<p>I'm curious as to why engineering majors such as mechanical, electrical, and computer science typically have lower GPAs than those students who are liberal arts majors?</p>
<p>Why the GPA disparity? What is it that prevents engineering majors from achieving high GPA? What is it about the curriculum that is so difficult?</p>
<p>I'm seriously thinking about majoring in computer science so I can later practice intellectual property law, so I'm interested as to why the GPA disparity in this and other engineering majors. If a lower GPA is to be expected, then I may have to supplement my major with another major and/or minor that I can do very well in to 'pad' my GPA to get into the best graduate school I can get into (as in law school).</p>
<p>I desire a high GPA and want to identify why students in these majors aren't as successful as their liberal arts peers.</p>
<p>At my school there is recommended class averages for every faculty. The faculty of engineering recommends the lowest averages. They fail more people and give less A's, etc. Liberal arts generally gives the highest averages across schools in north america. They just don't have as rigorous a grading system. So yeah, expect a lower GPA in engineering. You'll also be doing more work.</p>
<p>engineering is hard. you can't b.s. your way through the major like you can in political science or something. i remember taking an upper division political science class we were assigned to read around 6 books guess what i only read like 10 pages total out of thousands of pages. we had to write three papers and i just b.s.ed by way through an A in the class.</p>
<p>so in short, you cannot fake what 2 + 2 is. it is 4 and nothing else you can't try to convince me otherwise if you get my gist.</p>
<p>Russell, we can't equate a heavy workload to a course being difficult. That's a incorrect equation. A heavy workload is just a lot of work - that does not make the course challenging, just a requirement for the student to be dedicated to the courses. Now if a student worked full time in addition to being a full time CS major, maybe those factors would make the individual student's major challenging.</p>
<p>No one has answered my question. What makes engineering majors so difficult? Is it due to a large number of students who aren't competent in the mathematics and sciences needed to complete the major?</p>
<p>It's a correct "equation." It's easier to do less work than it is to do more work. Your question has been answered already. They curve low + heavier workload. Those are the two biggest things.</p>
<p>and yeah, read the thread that proton posted. It's already been discussed in many pages.</p>
<p>^It's not a correct equation. First of all, we're speaking in the context of intellectual effort, and a higher/heavier workload does not equate to being more of a 'demand' on your brain.</p>
<p>Darko, isn't the "ability to understand the concepts" of an engineering major relative? Meaning that what may be hard for someone may not be hard for someone else? We haven't even addressed EXACTLY WHY this "ability to understand" is harder for some than others.</p>
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First of all, we're speaking in the context of intellectual effort, and a higher/heavier workload does not equate to being more of a 'demand' on your brain.
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<p>lol, yes it does. More work is a longer demand, therefore more of a demand.</p>
<p>If what you really mean by difficult is the difficulty of the concepts, then yeah, what I said isn't relevant.</p>
<p>InnovativeBoxx, I'm assuming you've never taken an engineering course before? </p>
<p>One of the reasons engineering is so demanding is because of the breadth and depth of the subject. Even within individual fields, the amount of knowledge, concepts, etc are enormous. In addition, engineering is application-based, which means it requires thinking and the applying concepts learned before to new situations and problems. So in addition to needing to learn all that stuff, you must be able to recall all that stuff, make the appropriate connections, then apply it. That requires a logical thought process and mentality that many people do not possess and cannot learn in school. </p>
<p>Furthermore, engineering is much more objective than liberal arts, as proton pointed out. You either have the right answer or you have the wrong one. It's nearly impossible to BS your way through engineering. Of course, you might say "I've heard of people getting partial credit in engineering..." Yes that's true, in fact I've never had an engineering professor who doesn't do partial credit on free response problems. However, even in those cases, one must recognize the problem that is being presented and have in mind a good idea of how to approach the problem, otherwise you won't get any credit. </p>
<p>For example, in a political science class I took, I was asked a question about the causes of the Chinese Communist Revolution. I read the question wrong and didn't really study that part of the course for the test. I just started listing reasons that popped into my head from the various units we went over in class without making many connections or analyses. It's basic regurgitation of lectures notes. I ended up with an A- on that test. On the other hand, if I was asked why glass is a bad material to use for a hip replacement implant in a biomaterials class and I started listing the properties of glass and the pelvic bone, I'd get 2/10 for that problem, if that much. That's one of the reasons why engineering is hard.</p>
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Darko, isn't the "ability to understand the concepts" of an engineering major relative? Meaning that what may be hard for someone may not be hard for someone else? We haven't even addressed EXACTLY WHY this "ability to understand" is harder for some than others.
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<p>Are you just looking for attention? I answered your extremely broad question. </p>
<p>Why don't you make another thread named "Why do people have different IQs?"</p>
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Darko, isn't the "ability to understand the concepts" of an engineering major relative? Meaning that what may be hard for someone may not be hard for someone else? We haven't even addressed EXACTLY WHY this "ability to understand" is harder for some than others.
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<p>Just read this part so I thought I'd address that. InnovativeBoxx, you have to be specific in what you ask. Are you asking why the average GPA of engineers are lower? Or are you asking why some people have low GPAs? Because the example you just gave deals with differences between individuals, not sets of data as a whole. Of course there will be people who are smarter and do better. </p>
<p>In fact, if you are comparing individual GPAs, I'd say that smart engineers do better than smart liberal arts majors. Looking at my school's latin honors GPA cutoffs, since 2004 when cutoffs began to be calculated separately for Arts&Sciences and engineering schools, there is only one instance in which the arts&sciences cutoff is higher than the engineering cutoff, and that's just once and only for the lowest honor. For higher honors like Summa Cum Laude and Magna Cum Laude, the engineering cutoff is always higher than arts&science cutoffs, without exception. As for Dean's List, the highest arts&sciences cutoff ever since 2000 was 3.740, the highest for engineering in the same period of time was 3.900. Mind you, Dean's List is top third of the class. So I'd say, if we are talking about the top performing students, engineering GPA are not lower than liberal arts GPAs at all.</p>
<p>A lot of courses in engineering build on one another. For example, some engineering courses use calculus a lot. If you don't do well in calculus, you aren't expected to do well in those courses. Many of the math, physics courses are in the same pattern. It's not like an essay where you can write your arguments from many different perspectives and none of them is the right answer. As long as you can argue your point and support. In engineering, it's different, certain problems have only 1 answer. </p>
<p>also, the number of courses required are in general more than the average major. This is because engineering requires certain basic knowledge in math, science in order to take the first engineering course.</p>
<p>More courses means more work. You don't get more time because you have more work to do. Those who are successful engineering majors tend to have good time management skills, and that is rare.</p>
<p>I needed 135 credits to graduate. I know someone who had over 140. Most liberal arts curricula that I've looked at only required 120. There was one semester where the recommended curriculum for my major was 7 courses (18.5 credits). If I didn't do that, I would've fallen behind. </p>
<p>Padding your GPA with another major rarely works because you just won't have the time for it (unless you plan on taking 5 years to graduate, which is not uncommon in engineering even for those without double majors). That's what it all comes down to... time.</p>
<p>I would like to thank everyone's contribution to this thread. As some of you know, I'm wanting to eventually practice intellectual/patent law succeeding in engineering major such as computer science (my preference as of now) is vital to getting into law school, passing the patent bar exam, and finally getting hired by a law firm seeking a patent lawyer.</p>
<p>Ken285, to graduate with a B.S. in CS from SMU, you need a minimum of 123 credit hours. I'm am going to pad my GPA with a minor in Business Administration because I expect my GPA to be a bit lower than a liberal arts major (or any other major for that matter) and make me a more appealing, competitive applicant for law school. By the time I transfer to SMU, I'll have half of the minor completed already and I can simply finish the remaining courses during summer school. If my GPA is still not to my satisfaction, then I will do a second degree in Finance or General Business. SMU</a> - Cox : Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) - Majors</p>
<p>SBR, if you pay attention to everything I've written in context, it should be apparent that I was petitioning responses on why engineering majors typically have lower GPAs and what make the curriculum so difficult (as I've been told) that contributes to their lower GPAs. I'm also aware that engineering majors are much more objective than liberal arts majors, with the need to come up with the 'right' answer. I'm a left brainer, so I'm more comfortable coming up with clear, cut answers than having to deal with abstract, non-solid ideas and/or concepts.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know many people haven't heard of SMU (especially those on the east coast) so I hope to get into a well-known (and highly respected) graduate school like Stanford, Duke, U of Chicago or similar to get my dual law degree and master's and so I can also surpass my former friend Rob, who was a Notre Dame undergraduate.</p>