<p>I understand that ALL engineering majors are difficult as heck, but there has gotta be some that are easier than others.</p>
<p>Please rank them in terms of most to least difficult:
Industrial
Civil
Electrical
Computer
Mechanical
Chemical
Aerospace</p>
<p>I would think in terms of two groups of roughly equal difficulty:</p>
<p>Harder: Electrical/Mechanical/Chemical/Aerospace</p>
<p>Less Hard (but still hard): Industrial/Civil/Computer Science</p>
<p>This will depend heavily on what interests you.</p>
<p>Anymore perspectives?</p>
<p>I would bump up computer science to the harder list, and add bioengineering as well. In fact, at Berkeley grad students I've met say many consider bioE to be the hardest, next in line EECS and MechE.</p>
<p>The view from MIT is similar to redbeard's, but mechE is nicknamed mechEasy:</p>
<p>Hard: Aerospace/Chemical/Electrical
Not so hard: Mechanical/Civil/CS/BE</p>
<p>Civil and Industrial are easier. The others are about the same.</p>
<p>Are civil engineers required to get a license? Or would it just be better to do so?</p>
<p>Nobody is required to get a license, but for a Civil Engineer it is pretty much mandatory. Most civil engineering work is either funded or inspected by some government agency and they always require a P.E. license.</p>
<p><em>sticks up for her major</em></p>
<p>Okay. Everyone's always dogging on the civs.
Quit that!</p>
<p>Thing is, it can either be easier or harder than all the other majors, it really just depends upon what you want to do. Sure, if you want to do floodplain analysis and/or land development for the rest of your life, civil engineering is a pretty easy major.</p>
<p>But after that, if you want to do structural, it gets a heck of a lot harder. I was in a dynamics course in undergrad, and I was the only civ in with a gaggle of mechs... I was surprised to find that I was the only one who really "got" any of the material. In my civ courses, I was always in the middle of the pack, but in the mech course, suddenly I was the top dog. This gave me some confidence in the fact that maybe civs aren't the dumb-arses that people tend to generalize us to be.</p>
<p>When I got to grad school in structural, I found that I'm taking a lot of the same sorts of courses in mechanics that my physics PhD friend is, and that that whole "civ is easy" thing goes away.</p>
<p>So, yes. If you want an easy engineering major, civil engineering <em>can</em> be an easy major. But if you want a rewarding and difficult career and you're interested in designing something a little more complex than your average Walgreens, civil engineering isn't going to be the cakewalk that it's painted up to being. It gets really hard, really fast, and there's just as much theory and heavy advanced math and programming, if not more, than there is in any of the other engineering majors, provided you want more out of life than to be a McEngineer.</p>
<p>Add in massive amounts of responsibility to the public and incredible liability to keep you up at night. Stir thoroughly, season to taste. (I have to get licensed both as a PE <em>and</em> as an SE. That's up to FOUR PE exams, with a minimum of three, that I have to take, as compared to the one that others will have to suffer through.)</p>
<p>Haha, aibarr, I feel your pain. All the prospectives are always talking about biology being "the easy science", and it makes me want to eat a rock.</p>
<p>So PSA! There is no "easy" engineering! :)</p>
<p>It may depend on the school but at my school it is:
1) ChemE
2) ECE (EE/CompE) [close second]
3) AeroE
5) MechE
6) CS (really more time consuming than hard)
7) NukE, CivE
8) GE, IE</p>
<p>ChemE is the hardest b/c it has so many levels of weed out. All engineers have to deal with math and physics weed outs. But some majors have additional weedouts. CS & CompE have the CS courses. CivE & MechE have TAM (ME have ME courses too) but TAM is merely more physics (already learned) but applied. EE has ECE courses which are very hard and time consuming. Here it is where chemE's win out. They have chem, chem lab, AND chemE courses which weed out. It is five separate levels of weedout, which is ridiculous. That is my decision for the placement.</p>
<p>NukE-I don't know what's so funny about that but I'm laughing :)</p>
<p>Well, gosh, IlliniJ. About half of the kiddos in my steel I course have tanked on a good number of the assignments, and they're smart guys and gals! =) So, from a teacher's standpoint, your rankings are pretty darned biased. Checking through the required courses for CEE, our undergrads have to take most of the chem courses and labs (same ones!) that the ChemE kids have to take... so they weed out, too... You've got the TAM courses, and you have heavy math courses, you've got a lot more physics coursework than the chem guys, and then you've got the "easy" civ courses which aren't so easy after all.</p>
<p>Re-think your decision. I'm only being critical because I'm a CEE at UIUC (and my momma didn't raise no dummy), and I'm teaching some pretty sharp undergrads. I'm not sure that you have enough info on program requirements to make an informed decision, since what you're saying is the typical hearsay that I've heard floating about campus and have had to correct along the way.</p>
<p>Also, you can't just plunk your own major at the top of the difficulty list and call it a day. ;) Cheater.</p>
<p>Actually the REAL ChemEs have to take much harder chem courses. ChemE's have 202/203;204/205 and then 236/237 & 436 and then PChem 440, 444, please try and tell me every year isn't a weed out for chemE. 102/103;104/105 are much easier in comparison. The class is insanely difficult and the labs are in a completely different dimension of difficult. Some of the engineering (EnvironE, BioE) have to take 232/233 and maybe 332 but again those are much easier.</p>
<p>Of course, I'm a bit biased [you are too] but most of my friends agree (not just lib arts but engineers too, that they would never want to go through chemE). You go to grad school at U of I, you didn't go through undergrad here so how would you know that CEE & ChemE take the same chem. But, oh right, they don't. (I had one EvironE but he was thinking about ChemE, and then went through a year of accelerated and quit.) Also I was rating undergrads, not grad schools. Undergrad is much different. I was just saying based on most general route taken by the people in the major and in undergrad (mostly first two years but other years are taken into consideration) are the basis for my decision.</p>
<p>Also I never said those other classes were easy at all (never taken TAM but from what I've heard it is merely more Mechanics which we have learned and isn't too crazy . . . yet). THEY ARE ALL HARD. But my point is that chemE have to go through the most weed outs. Also look at the numbers. ChemE is a general (non-specialized curriculum) but it has the numbers of a specialized curriculum (aeroE and CE beat it out in numbers anyday).</p>
<p>I didn't just pick my major. (In case you didn't see ECE is a close second and a debateable tie.) I have been going here a for a year and a half. CivE has tons of undergrads (the largest amount by far), usually contains drops from other engineering majors as does GE. So don't tell me CivE is harder when it isn't. It is by no means easy and I'm damn sure there are some brilliant students (I have a lot of CivE friends, a lot, so I'm not demeaning their major at all). I thought I had some info that would be useful as far as number of weed-outs and general curriculums. I, also, based a bit of my decision on other things (type of courses (lot of small classes that take up hours), general program (is it difficult all the way through or does it pick up later or worse [most majors] begin earlier [which is definitely the case for chemE] and keep going).</p>
<p>Also due to the brilliance of foreign students (we aren't competing against the best of the best of the solely US) the numbers of foreigners also factor into the ratings. ECE has the highest, ChemE may have more due to proportions (ECE is a much bigger class). CivE takes a close 3rd.</p>
<p>And yeah that hearsay, I hear it everyday and usually agree. You know why? B/c it's the truth. It is there for a reason. It has been the general consensus between many I know that ChemE is the hardest engineering (usually CompE with a close second or debating for number one).</p>
<p>PS I am changing some ratings and explaining all:
1) ChemE (for many GOOD reasons, Acc Chem and Acc Chem Lab, ChemE courses, one of the few majors that slows down a little, or seems to b/c of the overload they place on you fresh/soph.)
2) ECE (very close second or maybe tie, b/c honors math, ECE courses)
3) AeroE (personally not a favorite but due to overall amount of credit hours most in college and lack of jobs in the area)
4) MechE (lots of ME courses, TAM)
5) CS (I don't really want to put it here but CS majors have a fit if you don't recognize the time-consuming quality of their majors, but there is a difference. CS majors like programming and would probably do it anyways without the courses. ChemE and others probably wouldn't do their majors [mixing chemicals and writing lab reports? yeah right.] outside of class.)
6) CivE/MatSE (TAM, Hard major but many drop to it from others, not sure what to do with MatSE, put it up with MechE maybe)
7) BioE, NukE/RadE/PlasE (hard in many ways but not an insane amount of weedouts. BioE is hardest to get into but is still an infant program and U of I's MCB prog isn't the best so a revamp of that and then of the main [most classes don't start until later years] would improve it)
8) GE, IE (Sorry guys, hard major, much harder than almost all others. But in engineering, it's a bit of a convenience.)</p>
<p>That wasn't favorites list, aibarr, I was asked to rank and I ranked accordingly to my personal opinion and general consensus. I'll rank favorites here to show any bias I may have in the last one. If I was ranking favorite majors (due to my likes, people in it, all-around curriculum, and adaptability [which are the most important factors to me]) it would be [BIAS ALLOWED! :)]:
1) ChemE (it is IMO the most versatile major out there, can take many other engineering jobs [pretty much anyone but CivE], most gender-diversity)
2) GE (if I didn't put my own at 1, it would be a shame, but GE always is always almost tied with ChemE, this major is the most versatile out there, make it what you want it to be, definitely hottest girls in GE)
3) EE (third most versatile degree, not much else to say but a degree I wouldn't mind having)
4) CivE (like it more than EE but less adaptable and higher number of grads make it less appealing to me, good diversity in general, if not gender)
5) MechE (Used to want to be a roller-coaster designer, so this one's important)
[Big Gap]
6) BioE (minoring in it so my favorite of the specialized)
7) MatSE (love this major but ChemE seems more useful and adaptable, could take some of these jobs or research positions, very hybridized tho and I like that.)
7) CompE (hate computers, but it's almost EE)
8) NukE (neutrality point, usually a lot of weirdos but has pretty good versatility for a specialty)
[Bigger Gap]
9) Aero (blech, sorry to any aeros here, it would be the least favorite at my school due to the people in it and has too many hours with too little pay-off)
10) CS (don't trust any major with computers, especially software, at least hardware has other places, plus I hate computers, also most boring and weird people you'll ever meet)</p>
<p>At Northwestern, it's EE and ChemE that are most demanding. Civil is nowhere close in terms of workload. I used "demanding" as opposed to difficulty since the latter depends on individual's strength/interest. Interestingly, it seems like a lot of EEs fear chemistry and a lot of chemEs don't like circuits. Anyway, when I was there, its the EE and ChemE majors that showed up the most at the engineering library or pulled all nighters often. My civilE friends just seemed to have a lot more free time than us. Part of the reasons the homework for ChemE tends to be very time consuming is that chemEs deal with chemical properties for so many chemicals out there. A lot of time, those properties data are not readily available and you have to do quite a bit of research to find them or estimate them. I remember how sometime I would spend hours to flip through the 3-inch-thick CRC handbook and Perry's handbook and then journal articles and still couldn't find the data (sometime all that work is just for one single number!) that I needed just to start. That's before you even actually tackled the heart of the problem. Even the basic foundation classes are no walk in the park as they include organic chemistry (and biology is also required now at Northwestern) and those are time-consuming and competitive classes taken with other premeds.</p>
<p>Sam Lee. EXACTLY What I mean on the chemE dont wanna do circuits vs EE dont wanna do chem labs stuff. It is about as hard on different planes that's why it's a close call. ChemE problems are long and many parts (this sucks for 50 minute tests b/c you spend half the time looking at it trying to solve it in your head and then rushing to write everything down) so this becomes very very time consuming plus the tables are inordinately hard to read (I got a problem (6 pts total) completely wrong b/c the number was 0.99 instead of 0.95 (what I thought it was). The honors chem sequence is no joke. Just when you think you've gotten through the worst part (honors gen chem with the hardest 2 hour course at U of I, which you write a 40 page lab) and then acc orgo comes and kicks most of the people that got the last one in the ass. Unlike gen chem which you can learn some with orgo it's either you know it or you don't. I can't imagine having to take bio too. But again I am anyway for my minor. Every engineering major I know has more time than me, including EEs. They may be as hard but chemE is the most time consuming.</p>
<p>I'm scared to start doing stuff with more than mainly water. Whatta nightmare. I hate tables.</p>
<p>I can't speak much of other Engineering majors, but the coursework in AE is very demanding. I even start to think that taking bath, eating and sleeping are just a waste of time :p But then again, I have my own biased point of view, and AE is arguably the area my school is probably the strongest at. Not really sure about ChemE, but from my experience taking Thermodynamics (which is a ChemE course), it is indeed very time consuming. Granted it is, IMO, not nearly as hard as some other Engineering fundamental courses like Solid Mechanics and Engineering Dynamics, but Thermo is more time-consuming. </p>
<p>Industrial Engineering seems to be most lax, though I can't say much about its difficulty. I think, as somebody else had already said, there isn't really a such thing as an objective difficulty. Until this very moment, a college-level class I was having the hardest time in was the freshman Political Science I had to take for Social Science requirement, and High School Biology kicked the living crap out of me. Well, I guess I'm not the most well rounded person in the world, but the point is, a supposedly easy class can be difficult if you don't feel like learning it (and vice versa obviously).</p>
<p>Following aiibar, I'm sticking up for all NukeEs out there....</p>
<p>The thing with most specialized majors (NukeE, AeroE, PetroE etc) its hard to judge them since most of them lack a universal curriculum. For example, at the my school NukeE is pretty damn hard--you have to take nearly ALL the MechE classes (Solids, Thermo, Heat Transfer), upper division Physics (Nuclear Physics), a few upper divion ChemE/ECE classes and finally your actual NukeE classes (Reactor Engineering, Reactor Theory, Transuranium element).</p>
<p>Basically it might not that be bad when you start out, since its a straight MechE major but come your Junior/Senior year, NukeE is one of the toughest majors.</p>
<p>Another thing is the public image of Nuclear Engineers--the world nuclear might still cause panic within the uninformed public and most associate them with mere Nuclear technicians, which is essentially a 2 year certification.</p>