The University of Florida

Date: Jan 25 2006
Major: Computer Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
There are many things to understand about the University of Florida.

First of all, unless you're die hard about doing software only, do either computer engineering - hardware emphasis or electrical engineering through the ECE department. Unfortunately, the CISE department is not as organized and the professors don't really teach you as much the fundamentals of computer science as you would need. Their approach is: teach you the concepts and let you figure out how to do the programming, which can become frustrating especially with more complicated assignments. A lot of classes are pretty big and have very little interaction.

In contrast, I have found my electrical engineering teachers to be more caring about the individual, the classes to be more interactive and smaller, the coursework to be taught in a manner that actually makes it fun to learn it, and the project useful in industry.

But there is one law that I have found of utmost importance in this school: you have to find the opportunities, they will not come to you. This school has tremendous amount of opportunities, from research, to interships, to sports, to service organizations, but you need to be interested and involved. When you do this, you will realize that UF has a lot to offer. If you have the possibility of participating in the Honors Department, take it. They will give you individual treatment and will actually care about your problems.

Unfortunately, due to the enormity of this school (40,000+) registrars, financial aid, are all very bureaucratic and tend to see you as a number. My advice to you in these cases are skip the front desk people and go to the supervisors if you have a real problem you need to solve. Those are the only people who can help you. I say this as a person who has had a problem with financial aid for almost every semester that I've been here.

I don't want to put UF down, it is really a good school with a great variety of people and opportunities. You need to seek them out, they will not take care of you. The education is very good and the environment is not too competitive, meaning that you will actually make friends in your department. The professors are willing to help you most of the time and they are for the most part an untapped resource so take advantage of this.

Once you get yourself settled in, you'll enjoy it.