In this study, we explore the difficulties of students in the disciplines of post-graduation in electrical engineering. To the extent that the student is able to elucidate his difficulties during the disciplines of the postgraduate course, your research can flow with greater satisfaction and success. Our findings are based on interviews of students with different backgrounds and educational experiences, allowing to capture different difficulties and motivations found in the classroom, which influence the researches of masters and doctoral students. We found that most of the students in the postgraduate course in electrical engineering had background training in distinct areas (73.3%), and that they are generally related area students, such as math, computing, and other areas of engineering. Another aspect is that most interviewees reported that their difficulties were related to the disciplines that addressed the development of algorithms and mathematical calculations (66%), suggesting that this problem was a consequence of insufficient knowledge base for the disciplines. The findings suggest that even with the difficulties encountered in the classroom, the students of the course had no disapproval, because most of the time they sought to discuss their difficulties in groups of studies created by classmates, and thus, elucidating the difficulties faced with colleagues who had different skills.