<p>Can't possibly agree with you more, Dirt McGirt. What Dirt said, every word.</p>
<p>Having taken graduate solids/materials stuff, it's hard. You go from playing with tinker-toy stress strain diagrams and relationships... and then suddenly, you're doing three-dimensional calculus and writing complex computer programs to solve your "simple" problems... and those computer programs take ten minutes to do their calculations. Try doing a materials analysis of the solid rocket fuel in the shuttle's SRBs as it's lifting off, so that you can determine the stresses and strains on the tank, like my advisor* was working on.</p>
<p>Those ain't no linear relationships in that there equation, buddy. Easy? Nope. Boring? Well, considering that the consequences if you do it wrong involve massive explosions... Not too boring, either.</p>
<p>Everyone has strengths, everyone has weaknesses. Figure out what your weaknesses are, if you're wondering what the hardest major is. I, for one, suck at understanding stuff I can't visualize. Abstract concepts, whatever... I can understand abstractions, but if I can't at least connect the effects of those abstract concepts with something I can observe, I'm screwed.... I can't see electrons. E&M was a nightmare. Flux? Flux...?? That is totally made-up!! =)</p>
<p>It's exactly like asking what the hardest subject in fourth grade was. It depends upon your strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>*Reminder: I'm a civil engineer, which is, as you recall, the "easy" engineering major.</p>
<p>I generally agree, but once you take those upper div classes, you are already set in that field anyway. </p>
<p>I forgot to talk about computer science/engineering. I think this is easily one of the harder engineering majors, and probably harder than most of the stuff in math and physics too. But i personally despise computers and working with them, and I hate microsoft, so nyah. </p>
<p>Which engineering discipline uses computer programming the LEAST? any ideas? or do they all use computer programming a lot? I hate computers, maybe I should just do math or something.</p>
<p>Ooh. Unfortunately, a lot of math involves programming these days, too...</p>
<p>Pretty much everything uses computers now to do a lot of the crunchier analysis and mathy iterative stuff. Only person I know of at Rice who was able to get away with not using computers except to type a few papers was my roommate, who was a violin performance major. ;)</p>
<p>Computers are very important in many fields to do computations that can't be done by hand. In stats alot of analysis is done with computers because to do it by hand isn't practicle or isn't possible. There are multivariate calculus equations in Bayesian Analysis that can't be solved exactly and to do them by hand isn't possible, with computer algorithms the solution can be sufficiently estimated. Or in Multivariate Regression, having to multiply a bunch of 5 by 1000 matricies together by hand isn't practicle at all.</p>
<p>I remember by stat professor telling me the long before the days of windows, when had to use basic computing language to do statistical analysis, and how you would spend weeks programming the computer to solve equations for you.</p>
<p>I'm interested to hear what the highest level of physics you've taken is, OP. (Physics holds a special place in my heart.) All science, at some level, is just about finding equations and explanations to fit physical phenomena. All engineering is based on science in some way. Is bio engineering an invalid field because you use principles that were discovered by biologists? "Watered-down biology," if you will?</p>
<p>I have taken up to relativity and quantum mechanics in physics. If I take more, it will be in physical chemistry, and fluid dynamics. </p>
<p>BioEngineering is just so stupid. Science is supposed to be multidisciplinary and mutually inclusive, like how math merges with physics, or how physics merges with chemistry. BioE is garbage because instead of expanding your horizen, you are pigeon holed into the application of scientific principles on biological systems. I am of the belief that science should be studied in the most GENERAL sense so that the students will be able to use it in different settings, get this biological BS out of here. It is pretty much a pre-med major, and I hate pre-meds and medicine itself.</p>
<p>Ok...I know this is wierd but sometimes I look at current engineering/math/science curriculums of various schools on the web JUST to see how different or what changes have been since I was in college.</p>
<p>Having said that...</p>
<p>I forget the school (I'll find it) but I saw their Engineering Physics curriculum and I was like WOW. It was a mixture of (up to 400 level) Mathematics, (up to 300-level) Computer Science, 400-level Physics, quite a bit from the EE program. I don't think the program had a single "free" elective.</p>