Hello Rakesh,

CSE and ECE are both amazing and interesting branches

Before selecting either of the two, you need to keep a few things in mind:-

1.) Placements:-

‘Placements’ is a word that can wake an aspiring engineer up from his slumber!! Both the branches are quite lucrative. Your selection of either depends entirely on the kind of niche that you want to carve for yourself. Before choosing either of the two, do a bit of groundwork on the kind of roles that both the branches have to offer.

Along with a good salary, you also need to make sure that you have job satisfaction, and that can only come when you are doing something that you like.

See CSE opens up software jobs and ECE opens up both software as well as hardware jobs because the course structure of ECE has quite a few CSE courses in it. But as an ECE graduate, it is a bit hard to end up in software jobs as compared to a CSE graduate. If you are sure that your interests lie in coding, and you want to end up being a software engineer, you should go for CSE. But if you are not sure whether your interests lie in coding or not, you should think a little before choosing either of the two. Delve into the syllabus/coursework of both the branches and try to figure out which one piques your interest.

Just remember one thing that if you choose ECE, it would be possible to shift to the software roles, but it would require a lot of external effort because ECE in itself is a very hard branch, and along with that you would need to be really good at coding (as good as any CS guy) in order to get a good placement.

2.) Research:

If you want to get into research, again it depends on your interests. If you are interested in Hardware, go for ECE. If you are interested in Software, go for CSE.

ECE graduates can go for research in both the software and hardware fields, but if you have already decided that you want to do research in software side only, then CSE obviously makes more sense because ECE has a huge workload and you would end up wasting a lot of time, studying useless subjects.

3.) Personal Preference:

Do not follow the herd mentality, choose what you think is right for you. You’ll get a good placement only if you have genuine interest in what you are doing. If you are not interested in CSE, chances are that you might land up in a mass recruiter like TCS, which would add nothing onto your CV. So just follow your interests and work hard in college.

4.) Other Plans after BTech-MBA/UPSC/PSU/MTech:

• If you want to go for M.Tech or PSUs, ECE is the right choice because ECE has more opportunities in the government sector.
• If you want to go for UPSC after your B.Tech, then your choice of branch really doesn't matter, just go for the branch which you have more interest in or if you’re confused, go for CSE because it is an easier branch and would give you more time to prepare for UPSC.

If you want to go for an MBA after your B.Tech, then your choice should be influenced by your interests. There are many ways to look at it.

If you’re gunning an MBA after your B.Tech, you should probably consider Placements as a backup option. ECE, being the more versatile branch, would offer you more options as you can sit for both Core as well as IT companies. Though the workload in CSE may be less than ECE, in order to get a good placement in CSE, you would need to work much harder in the background because there is a cutthroat competition for the software jobs. ECE has less competition as compared to CSE (for Core jobs of ECE) , and it also gives you more options, but do remember that getting into software is harder for an ECE graduate as compared to a CSE one. Most of the ECE companies that come to the campus tend to take only a handful of the students. CSE companies take a lot of students, but it’s hard to get into the biggies like Microsoft, Amazon etc, because in most tier 1 colleges, the whole campus actively takes part in coding, so competition is high.

Hope this answer will clear all your doubts

Good luck

See, branch selection totally depends on your interest but still for you I would give you some information so that you can choose the best for you.

If you are interested in coding want a high package salary then you should with CSE.

If you have planned to go for masters degree and want to have a good knowledge of electronics then I would suggest you to go with ECE.

Hope it helps you to choose the best for you.

All the best.