Ranking all 22 engineering classes I took in college 

"The teacher was so bad BUUT the information was pretty cool" summarises my entire college experience until now.

As someone who isn't even in STEM, I still find this interesting. I like seeing what other majors need to do in their degrees.

As an Electrical Engineer with a PhD in Statistical Signal Processing, I must say I had the biggest smile in my face when I saw your favorite class was DSP. Signal Processing is so cool... you design a filter mathematically using complex numbers and transforms and the designed effect really happens the physical world with the actual signal, it is almost like magic! The frequency domain is like this hidden world, like tapping into an alternate dimension to solve problems in our dimension. I also liked the same classes as you for nearly the same reasons. It is nice to see how people who lean toward one area end up having so much similarities. :)

I am at Cal Poly taking Digital Design literally right now, and we are still doing the same exact projects you did hahaha. My lecture videos are from 2012, around when you would've taken the class. It is honestly crazy to think that I am literally in your shoes from when you took the class, but in 2023. I have been watching your videos for years now and this is an amazing moment for me. You inspired me and helped me choose my major for college.

I didn’t know I needed this video until I saw it. I’m a Physics major and in a month or two, I’ll be choosing another engineering major. I was always inclined toward Electrical Engineering and now this simplifies my choices further. Thanks a lot for this!

Ranking my classes…0/10 would not do again

Let's just confess how much we miss the EE Zach Star.I really hope to see more EE related videos.

I just graduated with an EE degree, and damn this list just makes me realize there's a lot of classes I wasn't able to take at my school cause they either weren't offered or I didn't have the space. I know EE is broad but man there's so much to learn, I wish I would have been able to take more classes.

"Getting 50% on the midterm and expecting it to be lower" Yeah same man

Your university classes covered all aspects of electrical engineering really well.

Cal Poly Pomona alumni here, nearly 40 year engineer. I remember about 6 classes from my program. Specifics fade but the engineering mindset stays and keeps you in the career. Good luck sir.

“Bro, stop being f****** racist.” “Let’s rank all my college engineering courses!” Two twisted sides of the same coin of Zach Star…

Hot take: My computer organization and assembly language course has been by far my favourite! I'm doing computer engineering at McGill and I loved writing assembly programs. Also the best midterm of my entire education. 106% due to bonus points

I'm quite hyped to learn about digital signals. One of the projects next year is to encode a digital signal into audio and transmit it. One group didn't use all their frequencies so decided to play a rickroll in the rest

This is actually really interesting! i'm now doing my finals in the bachelor of engineering majoring mechanical and minoring electrical, and it's very interesting to see the overlaps and differences between places.

Love your vids, keep it up, I have learned so much from you!

I really missed Zach the Electrical Engineering nerd!!! It’s been really fun watching you in the Zach Star Himself channel, but as a fellow EE student I really missed a video where you talked about Electrical Engineering, I used to watch all of your videos as a first year, and now that I’m taking those senior level classes such as DSP, Digital Comms, Electronic Design, etc, it feels awesome to see you talk about them again…

Its crazy that I found your videos around about the time I was feeling a little nostalgic for Uni and thought your skits were really relatable, only to now watch this video and realize we were in the same Uni, Major, and year! Guess that explains the why I related to them :P EE really thins out by 4th year, I wonder if we had a class together... Anyway, congratz on all the success man!

Thanks Zach for bring back all the classes in Electrical Engineering that I took to get my BSEE in 1974. The math hasn't changed nor the ckt design, power, chip design and high level problem solving. What has changed is access to all the real tools you had in the lab to actual make the math real.

As someone studying electronics engineering, I recognized so many of these classes and your rankings are 100% validated

wow much respect from a CS major, those classes seem like hell!

I graduated as a mechanical engineer. However, as luck would have it, I stumbled upon a job as a systems integrator after playing around a lot with the PLC's at the plant I was at. So It's kind of funny to see that even if it's more an EE job, it really only amounted to a single class for you guys. Makes me wish I got a technical degree in control systems instead of a general engineering degree. You touched on it, but this idea of theoretical knowledge vs practical application. I'll tell you my absolute favorite class as an ME though and it was not even an engineering course: Physics 1(2) lecture and lab. They got the formula right on how to make lectures stick with you. You take the lecture for the week, then when you go to lab, directly applying what you've learned in real world applications. My favorite part was the challenges where you are putting a huge chunk of the lab grade on your confidence to demonstrate how well you understood the material. You get one shot and a spring loaded gun. See how close your kinematics gets you to the bullseye, that kind of stuff.

I had a very similar experience in my IT degree, the classes where they just give you a mystery to solve are so much more fun than the classes with theory

This topic is so essential! It needs to be an active part of (mandatory) curriculum design!

I had no idea you went to SLO! I'm in that area and always hanging around CalPoly kids. Super cool place!

I learn Electrical engineering. I really liked Electrical Machines classes (learned that in 2 semesters) , where we learned about transformer, AC machine, DC machine and Synchronous machine. Another subject I liked was Static Converters 1(Power electronics) where I learned about rectifiers and AC/ AC electronics : )

Thank you for letting me know something new 😊

Im currently a senior EE at USF. I think its funny your favorite course is the Signals course, since Im currently in the last week for the coursework. love the tier list by the way

I'm in signals and systems right now as a computer engineering student and im loving it so far. Ive been thinking about taking control systems as an elective or some other signal processing class. Wireless communications also sounds super interesting.

Really interesting to see how different universities split the EE curriculum. Got my EE degree from ASU after transferring from a local CC and now work in the electric utility industry. Definitely don't use 90% of the material I covered in school but I loved learning it all the same 😂

That is a fairly good coverage of electrical engineering. It is comparable to what I did 40 years ago. What has improved is that you have better labs and more of them. That is very much a reflection of technology. Doing signal processing with microcomputers was only just starting in industry, and was just too expensive for students.

I really liked most of my CS classes - Assembly, algorithms, embedded stuff, and more. My major was image processing and computers(VHDL, VLSI,and all that stuff. )So, Ilearned extensively DSP. It’s fascinated seeing how DSP theory applies to signals . For example in our project - filtering cardiograms to detect heart illnesses was really cool experience. But, oh boy, I hated all those circuit analysis classes and related stuff. No wonder I ended up in the Linux embedded field and work now as SW engineer.

Your class EE133 Digital Design is taught at my Computer Science major at my University which is in another Continent. And the course is exactly the same. HDL, full adders, 8 segment displays and FPGAs.

We just had a single Circuit Analysis course (we covered Thevenin, Norton theorems and simple AC circuits in the Basic EE course, which was a required course for everyone.)

Course 16. Ropes on ropes is the best explanation of impedance I've heard. So I hope that was the topic!

aw no way!! I'm doing my bachelor's in EE at Cal Poly! cpe 233 was definitely hell. I'm onto my 3rd year and I'm gonna start taking a lot of these classes. looking forward to them 🤞

Circuit analysis 1 is my all-time favorite

I know some accredited engineering programs where if the student says the word "engineer", they are handed a list of all the engineering classes they need to take regardless of their desired discipline. Whether you wanted to be an Electrical, Mechanical, Civil or even Industrial engineer -- everyone had to take Statics, Dynamics, Strength and Materials, Materials Engineering, Thermodynamics, Heat & Mass Transfer, Mechanical Drawing (i.e. CAD) and several more. There were 2.5 years worth of classes every engineer had to take. By the time the electrical classes appeared in the curriculum, it was payback to all the Mechanical Engineers who made the rest of us suffer through Thermodynamics. We also had to take various Humanities and Social Studies electives. Imagine an engineer sitting through a Philosophy 101 lecture listening to the professor lecture on whether the table in the corner is actually a rectangle, or whether it is really blue. In the real world, I've noticed that engineers who came from those types of schools tended to run circles around those that only took classes in their discipline. Maybe it has to do with the industry I'm in and how interwoven and varied the activities and positions are.

Bro I'm an electrical engineer too and I agree with the ranking system you put. I really liked discrete time signals but I now see I should have put more effort in it. Also, for all the emotions you felt and shared with us hear this: "you are not alone ma guy"

i'm a current computer engineering student at cal poly and it was so disappointing to see ee 233 as your least favorite class, it's literally my favorite class that i've taken so far :(

My program condensed a lot of the circuit analysis into one. We did AC, Op-Amps, RLC, Frequency response, 3 phase, along with all of the DC basics. It was a whirlwind and a lot of people dropped.

as a 12th grade student taking STEM the program that I would like to take on college is Mechanical Engineering and even though this channel talks about Electrical Engineering it may or may not be involved into the program that I am taking for college. This video also helped me to grasp what's coming next in my life too basically lmao...

We had to do some weird shit in our bsc degree. For some reason we had a proper electrodynamics class, which was almost identical to a physics electrodynamics class and the in depth wave, antenna and applied stuff was in a seperate class. We also had a seperate semiconductor physics class where our professor went way too much indepth. Materials was another type of this classes. We also had to do Photonics, Sensor systems,electrical energy systems and machinse and drives. I am suprised that you did not have to do Measurement and Instrumentation. Our Professors are under the impression that Arudino is for Children so they would never consider teaching with it and we had a lot more programming.

Hey this is an old video but in case you see this I think your videos about what engineering is are great like what is structural engineering is and disciplines and curriculums are etc... I would appreciate if you did a video about national security studies, intelligence collection, military science etc... I would appreciate that

God I wish my University did circuits like yours. Linear Circuits 1 is considered a big weedout course at my Uni. There's no such thing as a circuit analysis class with just resistors. Our first circuits class does resistors, capacitors, and inductors so it's DC and AC together for your introductory circuits class. But we don't have a third class in that series, so it's just a lot more condensed and can be a lot to take in in one semester.

Communication Theory and Automatic Controls Systems were my favorite classes in EE. I would do it all again just to better understand those two.

As a Signal Data Analyst with no background in electrical engineering it's cool to see what is involved with Electrical Engineering classes. Thank you

I loved digital design!!!❤

It’s funny having the same degree but seeing how your university ordered some of your classes versus how mine structured the classes, all the same classes but in different orders

Holy shit, did I've been watching you for years, and now I know We went to the same school, were in the same major, and graduated the same year, wtf.

omg everything you had in circuit analysis was in 1 class for us (ac, dc, phasors, complex analysis, rc, rl, rlc, 2 port networks, freq response (resonance). I'm studying CE, first year

I just want to let you know thank you for your videos. I watched your videos almost 4 years ago going to my Junior year of High School and now I’m becoming a 3rd year as a Mechanical Engineering at Cal Poly SLO where I met my partner too. Thank you for your support and tips!

Went to GA Tech - EMAG 3 "The focus of this class was killing hopes and dreams". I had a great professor, but it still sucked. I remember the explanation of Synthetic Aperture antennas was cool. Seeing a Smith Chart 30 years later still strikes terror into the depths of my mortal soul.

Funny. I ranked wireless comms and DSP as my favourite courses as well. I ended up doing a PhD in signal processing for telecommunications. Was a great field for a while.

Looking at this as an EE, when he mentioned most people won't agree with some of his top choices being heavy in theory...RELATABLE. I wish I could take more classes like the one with Arduino projects instead of some of the theory-heavy courses.

"Assembly isnt where you code games and apps and stuff" OG rollercoaster tycoon:

as a electronics and telecommunications engineer i will agree with this list . Digital Signal Processing course is fking awsome , as engineer you will fall in love with FFT algorithms, this course become more interesting when you program this algorithms and filters by yourself.

2 of the classes that I hated at the time were what we called 'Signals and Systems' and 'Continuous and Discrete'. (What was covered in those classes was spread out among 4 or 5 of the ones on this listed in this video.) The biggest thing I hated about them was how they were organized. It was a lot of dry math with no real hints as to how it was going to be used early on. The idea of test functions and what was called signal power and how it fit into a statistical framework just seemed so opaque to me at the time. It wasn't until I started taking my control systems classes that I really saw their advantages.

There are so many courses to take in EE but not enough time!

Thanks Zach, I needed this video! I'm planning on going into engineering, ad I think this video will help, I'm glad that someone so funny yet so smart is able to keep making my day better, thank you!

It's crazy how I knew this was from Cal Poly just from the formatting of that coursework schedule 😂. Aerospace 18'.

i think you should review the gcse and/or a-level electronics courses here in the uk. a lot of the stuff you say is doone in the 3rd or 4th years is taught to 15-18 year olds. i myself took it and i think it's a great thing to do.

4:00 yup...Basically all my classes.

Miss the college videos

it's funny that a lot of it sounds like army preparation and even explain was in form of missaile

Woah, as someone who majored in pure math and physics I kinda wish I had done some of these courses, these look super interesting! Will you consider some of them for future video topics?

@zachstar You would be intrigued with Photonics and Optical Engineering.

Yoooo Cal Poly! I recognize the flow chart at the beginning

16:20 I did my final on fourier analysis today.. somehow went worst than I thought

HAHA. I saw that class list on the first image and thought “wow that looks a lot like my class list” guess what? Computer Engineering at Cal Poly! Go Mustangs. Small world. I transferred in and ee 255 wrecked me. Rest leveled up though. I liked my time there. Would not do it again. But glad i went.

My favorite class was Assembly Programming as Electrical Engineer :)

when you were talking about fields and said "scariest-looking thing in all of electrical engineering" i immediately said out loud "it's a smith circle" 😭

I’m majoring in chemistry but I still find all of this quite interesting

I was surprised you had such a smaller number of classes until I learned you left out the non-EE classes. I had a total of maybe 50 classes.

“It is not what you cover (in a class), But what you discover” (Heard somewhere else)

Great weight loss Zack! Now you are a lean engineering machine 😊

I am suprised digital signal procesing and control are so far appart. Because control is just DSP, only with the added fun of having to deal with physical systems.

I'm graduating this year, my biggest regret is not taking DSP when I had the chance.

My antenna professor was the lead guy for the whole electrical engineering phd department. Really brilliant guy but my undergrad head was spinning the whole time. Honestly they should split up antenna theory into the easy parts and the hellish derivations.

Assuming CSSLO is on a semester system, and a typical load is 4 classes per semester, that means that at least 22 out of your 32 courses during your college career were STEM, leaving only 10 slots for non-STEM courses. What were your favs among those?

Watching your videos is categorized as studying time on my conscious. :D

Just when I start wondering if I'm too set on EE and started looking at other paths, I see a video like this and ALL of those classes seem interesting. Other paths just don't really peek my interests but everyone keeps telling me as a mom I shouldn't do an EE degree. I'm finishing my undergrad and transferring to SDSU and really excited but everyone around me keeps advising against it because it's hard? Obviously it's hard, the challenge is what simulates my soul so I have been ignoring all the advice.

When did you graduated?

My major was Electronic and Information Engineering, I had the exact same courses.

0:51 What programmers usually do: make games and apps. What assembly programmers do: make calculators run directly on CPUs. Btw, iirc the original Roller Coaster Tycoon was coded in Assembly 😶.

Is that food on your shirt?

Hey, can you maybe explain a little bit about Alan Beckers new video Animation vs Math? Maybe I can understand then what the heck happens...

Looking back at it bro I’m a dumbass. I switched majors from EE to comp sci after the end of circuit analysis 1 which was basically your circuit analysis 1 and some of your circuit analysis 2. Because I felt I was a failure because I couldn’t take a problem and design a circuit to solve my issue, I thought it was me but it looks like it’s just how the curriculum is supposed to be… Low key kinda regret that decision now in hindsight…

I wish my university put half as much effort into the material as yours did. Most every course left me asking "why should I care?" Not to mention, the labs were a complete waste of time. Nothing of value was ever learned

As a biomedical engineer who almost take 75% of this courses eectromagnetic and CT signal and systems and DT signal and systems was deadly 💔

I had to study about 52 subjects for my Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering in Nepal

Now you have to give us your mechanical and aeronautics engineering classes

Wow I’ve been watching you for years and never knew you went to cal poly. Go mustangs

I would pick Discrete time signals as last. In this semester is the only thing I need to do and I dont like it 😢

Signals and Systems should just be one course. Then is you want to dive deeper into the discrete side of things one can take DSP... Also DSP is the most useful/best course in any degree ever.

Oh, man. Assembly was my favourite programming language

Our teacher for "Arduino like class" hates them, so he with help of faculty designed facultie its own develepment board using STM M7 chip line.

22 classes ?!? Over how many semesters if i may ask ?

As an aerospace engineering student, circuits make 0 sense to me, I'm glad there are people who understand it more than me.

In my computer engineering major, we take the three circuit analysis in two courses instead of three. same topics, just condensed into two courses instead of three. is that normal?