<p>OR can be just as rigorous, quantitative, and difficult as any other engineering major. When you get deep into a nonlinear optimization problem, or a tough stochastic thing like a partially-observed Markov decision process, you'll be doing as much math as any other engineer. In fact, if you throw in the extensive use of modern non-parametric statistics that many OR programs include, OR majors earn their higher salaries.</p>
<p>As a field, OR is well over 60 years old. It's odd to refer to it as 'new' (as opposed to the 'old guard' engineering fields).</p>