If you are an engineering major, do you have to take a lot of physics or math courses in college? Now I understand it depends on the type of engineer but is there ANY type of engineer that won’t make you take so many? I can handle taking up to Calc 1 or Physics 1 but higher than that and I will start to struggle.
This is like asking if there are any culinary arts majors that don’t include food.
Why are u interested in engineering if u can’t handle math or physics?
I don’t know it was a stupid question, but I was curious and just felt like asking. I took PLTW at my high school and there wasn’t math above Calc 1 used. Mostly using CAD and autodesk inventor.
So any type of engineer should expect to take a lot of math and physics courses? What would you say is the minimum level of math engineer majors must take, multivariate?
WHY do u want to be an engr?
I don’t want to be an engineer, I’m just curious. When I told my AP Physics and AP Calc teacher that I will be a liberal arts major they were just completely shocked. Even though I secretly hated both classes, I was the top student in both classes. They kept on telling me how much potential I had and that I could make a lot of money. Well, I am sick of math because of them and for the whole year I thought to myself that if I can get at least a 4 I will never have to take a math course again in my life. So I was just wondering if this is the case for engineers or am I just being naive and engineers really have to take a lot more math courses in college?
You have to really like math and physics to be an engineer. You will take a large number of math and physics classes to become an engineer.
Major in the liberal arts.
There is engineering technology, which does require math and physics, but somewhat less.
http://www.rit.edu/emcs/admissions/academics/majors/engineering-tech-or-engineering
Picking a profession just because it “could make a lot of money” is a really bad idea if you hate performing the most basic aspects of that profession.
Remember, a job is something you have to do for the next 60 thousand hours of your life.
Engineering is applied math, or applied physics (which itself is also applied math). Engineers learn, at a minimum, multivariable calculus, ordinary differential equations, and linear algebra–sometimes also statistics. Engineering majors utilize this (and more) math in the vast majority of their classes.
To make another analogy like @GMTplus7 's, it’d be like asking “is there any type of English major that doesn’t have to read and write papers?”
You said you did well in AP Calc and Physics even though you hated them. Think about whether you actually hate the subjects or just can’t stand the way they are taught in high school. Retaking the same courses in college might let you see them in a different light.
There are MANY young people going into engineering right now and most of them love physics and math. If you go into any engineering field you will be competing against people who are passionate about the subject. They are the ones who will be making lots of money.
Engineering involves modeling the real world and making things that interact with it. The point to math and physics in engineering programs is to give the aspiring engineer the tools to make usable models of the physical world.
A metaphor is an in apt tool for this kind of modeling, so math and physics it is.
Are you sure you really hate math? Or did you just hate how your teacher taught it? The teacher matters.
At umich, industrial and operations engineering (IOE) is often given the reputation “in and out easy”. Any engineering major involves a substantial amount of math, but IOE involves minimal physics. For IOE, you would need to be good at statistics and linear algebra, from my understanding.
Yeah, industrial engineering was the only one that came to mind. It has less physics relative to other engineering majors, but it can still be pretty math-heavy. You certainly will have to go past calculus I.
Industrial engineering may be more math and statistics heavy than some other engineering majors, even though it may be less physics heavy.
Some would find this pedantry, but I think it’s substantive and important, myself: Math and physics are each part of the liberal arts.
This means that a math major is a liberal arts major.
This means that a physics major is a liberal arts major.
Liberal arts≠no (or even very little) math or science.
^I was going to say this, but didn’t, so I’m glad someone else did.
Also, there are other social sciences majors that either require or benefit from facility in math; economics is the biggest one, political science follows (especially at the graduate level), and psychology and sociology also are more marketable if you have statistical skills.
You said what you do NOT want, not what you ARE interested in.
Computer Science is sometimes taught in liberal arts (offshoot of math dept) and sometimes
in engineering. Usually have math requirements, though possibly less than a Math or ME/EE major.
But be prepared for some more math unless you will study something like History, Poly Sci etc.
And I teach a couple courses in an English Department that have a decent-sized quantitative component (just as there are a good number of math courses that require good-quality writing). Trying to wall everything off and focus on something utterly narrow really doesn’t work for a university education.
CS degree programs will include discrete math and some CS theory courses that are very much like math courses.
While you can probably graduate in such a major with minimal math, more advanced study of most social studies subjects tends to require stronger quantitative skills, such as when doing statistical analyses of polling and election results in political science. Even humanities can have some math-like thinking, such as logic in philosophy.