<p>I have always thought that the difficulty of the degree should be at the same par, but recently I looked up some of my friends' timetables who are in the states doing engineering (I go to uni at Canada). I am surprised that the hours of classes(lecs, tuts, and lab) are significantly less than mine. Their timetables only have around 18 hours per week where as the engineering students in Canada typically get around 26 hours or even 30+ for EE and chemE. when I showed one of them my timetable, he was shocked of how packed my timetable is. We are all attending ones of the top universities.</p>
<p>I know that the hours does not directly imply the difficulty of a program, but at least it says something.
Why is there such a difference? Is engineering easier in the US than it is in Canada?</p>
<p>I don’t know about direct US and Canada comparisons, but the workload definitely varies by school, and most definitely by country. My roommate is an exchange student from China and he signed up for 21 credit hours his first week here (in the US). He ended up dropping 2 classes because he was shocked at how much more work the courses were than in his school. </p>
<p>That said, most engineering majors I know - myself included - take anywhere from 15-21 credit hours per semester. It largely depends on how many credits you already have going into college. For example, my school is very liberal with AP credits and leaves it up to us to decide if it is a good idea to transfer AP courses. Because of that, most of my electives and intro courses are taken care of and I don’t have to take too many courses each semester. But some schools accept 0 AP credit and you’ll have to take more hours each semester as a result.</p>
<p>To my knowledge, but I might be wrong about this (I only know a subset of schools), Canadian engineering schools tend not to give credit for AP courses that are required engineering courses. </p>
<p>Also, outside of engineering and more generally speaking, the normal course load/credit hours at Canadian schools tends to be higher per semester than the normal course load/credit hours at American schools. Also outside of engineering, many more US schools accept for degree credit a lot of courses that would not be accepted in Canada (e.g. Bowling 101 for non-phys ed students, art studio for not BFA students). I know someone with a degree in computer science from a well regarded public university who says he filled all of his ‘breadth requirements’ with recreational courses like tennis and ping pong.</p>
<p>I’m from Canada and didn’t even know what AP credit was when I graduated from high school. Maybe that makes a difference. I’ve had 6 classes pretty much every semester, and like starbright said, the restrictions on electives are pretty tight. Definitely can’t take any overly rubber head classes. No idea what things are like in the US.</p>
<p>I imagine there’s a different way of counting how units should be counted between the different schools, as 30+ credits would imply an expected work load of 90+ hours a week.</p>
<p>oh, now i see it seems that the credit systems r totally different. Canadian schools dont equate the number of hours to the credits earned. Im taking 5 courses x 0.5 credit/course but i am having 31 hours of classes per week.</p>
<p>Anyways i think its the AP thing that makes a difference, some high school do offer AP courses but not every school does, and starbright is right about universities don’t accept them</p>
<p>I went to U of T and have been in the USA now for 7 yrs due to the engineering industry. There isn’t a big difference in hours amongst “ABET accredited” US schools and Canadian schools. There may be differences with non-ABET schools or with schools which have engineering taught alongside a healthy slice of liberal arts curriculum if you are looking strictly at the science and math courses. Some Canadian universities do accept AP or IB credits for particular subjects as well.</p>
<p>As a ChemE at UC Berkeley, I average around 25 hours per week for classes, which isn’t really that different from 26-30+. </p>
<p>But I don’t think the number of hours of classes is really that important of a factor in determining the overall difficulty of the schedule…how long the problem sets take is far, far more important.</p>
<p>Yep, most people skip engineering lectures anyways. What is significant is the workload of labs/assignments and the fact that most courses have 2 midterms and a final that is worth 75% of your total marks.</p>
<p>Most people don’t skip engineering lectures (at least not regularly). Some do and get away with it, more do and their grades suffer, but the majority of people attend the majority of classes. There is a definite correlation, in general, between attendance and grades.</p>