Hardest Majors

<p>What majors are the hardest at MIT? What makes them hard?</p>

<p>6 and 8. cuz everyone loves EECS and physics. they're naturally difficult subjects, anyway.</p>

<p>I think 16 is the hardest (maybe due to Unified Engineering? 24 credit course =-O)</p>

<p>lol, unified is pretty killer from what I hear. While I'm just a freshman and haven't really gotten into my actual subject material at MIT (electrical engineering), I do hear that course 6, 10, and 16 are some of the hardest. 8, well, while the material is probably difficult, the actual course requirements are actually pretty easy. The hard part, I guess, is getting through the classes. Also, I think EE is considered a pretty hard major at any university, (I think harder than pure CS), so I imagine it would be the same at MIT. (EE is 6-1 at MIT, and CS is 6-3).</p>

<p>That question is definitely different for everyone but I'm sure 16 is insane with that Unified Engineering.....</p>

<p>I think 22 Nuclear Engineering has a hard rep also</p>

<p>oh really? I was interested in Course 22. From what I've heard, Math is ridiculously hard -- but that's to be expected. I've heard that 7 is easier [but that's in MIT terms :)].</p>

<p>What number is aero/astro?</p>

<p>it's course 16</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>they're the hardest majors, aren't they also like the most popular ones?</p>

<p>I also heard chem engineering was tough.</p>

<p>for terms:
10 is chemical engineering
7 is biology</p>

<p>I think the rest is defined in the thread....</p>

<p>SDFried, I think applied math is reasonable. Theoretical math requires that you take some hardcore classes like 18.901 intro to topology :o</p>

<p>Thanks vecter.</p>

<p>My geek-history took a bit of a turn in HS. In MS, I was the math "genius" kid who was into the whole MathCounts deal, etc, etc. Then in HS when I took real science courses, I realized "Wow -- there's a lot more than math." I got really inspired by bio, especially the molecular and biomedical research aspects. Anyhow, now I'm somewhat cynical about math. Maybe it's the stat class that I'm taking, or maybe it's the fact that I find bizarre "problem solving" AIME-style math problems really unapplicable and trivial. Bah... Well, I'll major in course 7, and if minoring is still attractive to me after getting accustomed to MIT work load, I might try minoring in C9. I don't know why, but for some reason C22 seems reall cool, and even though I don't have plans to have a degree in it, I think it'd be awesome to take some classes in it.</p>

<p>One surprising dark horse candidate that some MIT students, particularly the graduate students, think is truly the hardest, is course 13 - Ocean Engineering. The fact is, hardly anybody in the world really understands fluid mechanics, and yet that comprises a whole lot of course 13. All that weird turbulent flow stuff and ridiculous Navier-Stokes equations are just an absolute bitc*. </p>

<p>One widely attributed but probably apocryphal quote of Werner Heisenberg was, when asked what he would say if he had the chance to talk to God, Heisenberg replied "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first". </p>

<p>Now, I should point out that course 13 is being folded into course 2 (MechE). (Current students will be allowed to finish their programs, but I don't believe the program will accept new students). Still, I believe that the Tute will still offer the ridiculously difficult hydrodynamics course, at least as a graduate H-level course, for all you super-masochists.</p>

<p>ahh is there a website at MIT that tells with code/course goes with which major?? I don't know any numbers.</p>

<p>Ask and ye shall receive.</p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/education/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/education/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>well why dont we all just conclude that there aren't any easy courses. it seems like we have covered just about every major ;) lol.</p>

<p>Oh, I don't know, I think that some of the course 21 stuff is a bit sketchy. ;-)</p>

<p>haha yeah, course 21 is what i am going to MIT for lol</p>

<p>EECS (6), Physics (8), Aero/Astro (16) and Nuclear Engineering (22) are generally regarded by the students as the hardest majors. Math (18) is generally regarded as pretty easy, but you can make it insanely hard if you want.</p>