Thursday, June 05, 2008

Embedded Digital Systems in University of Sussex

Finally lot of people are asking me about How is it in MSc in Embedded Digital Systems from University of Sussex. As I have given my final exams and also got result of half of the courses, I think I am in position to evaluate it for you.

Below I go:

Courses
In first term I studied:
Real Time Embedded Systems
Mobile & Satellite Communication Systems
Advanced Network Technologies
Digital Signal Processing (Advanced)

2nd Term Courses:
Fibre Optic Communications
High Level IC Design
Advanced Microprocessor Systems
Advanced Digital Communication Systems

Instead of going into long details I will try to summarize weaknesses and strengths of university and courses being taught.

Strengths
  • Excellent Management
  • Excellent Examination System
  • Excellent Atmosphere
  • Excellent Town to live in whole UK i.e Brighton (no.1 on people's happiness scale)

Weaknesses

  • Course contents are not advanced, strip out "Advanced" from courses names, as they will not be advanced. We studied more advanced content in our undergrad back in a poor 3rd world country Pakistan.
  • Every one awarded admission, the course should be for Engineering background students, but you will be amazed by the diversity of background disciplines in the class.
  • Because of students with non-engineering backgrounds in the class, they will teach very straight away simple things so that every one can study and pass the course (simple reason: student has paid 11,500 pounds)
  • And the main reason behind all these mess-up is 11,500 pounds itself. I think there should be more focus on quality also. I think you people got my point.

Overall UK Education System

I have already written a post about UK education system, it has its own weaknesses and strengths, the weaknesses and strengths I listed above were specific to University of Sussex, but they can be applied to all corners of UK education system itself. Following are the points, which I now learnd, can become very handy sometimes.

  • They will only teach you 15% of course contents, but the exam will not be conceptual as such, that will be a memory test, you will not have to solve any thing, because they will give you hints in tutorial class that whats coming in the exam and you will have past 3 years papers to see the patterns.
  • They will not teach you any books, will give you hand-outs, each course will have 3-5 notes in total, exam papers include them all, if you just prepare exam papers, you will be covering infact 70-80% of the course.
  • In exam you will be in strict pressure, 2 hours time, have to solve everything out, total 4 questions, choice of 3, but still you will not be able to think anything, exam papers are masterly designed, if you stop to think about anything, you will be losing a question at the end. So you should have a sharp memory power, you should memorize everything before coming to exam and during the exam just pour that all out on the paper.

Now from here, I got the trick that from where "Ratta" or "Rote" system is gone in sub-continent because our education systems were based on british system. What we did, we stripped out all the benefits from this system, forgot the basics, never give any notes and still make people to remember all those formulas and relax them a bit during the exams.

But institutes like from where I have studied, they are following American System, semester one (you will see annual system in work here), and there we study loads and loads of knowledge and actually when we go to interviews, we are able to solve very complex questions of Laplace, but very few of us know why Laplace is used in DSP at first hand, well here they will only teach you why Laplace is used, from where it has drived and very simple questions to pass the exam paper, infact thats they only thing employers wanted to know from you. Here they will teach you very basics, but you will have to remember them, this makes you efficient for the interviews.

But still, if there is a masters degree in MSc Embedded Digitals System, only computer/electrical engineers should be given admission and a bit advanced courses should be taught, like they already must have known that how a micro-controller works in RTES, there should be real time systems high end system which they should have to implement during labs rather than just interfacing serial and CAN buses.

Next are exams, you want to know my experience, read my past posts, I am very average students, never exceeded 65% overall average in my whole life. I studied 6 to 7 hours before the exam of each course, on the night before. Uptil now my average is around 60%. And I am hoping I will remain on 60%. Its a B-grade over here and 70% is A-grade. A person with a B-grade is known here as Passed with Merit and still I hardly attended classes during 2nd term (attended several in the 1st).

Job Situation

I know you are interested in Job situation because ultimate goal of 95% people coming here is to earn. Take my simple advise, you will get severe problem over here because even a Cleaner job will ask you the reference (and you will have to find it, use your contacts over here to get one). Once you got the job, it will work during the study. After the study, its my believe, its up to your own attitude + aptitude that what you think about yourself. If you have any skill, you can cash it in very good good money. Let me give you my own example, when I came here I got a job at a local dominos shop with the reference of my landlord over here, I worked 6 months there, it given me bread to eat while I was studying but when I was going on my exams vacation, I decided I am not coming back here InshAllah, and on the 3rd day after the exams I have got a extremely good Programming job in London. Thats because I knew I can do it. If I would have sticked to dominos, I would never have got it.

And I think you have got all my points. Do ask if you have any other questions!

(Notice: This blog post is for those who want to get admission in my University and it can only be used for individual information. I hold no liability as they are my personal views and I think I am doing better use of freedom of speech. )

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