<p>I'm having a hard time deciding between the two majors industrial and civil. I know the difficulty is subjective, so I won't really ask how hard each major is (If you have experience with a topic, I'd be interested to know how hard you think something is, though). From what I can see, industrial makes more money. A small difference, though. I'm sure both majors have pros and cons. If it makes any difference, I am planning on getting some sort of graduate degree, whether it be an M.S. or MBA. My undergraduate years will be spent at UF.</p>
<p>Can anyone tell me a little bit more about each degree option, and what I can expect to get out of each choice?</p>
<p>I know next to nothing about Civil, but can give you a little info on IE. UFs IE course schedule looks pretty similar to Purdues </p>
<p>Basically youll get a pretty well rounded understanding of a lot of the different engineering disciplines (EE, ME, etc.), a bunch of statistics, and then the main areas of IE (OR, Systems, Human Factors etc…). Im not going to go into what all those are about, theyre pretty easy to google if youre interested. A lot of people throw around the impression that IE is a glorified business major my experience is that this really isnt true. Id definitely say IE here is a broad engineering major long before its a more rigorous business major. I can honestly say that I know quite a bit of ME, enough to easily understand any basics that Id come across in industry. However, I know that some programs are much different and take more of the business route (looking at Ufs courses Id say youll have a similar experience to mine). </p>
<p>As far as opportunities upon graduation, the majority will be in supply chain, operations management, and classical IE (basically a position where youll use most of the IE stuff you learn in school) theres also usually quite a few opportunities in technical consulting (IBM type stuff). Almost every major company now recruits IEs for one of those positions… However, without a doubt the main recruiting companies are those that manufacture. Im sure you can find info on the starting salaries out of UF, here were usually in the middle of the pack as far as engineering majors, but yes, higher than Civil. </p>
<p>Both UFs and Purdues IE program encompasses a lot of engineering core classes from other majors this is good because it leaves the door open for grad school in any engineering discipline with only minor make-up requirements. For instance, Im thinking about a MS in Petroleum E. If you think youll want to do a grad program in something outside of IE, think about taking your technical electives in that discipline.</p>
<p>IE is what just purduefrank point out. At Georgia Tech, we call IE Imaginary Engineer to point out the fact that they engineer imaginary statistical numbers to improve the overall product management and performance in macro management point(also point out how easier it is compare to other undergraduate engineer majors). however it’s more toward business and operation management area route. How to improve current implement system and save cost to overall production and etc. It is great field to get into if you plan on business side and operation manager route. </p>
<p>Civil engineer I believe will have large shortage in job market due to the fact that new house built for next few years will decrease significantly. With many house being repossessed by banks and down in real estate market, the area in civil engineer that you should get into to secure job would be environmental area. Clean energy and environmental issue is hot right now with current government funding but I do hear mixed messages from department of energy since they are not getting the enough funding due to government deficits.</p>
<p>Yeah yeah… they call it imaginary engineering everywhere lol.</p>
<p>In any case, the difficulty is inherently different for each person. Personally, the #1 weed class for purdue EE’s is the first linear circuits class (man if I had a $ for every time I’ve listened to people b**** about that class) - imo I’d take that any day over some human factors class where I have to memorize minute details over, literally, ungodly amounts of information. Mechanics, to me, is actually kind of fun… In fact, my GPA only considering the ME/EE weed out classes, math/physics/cs is actually higher than my IE GPA.</p>
<p>I mean don’t get me wrong, I’d say overall ME/EE are harder for most people but it’s no business major (really not even remotely close as far as the coursework). ChemE, on the other hand, just scares me - my hat’s off to them.</p>
<p>In general, do people you know consider IE harder/easier than ME/EE etc.? It is one of my choices because I don’t necessarily want to be purely technical. I like the economics and broadness of it. So I feel like possibly it would easier for me than most other engineering types.</p>
<p>If you ask any school with IE / EE / ME program, all likely will say IE is easier since IE does not go in depth into science area and end with just introductory physics class. Don’t put emphasis on which program is easier/harder but what you wanna do… if you just choose program that is harder than other engineer programs to just to prove point that you are smarter than others and miserable for the rest of your life… what’s the point. Find your interest and go for it. Find your major after taking some beginning introduction class at freshmen and sophomore and decide on your future. If you wanna go into management in technical area, it’s better to go into ME or EE and getting MBA rather than going for IE MBA route.</p>
<p>Industrial: statistics, quality control, time measurements, system simulation, stochastic modeling, fuzzy logic, figuring out the optimal use of resources, designing a system to achieve a goal at lowest cost, etc.</p>
<p>Like I said, most will find/say that IE is about the easiest engineering major. There are parts more challenging than others - the OR classes are certainly the most technical as far as your IE courses go, human factors is probably the least technical. </p>
<p>As far as your reasoning for getting into it, I’d say it fits pretty well. Personally, I’m a big fan of econ - without a doubt it’s one of my favorite subjects and something I stay fairly up to date on just in general. IE (at least at UF and Purdue) will leave something to be desired as far as getting a lot of econ coursework - you’re only going to take the basics (and primarily, at least here, they focus on micro stuff)… but you can take some more classes for electives if you feel the need. </p>
<p>My point is just don’t have the idea that it’s a lot of what’s normally considered business coursework, most of the stuff you’ll learn about business is from an operations standpoint (production control systems and design, optimization, etc.) - not econ, accounting/finance, management…</p>
<p>in IE at purdue you still have to take Thermo, Statics, Linear Circuits and a nuclear engineering class, so its not all as easy as its made out to be.</p>