Careers: We look at ourselves: The EE student: A picture of today's electrical engineering students emerges from interviews with 16 of them, aged 20 to 24, at 10 U.S. colleges

Carrying five-color pens in the pockets of their Oxford shirts, they wear calculators on their belts and have oscilloscopes in their dorm rooms. They are great with numbers and can fix anything that has a battery, but when it comes to putting words on paper, they are helpless. They are conservative, cautious, and not inclined to take risks. They are introverted and don't socialize much - in fact, they're more comfortable talking to computers than people. In 10 or 15 years, they will settle down contentedly in middle-class suburbia.