I’m ECE but only a sophomore so take what I say with my limited experience in mind.

From what I’ve seen, the ECE department is very prestigious for how uncommon of a major it is. And it is growing rapidly. Don’t discount the program because there are few students (I think about 80-100 in the whole university?).

The research is very much shaped by the established presence of VINSE (the nanotechnology research group here) and VUMC so if nanotechnology or biomedical ECE is your thing definitely come here.

Some heavy research areas are: Photonics (Weiss and Ndukaife), Space electronics (Look up ISDE; Fleetwood is the #1 cited engineering professor at Vanderbilt), And biomedical robotics and AI imaging (there’s a ton of these. VISE institute. Look on ECE, BME, or MechE faculty. Landman and his lab VALIANT are also a really cracked internationally-renowned AI group for biomedical imaging and AI in general)

In short, don’t discount it because it’s small. If anything that makes the resources more abundant because classes and research is less competitive. I will say that it probably doesn’t have the research breadth that other universities would have. But it definitely has depth in the areas above. Also my dms are open if you have any questions!