<p>How tough is IE in comparison to other engineering majors? I'm going to Penn state so is the curriculum there as rigorous as other top IE colleges?</p>
<p>Can someone please reply to this?</p>
<p>From what I know, IE is generally regarded as the "easiest" engineering major, but that's all relative. Some people don't even consider it "true" engineering, but that doesn't mean IE doesn't involve tons of math, etc. It's still a rather technical field of study I think.</p>
<p>My mom's been an IE for most of her career, and while it doesn't necessarily contain the same amount of math from day to day that you might have as an EE, there's still plenty of complex problem solving and engineering style thought that's required.</p>
<p>Its a good major, and it will provide you with the skills to work in and engineering enviorment, or to transition into a management career. </p>
<p>It might be considered the "easiest" engineering major, but I am sure its still much more difficuilt than most other college majors...easy and engineering are not a good combination of words.</p>
<p>It's the "easiest" to get a management job sooner and start making some serious $$. It's a very versatile degree, and a lot of my friends go into consulting with it, whereas I chose manufacturing. A Harvard MBA student I was talking to said it was the best undergraduate degree you can possibly get if you want to go to a top business school FWIW.</p>
<p>It probably depends on your interests. Im in IE and I find the material to be quite interesting as compared to classes in ME, EE or NuclearE, which I have also taken because they are all part of the IE mandatory courses here. I know people from ME that really just dislike the kind of problem solving that IE focuses on, myself, I dont really like the kind of problem solving that they focus on. As far as the use of math in IE, we take as many math courses as the other engineering disciplines, on top of the math classes we also must take at least a year of Statistics courses. I am not arguing that IE is harder than all the other engineering disciplines, but if it is any easier, it would be a very relative question. In my opinion there are no easy engineering courses, I have always worked far harder than people outside of engineering, and as hard as others in the other engineering fields. IE is a great major, it opens up doors in any industry that you want to work, it is a fast path to upper management, and gives you the technical ability to understand most problems that you come across.</p>