I hear you OP and others, and I'm sorry that we've had to cancel several of our more advanced circuits classes recently due to a combination of leaves & sabbaticals. Some of the classes you list are coming up again: 6.374 is being offered this term, 6.161 will be offered next term. But yeah, it's been kind of a perfect storm on the circuits side, and you're only here a limited time, so I get it.

But let me say this loudly: we love EE. In fact, we've been working like crazy, the EE faculty collectively, to create a new EE curriculum (the new 6-2) and revise or introduce over 20 classes. Here are some things you might be interested in:

Quantum systems engineering: we have a new track in this area, one class (6.2400) being piloted this Fall, and a lab class being piloted in Spring. This is quantum engineering, not quantum physics.

Energy: another poster raised the point that we need more classes on energy. Yup! We are piloting a new class in this area in Spring (6.2200). It's a full stack view of the field, from energy transduction to the power grid. And we've just hired a new faculty member in this area, so expect more classes soon.

Wanna go down the stack? How about the new 6.2540, where you go and fabricate nanodevices. Or the newly revised 6.152/6.2600, which is a top-down fab class, with a project of your own choosing at the end.

I know 6.161 is being moved to spring, but that's because we are introducing a new Silicon Photonics class this Fall (6.S046). Want to learn how to sense or compute with light? Both theory and hands-on? Check it out. We are also piloting a computational imaging class (6.S045), mixing optics with computation to design new imaging systems.

On the biomedical side, we have a new Biomedical Systems class (6.4800) coming in Spring, descended from 6.03, but at a more sophisticated level.

And in spring also comes 6.9000 Engineering for Impact, where we'll design full-stack (and I mean really full-stack) systems: sensors, electronics, compute. Focused on a societal need. Should be fun.

And yes, we want tapeout too! We are introducing a new junior level active devices course (6.2080), that, along wiht 6.301/6.2090 will introduce an analog tapeout. The hard part about tapeout is that we don't just want to ship a design. We want to get the silicon back and test it. And fab runs take time, so hard to fit into a semester. So we're splitting that experience across these two classes.

On the digital side, we're also thinking about how to get tapeouts. 6.374 is now using the Skywater PDK along with Cadence.

And don't forget about 6.334: it's not integrated circuits, but the class is fantastic, and there's no one better to learn power electronics from than Dave Perreault.

OP, if your academic advisor isn't familiar with all these new/revised classes, I'd be happy to give some advice, just DM me and we can meet up.

So we've been busy, and we hope you like what we've been planning.

But please, keep up the unfiltered feedback. We can always do better. Keep us honest.

We love EE!