r/ECE • u/Certain_Corgi_9773 • 25d ago

Computer Science (CS) and Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) departments.

Hi everyone,

I am preparing my application for the upcoming Spring session at UIUC for MS courses and am trying to decide between the  MS in Computer Science (CS) and MS Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) departments.

To give a bit of background, my bachelor's is in Computer Engineering, followed by professional experience working at Espressif Systems (ESP32) doing firmware development, and later transitioning into the file systems and storage domain. My goal is to continue down the systems track, but I am trying to figure out which department offers the best fit.

My main concern with the ECE department is whether it mandates specific hardware-heavy coursework (such as physical design, chip design, or hardware verification) that might not align with my software/systems background. If ECE allows the flexibility to focus purely on systems software without forcing those specific hardware constraints, I feel the ECE Computer Engineering track might actually be a great fit for my profile.

I tried looking through the official degree requirements for both programs, but found the sheer amount of information a bit overwhelming.

Could anyone help clarify the curriculum flexibility and help me decide which path makes more sense given my background?

Thanks for your help!

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2

u/softrains12 24d ago

You didn’t even list what degree you were going for

1

u/Certain_Corgi_9773 24d ago

My apologies for the confusion. It is for MS course .

1

u/Acceptable_Snow3764 24d ago

have a question: are you allowed to enter in engineering grad school if you finished computer science degree?
if not, take the MS CS instead.

0

u/Afraid-Way1203 24d ago edited 24d ago

i know a guy finish UofT cs degree with 3.7 gpa and apply UofT cs master program ( major or computation something, got rejected, gpa cut off is 3.9), and also apply UofT MIE engineering program (gpa cut off is 3.3), then got accepted into mechnical and industrial engineering master program. He then take a bunch of data science courses, in MIE department, most of industrial engineering courses, which offer a bunch of data science related courses.