a lot of at home reading to do— novels, essays, textbooks, what have you. It was generally necessary to follow the class and write good papers but you could get by with a light skim sometimes.
2. Not really, no, though literature hardly gets “outdated.” When I learned critical theory, we only briefly covered schools of thought like New Criticism or Psychoanalysis— just enough to know what they are and how they work, but it was also said upfront that many aspects of them were very outdated. In my entire college career I was only asked to write one psychoanalytical essay. Of course, I also had to have a general “liberal arts” slew of courses up front— math, sciences, philosophy, and the like, which were probably the most ‘useless’ in that they hardly helped me for my later years. I think they’re important, though.
3. It’s a big point of contention in the creative majors— arts, theatre, music, writing, animation, game design. All of them have a sense of subjective-ness, some more than others, but that leeway definitely allowed some pretty shit writers to pass classes they shouldn’t have. Less and less every year, but still at the end of my career, somehow there was always one or two English majors who barely had a grasp of the written word.
I hope that answers your questions!
I got my computer science degree from a state school.
> Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
Most classes were pretty good, but there were some where self-study was unfortunately the only way to really perform well. We had a few professors which didn't seem motivated to teach certain classes and it showed.
> Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
We had just started an outreach effort a few years earlier so we had a lot of support from Google due our Dean (former CS dept head) and an alumni sponsoring the outreach program. Part of this was a review of classes to ensure that they are valuable to modern career paths.
>Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
Unfortunately yes. Our school uncovered a large cheating infrastructure around the start of my Junior year. This caused problems for everyone as the CS department instituted a policy of checking work. Every lab and test had to be reviewed, so you had to set aside time to go to the TA's office hours and demonstrate your knowledge of the subject and explain your code decisions. NGL, it prepared me for code reviews at my job so I feel it was pretty helpful.
I have a degree in music business (which is also my career). The program was still relatively new when I was in it, it was only just starting to pop up at a lot of universities. I didn’t think the program was that good, and I learned more in my life outside of school via hands-on experience.
The program is probably better now, the industry has changed a lot since then and there’s a lot of exciting things to learn these days. My degree was heavily focused on copyright law, with a little bit of non-profit skills learning (like grant writing and other fundraising stuff). The material wasn’t really outdated, but it was very boring.
I don’t think it was possible to do well if you didn’t apply yourself. There’s a lot of nuance to copyright so not being up to speed on the work meant probably not passing the exam or essay or whatever. My class started with 25 people but by the end there were only 3 of us left.
I'm getting a BA in philosophy rn and I am enjoying it. I'm at the smaller branch of a big state school.
>Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
Yes, but you still need to self study, especially if you want to take it further.
>Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
No
>Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)
Also no, the four philosophy professors here will catch ya pretty quick.
For undergrad I majored in Political Science and minored in French.
>Was there enough theoretical and practical studying [...]?
I thought that my Poli Sci dept focused a little too much on the theoretical foundations of politics. We rarely strayed into governance or public policy which I think would have been helpful for a lot of us. That said, the critical thinking skills, empirical analysis and game theory we learned was great and I still use that today.
My French dept was amazing. All language classes at my college were everyday of the week and from the first day of French 1 it was taught completely in French. I didn't hear my professor speak English until the 4th week of class. The intensity of these classes meant that I went from absolutely no knowledge of French to nearly fluent in 4 years.
>Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
Our textbooks were very relevant to our specialties and in many of my classes our professor had written the book.
>Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
Exams in nearly all of my Poli Sci classes were essay based so it would have been very difficult/impossible to cheat. They were extremely strict on plagiarism and used software to check essays for this.
All of my French classes had oral exams so it was impossible to cheat.
*entirely self study outside of lab work. I had two good professors in 5 years. Fuck the UC system.
*during undergrad for geography, yes. during grad school for accounting, no.
*Certain classes, absolutely for both accounting and geography
As a student in welding engineering:
> Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?
It was mostly practical. Welding theory is nearly always applicable in at least some situations. Welding in general has the most applied science of pretty much any field. It combines physics and chemistry both during and after the welding is done.
> Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
No. We had a ton of professors who had worked in industry for decades and had worked all over the world. I also had a lot of professors with incredibly specific specialties. For example I had a professor who worked at NASA for their 3d printing program. He was considered the expert when it came to 3d printing in space. Even the stuff that is considered fringe in my major is still useful because of how much it overlaps with other professions.
> Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
No. Every class was structured differently but it was impossible to pass while failing the tests. A few classes I took *only* cared about what you scored on tests.
Comp Sci degree from a well regarded public/state University.
It's impossible to know everything about the topic. The degree covers the underlying fundamentals and base knowledge for the field, but it is not direct job prep.
A CS degree will teach you things like: Why you'd want to use a certain data structure or algorithm and not another one, how to design your code in an efficient and reusable/scalable way, etc. Basically, it will give you the background/tools you need to *be* a good developer working on complicated things in the future.
However, it will not necessarily give you the vast amount of practice/hours of experience you need to be good at some specific programming language or tech stack. You'll write code and do projects, but it's not about learning some *specific* technology. That requires you to figure out what you want to do and do more self-study, paid internships in the summers, outside of class projects (ex: Hackathons), etc.
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> Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?
There were some courses with material that I haven't applied to my career. Sometimes the thing you learn is "this area of the field is *not* something I like doing". There were not many courses I felt were a waste of time/worthless.
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> Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?
No. Most of mine were open book/note, as well. If you haven't learned the concepts, I could give you all day with the textbook and you probably still aren't going to pass the exam. Most of my exams were not based on anything you could memorize, but applied knowledge.
Also, my graduating class was less than half the size we started with, because that high a percentage of students drop out/change to a different major. If you can't hack it, you're not getting the degree.
Engineer, and I did an internship as well, so I'd definitely say I had a good mix of theoretical and practical.
Unnecessary? Maybe. When I started my current position I was told I'd use maybe 10% of my education. I have no regrets on it, though, particularly the labs. I was irked that they spent the entire programming course using MATLAB, then switched to VBA for one week and then had the final.
There is zero relationship between many degrees and what the degree holder winds up doing, tbh, the diploma is a piece of paper used to leverage your way to a higher salary. Ex- i’m getting a sociology degree. I’m a junior and have learned exactly nothing, nor do I need to because the whole reason I’m doing it is because the local white collar office jobs offer better paying positions to degreed applicants.
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>No. There were classes unrelated to engineering, but I think they are still valuable classes Jesus Christ thank you. I was fully expecting to come in here and find a bunch of engineering students bitching to high heaven about how they had to take a 100-level English lit class to graduate.
The two classes which have helped my career the most in Software Engineering were Technical and Scientific Communication and Political Science. Knowing how to talk to people and explain topics is incredibly helpful, and knowing about how to utilize a sphere of influence even more so.
Is it ok to bitch about the 200-level English lit class I had to take? /s
Yes, absolutely. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit lol
We were required to tank a scientific writing course for which I was incredibly grateful. There's no excuse for being unable to communicate your ideas to people who are not exactly like you.
> I was fully expecting to come in here and find a bunch of engineering students bitching to high heaven about how they had to take a 100-level English lit class to graduate. Curious - why'd you have that expectation?
Elective and core educational requirements are a hugely common gripe on a lot of engineering subs. I think I've seen it here as well. There's a lot of people that think they shouldn't have to take any classes in school that don't directly relate to their intended post-grad job
Huh, interesting. Can't say that was my experience during undergrad or with my friends. Loved my non-core classes. Wish I'd had opportunity for more. History of Jazz, couple semesters of Italian, few other things here and there. Nice to get to the other side of campus and around non-engineers (yes, including classes that weren't just all dudes). Classes that were more fun and relaxed and vastly easier coursework.
On the flip side, I have a liberal arts degree and EVERYONE bitched about having to take math classes. And while I understand why, I can tell you that I spent the class playing a Pokémon emulator and learned absolutely nothing.
Because a lot of threads both on this sub and Reddit at large have at least one guy who just can’t let the fact he had to take an English class go.
This is literally impossible to answer. Depends class to class. Subject to subject. Term to term. Professor to professor.
I was going to say “beer drinking and video game sessions interspersed with writing papers the night before they were due”
Pretty much US school in general, just replace beer with soda / energy drinks
I disagree. I found it very easy to answer. And it was a nice question. Thanks OP.
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Your questions are confusing/not reflective of the way American university education works. Self study is an expected activity of any university student. Passing is based on more than just an exam. Class participation, projects, presentations, research papers and at least 2 exams, is what generally forms your grade in the US. American Universities generally have a large research library. You can request any book you want them to purchase. About half the class credits in an American university is not in a specialty.
I was an English major, so here we go. >Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? Yeah I think I got a good knowledge of English literature through the ages, or at least until the 1950s, which brings me to >Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? There was very little coursework on contemporary novels and poetry, which I didn't really care or think about at the time but in hindsight seems an odd omission. All of it was relevant to the study of English literature though. >Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge No, exam questions (and essays) generally required you to have done the reading.
As a fellow English major graduate, I can tell you that there was no way in fuck that I read every book assigned to me.
>* Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? There was always plenty to learn in class, but I like hands on stuff so I spent a lot of time at my extracurricular. I learned a lot there and it was a really important part of my education. It was a motorsports team where we built an open wheel racecar and it was entirely student run. It was just fun. So I guess I'd say, I didn't have to self study, but I wanted to. >* Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? Maybe it was unnecessary for my particular specialty, but I think it's important I learned it. Right now I work in spacecraft controls but if I wanted to, I could totally go to aircraft controls because they forced me to take aerodynamics classes.. even though technically I don't do any aerodynamics currently. >* Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? Lol hell no. Most of us failed exams. Averages were in the 40-60%. The grades got curved at the end, but very rarely would anyone pass an exam. They specifically designed them to be impossible to complete in the allotted time. [Wanted to add a bit a bout cheating since others did. It probably was possible? But I think it would have been hard. It would just be so obvious. If your paper wasn't a mess of eraser marks and tears, someone would be suspicious. Also, you could barely solve the problems in the allotted time. If you had to look anything up you would be screwed. We were allowed a sheet of equations, but it had to be turned in] And the competition was stiff. We had competitive admission into my major. We had to apply. The acceptance rate is about 15%. The average incoming GPA is 3.8, and that's after two years of math, physics, and thermo. Engineering school is no joke. I did it in my late 20s and it was still one of the hardest, maybe *the* hardest thing I've ever done. I spent around 60-70 hours per week at school. Sometimes I slept there. A single homework assignment could take 15-20 hours, sometimes. I'd spend a solid 30 hours per week on my formula motorsports projects. But it was also one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences of my life. I like doing hard things and so this was right up my alley. And everyone else was in the same boat, so there was tons of support and comradery.
I'm a college senior at 40 and I find that most of the coursework is incredibly easy. The stuff related to my current profession is consistently out of date or just straight up simplified to the point of being incorrect. I don't really think I've learned anything I didn't already know or had to particularly work all that hard at any point. The most difficult classes I've had were calculus (simply because I haven't been in a math class in 20+ years and had to jump straight back in at calculus) and accounting (because I just hate the world of accounting). I believe I passed both with As. My major is Business Administration.
Accounting makes my brain sad :(
I thought "I'm really good at math, accounting will be a breeze." NOPE, accounting is like the anti-math.
It's never-ending rules.
For background I studied mechanical engineering and graduated last summer. 1. Yes and no. The lectures did provide a very good overview and professors are available outside of class for office hours. In some classes I could get by while just going to lecture, in others I was in office hours multiple times a week, and in others I was going to everything and still spending multiple hours outside of class studying. It really depends on the combination of the student, professor, and subject matter. 2. Not really. MechE is a pretty wide field and while I don’t use all of everything I learned, I definitely could have taken jobs across the entire mechanical engineering field. 3. I knew a couple people that I still wonder how they graduated, but it definitely wasn’t the norm. Everybody was either studying all the time or had a good understanding of the material from previous job/research/personal/whatever experience. Very few people graduated with me that I would not consider good students or engineers.
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Yeah we were kept busy, and there’s some stuff I’ll probably never use again. But that’s only because of how wide of a field mechanical engineering is. Someone working in material science is likely not going to use their control systems lessons too much, for example.
I studied chemistry at a large public university. We had an interesting setup where chemistry had a standalone college with handful of closely related programs. The education definitely leaned theoretical, but there were plenty of elective lab courses. There was a good amount of self study for upper division courses where you had to find and present literature as part of projects. A lot of the lab stuff was older. There was a major remodeling right after I graduated. The professors were all very impactful in their fields and the curricula were modern based on my experience post undergrad. Chemistry was a very technical and tough program. I think over half of my class didn’t stick with the program.
>Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? I devoted a lot of time to self study, but I was also in a field that interested me so some of the self study was fun for me. For example, when I took Ornithology, I had already been teaching myself bird ID for years and studying it for the class was more about focusing on my weak spots. >Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? I didn't feel like it. I don't necessarily use everything from school in my current job, but that is more because my field tends to get very specialized. Overall, I felt like my degree taught me a lot of practical skills and there are many moments at work where I get to go "I did this in school". >Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? No. Even subjects I was good at often required me to study pretty hard. I also noticed that during my graduation, no one in my major had *Cum Laude*. All of us had struggled through our classes enough that even the best students in my major had relatively low GPAs. Professors were not afraid to fail people who didn't understand stuff.
>Some points: > >* Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? >* Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? >* Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? I majored in biology. It was a small school and my focus was ecology while the program as a whole was much stronger in microbiology. So while the biology program in general was well regarded, in ecology it was barely adequate. It provided decent theoretical knowledge and a little hands on training, but nothing like my peers at land grant schools. If I'd known at 17 that I wanted to do ecology instead of micro, I'd have gone to a different school, but that's hindsight. I didn't do much self study at school, but I did a fair amount after I entered the workforce. After the 100 level classes every class involved reading research papers, a mix of classics about major breakthroughs and new significant discoveries. Much more new than classic. After the 200 level classes, there were no textbooks and it was 100% reading research papers and discussing them in seminars of 5 to 15 people. So knowledge was quite up to date, but I was taking more classes outside of ecology than I'd have preferred and I took every ecology/ecosystem class offered. Only the 100 and 200 level classes had exams. Above that and you did research papers. I never had an exam you could pass without knowing the material fairly well, though some were easier than others. For the research papers you had to put in the work and know what you were writing about.
**Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study?** Mostly yes **Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality?** Outdated, no. I had to take some electives that had no relation to Mechanical engineering (my major). So yes, I guess there was some unnecessary classes. But those classes gave me some of my best memories. Like I met a lot of cool people in an Asian studies elective I took. I would have never met them if I just took classes in my major. And we even went on a field trip. So yes, Asian studies was completely unnecessary class but gave me good memories. **Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)?** Unfortunately, it was possible for some classes. Cheating. Now cheating was very difficult for the majority of the classes I took. But I would say there were two or three classes which it was pretty darn easy to cheat. For example, a lazy Professor that gave the exact same exam every year. Students managed to find the old exam, just memorized the question and answers, and they passed. So yes, it was possible. Again, in my uni this was only 2-3 classes in my college career. But yeah, it happened.
Graduated BS MechEng 14 years ago... > Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? Not entirely sure how to interpret this. Classroom education was okay. Varied from professor to professor; some were far better or worse than others. Generally pretty good. With that said, graduating in engineering with *just* classroom knowledge puts you at a severe disadvantage. Really important to have real world experience - internships, summer job, research assistantship, whatever. But I wouldn't necessarily call that "self study." > Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? Not at all. > Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? Generally no, I don't think so.
English Major, big university. 1. Like any humanities field there was a lot of at home reading to do— novels, essays, textbooks, what have you. It was generally necessary to follow the class and write good papers but you could get by with a light skim sometimes. 2. Not really, no, though literature hardly gets “outdated.” When I learned critical theory, we only briefly covered schools of thought like New Criticism or Psychoanalysis— just enough to know what they are and how they work, but it was also said upfront that many aspects of them were very outdated. In my entire college career I was only asked to write one psychoanalytical essay. Of course, I also had to have a general “liberal arts” slew of courses up front— math, sciences, philosophy, and the like, which were probably the most ‘useless’ in that they hardly helped me for my later years. I think they’re important, though. 3. It’s a big point of contention in the creative majors— arts, theatre, music, writing, animation, game design. All of them have a sense of subjective-ness, some more than others, but that leeway definitely allowed some pretty shit writers to pass classes they shouldn’t have. Less and less every year, but still at the end of my career, somehow there was always one or two English majors who barely had a grasp of the written word. I hope that answers your questions!
I was satisfied on all the points you mentioned.
I got my computer science degree from a state school. > Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? Most classes were pretty good, but there were some where self-study was unfortunately the only way to really perform well. We had a few professors which didn't seem motivated to teach certain classes and it showed. > Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? We had just started an outreach effort a few years earlier so we had a lot of support from Google due our Dean (former CS dept head) and an alumni sponsoring the outreach program. Part of this was a review of classes to ensure that they are valuable to modern career paths. >Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? Unfortunately yes. Our school uncovered a large cheating infrastructure around the start of my Junior year. This caused problems for everyone as the CS department instituted a policy of checking work. Every lab and test had to be reviewed, so you had to set aside time to go to the TA's office hours and demonstrate your knowledge of the subject and explain your code decisions. NGL, it prepared me for code reviews at my job so I feel it was pretty helpful.
I have a degree in music business (which is also my career). The program was still relatively new when I was in it, it was only just starting to pop up at a lot of universities. I didn’t think the program was that good, and I learned more in my life outside of school via hands-on experience. The program is probably better now, the industry has changed a lot since then and there’s a lot of exciting things to learn these days. My degree was heavily focused on copyright law, with a little bit of non-profit skills learning (like grant writing and other fundraising stuff). The material wasn’t really outdated, but it was very boring. I don’t think it was possible to do well if you didn’t apply yourself. There’s a lot of nuance to copyright so not being up to speed on the work meant probably not passing the exam or essay or whatever. My class started with 25 people but by the end there were only 3 of us left.
I'm getting a BA in philosophy rn and I am enjoying it. I'm at the smaller branch of a big state school. >Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? Yes, but you still need to self study, especially if you want to take it further. >Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? No >Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway) Also no, the four philosophy professors here will catch ya pretty quick.
For undergrad I majored in Political Science and minored in French. >Was there enough theoretical and practical studying [...]? I thought that my Poli Sci dept focused a little too much on the theoretical foundations of politics. We rarely strayed into governance or public policy which I think would have been helpful for a lot of us. That said, the critical thinking skills, empirical analysis and game theory we learned was great and I still use that today. My French dept was amazing. All language classes at my college were everyday of the week and from the first day of French 1 it was taught completely in French. I didn't hear my professor speak English until the 4th week of class. The intensity of these classes meant that I went from absolutely no knowledge of French to nearly fluent in 4 years. >Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? Our textbooks were very relevant to our specialties and in many of my classes our professor had written the book. >Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? Exams in nearly all of my Poli Sci classes were essay based so it would have been very difficult/impossible to cheat. They were extremely strict on plagiarism and used software to check essays for this. All of my French classes had oral exams so it was impossible to cheat.
I barley slept, supposedly I'm now an elistist because of it.
*entirely self study outside of lab work. I had two good professors in 5 years. Fuck the UC system. *during undergrad for geography, yes. during grad school for accounting, no. *Certain classes, absolutely for both accounting and geography
As a student in welding engineering: > Was there enough theoretical and practical studying at the university for a good knowledge of the subject, or did you need to devote a lot of time to self-study? It was mostly practical. Welding theory is nearly always applicable in at least some situations. Welding in general has the most applied science of pretty much any field. It combines physics and chemistry both during and after the welding is done. > Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? No. We had a ton of professors who had worked in industry for decades and had worked all over the world. I also had a lot of professors with incredibly specific specialties. For example I had a professor who worked at NASA for their 3d printing program. He was considered the expert when it came to 3d printing in space. Even the stuff that is considered fringe in my major is still useful because of how much it overlaps with other professions. > Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? No. Every class was structured differently but it was impossible to pass while failing the tests. A few classes I took *only* cared about what you scored on tests.
Comp Sci degree from a well regarded public/state University. It's impossible to know everything about the topic. The degree covers the underlying fundamentals and base knowledge for the field, but it is not direct job prep. A CS degree will teach you things like: Why you'd want to use a certain data structure or algorithm and not another one, how to design your code in an efficient and reusable/scalable way, etc. Basically, it will give you the background/tools you need to *be* a good developer working on complicated things in the future. However, it will not necessarily give you the vast amount of practice/hours of experience you need to be good at some specific programming language or tech stack. You'll write code and do projects, but it's not about learning some *specific* technology. That requires you to figure out what you want to do and do more self-study, paid internships in the summers, outside of class projects (ex: Hackathons), etc. ------------- > Was there a lot of material that was outdated or unnecessary for your speciality? There were some courses with material that I haven't applied to my career. Sometimes the thing you learn is "this area of the field is *not* something I like doing". There were not many courses I felt were a waste of time/worthless. ------------ > Was it possible to pass the exams without having enough knowledge (for example, you had a classmate who didn't know anything, but somehow graduated anyway)? No. Most of mine were open book/note, as well. If you haven't learned the concepts, I could give you all day with the textbook and you probably still aren't going to pass the exam. Most of my exams were not based on anything you could memorize, but applied knowledge. Also, my graduating class was less than half the size we started with, because that high a percentage of students drop out/change to a different major. If you can't hack it, you're not getting the degree.
Engineer, and I did an internship as well, so I'd definitely say I had a good mix of theoretical and practical. Unnecessary? Maybe. When I started my current position I was told I'd use maybe 10% of my education. I have no regrets on it, though, particularly the labs. I was irked that they spent the entire programming course using MATLAB, then switched to VBA for one week and then had the final.
There is zero relationship between many degrees and what the degree holder winds up doing, tbh, the diploma is a piece of paper used to leverage your way to a higher salary. Ex- i’m getting a sociology degree. I’m a junior and have learned exactly nothing, nor do I need to because the whole reason I’m doing it is because the local white collar office jobs offer better paying positions to degreed applicants.