> I go to a "name brand" college (Carnegie Mellon, you can disagree if you'd like) and there are LOTS of CS majors who don't know anything. That was my impress

> I go to a "name brand" college (Carnegie Mellon, you can disagree if you'd like) and there are LOTS of CS majors who don't know anything. That was my impression of ECE at Purdue University (a top 10 graduate school at the time, unsure of undergrad ranking). Most undergrads were incapable of functioning as engineers. I taught two different senior-level courses while I was there. The top students were excellent, as you would expect. The rest hobbled along. I had seniors who couldn't approximate the gain of an op-amp or make a common-emitter amplifier. Not one of the senior design students bothered to simulate their circuits before building them (and frying them). They had no idea how to test a circuit once they built it. I actually credit the undergrads' ineptitude to the curriculum. Purdue has lots of classroom instruction but very few labs. I had approximately double the number of labs as an undergrad at the University of Arkansas. Even the worst students were capable of building and testing a circuit, whereas the Purdue students would expect the TA to do their testing for them.