<p>My experiences seem to differ a fair bit from yours then. I’ve seen a general consensus in most places I’ve looked that EE and ChE are the two hardest (with the most rationale to support this conjecture), and looking at these majors side-by-side, that opinion seems to be valid enough.</p>
<p>Sure, there isn’t an objectively correct answer. It’s a subjective question and any statistical analysis on the matter would be plagued by so many confounding variables and so much response bias that you’d be unlikely to get a correct result. However, I do think that it would be possible to say that some are harder than others. </p>
<p>At the same time, it’s a completely irrelevant question because:
Difficulty is much less relevant than what you actually get out of it, and I don’t believe that there are any general trends for which engineering majors are the best for getting something out of it.
It does depend on schools. 2-3 evil labs/professors here and there would add a lot of skew in favor of any major.</p>
Just looking at this for a moment, I’ve never seen anyone put nuclear engineering under an EE hat. Sometimes ChemE, sometimes MechE, sometimes on its own. But never as a part of EE.
I don’t even know what it means to have a “hard” major. Are we talking about the total amount of study time required, the level of concentration needed during that time period, the average grades awarded, or something else?
<p>The core curriculum seems to be:
The basics (Physics, Calculus, DiffEqs, General Eds)
Thermal/fluids (MechE, ChE goes into more depth than this on that subject)
Computation/CS
SigSystems (Definitely EE)
Specialized nuclear physics courses
NukE design</p>
<p>At a first glance, it seems closer to EE than to anything else. It has a bit of MechE and focus on NukE in and of itself, but the core seems closest to EE. The mindset seems quite similar between the two.
I’d say if you had to classify NukE, it’s either its own major or an EE one. ME and ChE are too far removed from what you actually learn there.</p>
<p>I think like a lot of people said there are so many factors (school, program reputation, persons strength and weakness etc). However I will say EE is definitely up there is difficulty. The thing about EE is that it is so varied. I have friends in EE who are taking just completely different classes from me. What makes it hard is that you are expected to know a little about each of these fields and often the subject material will blend in problem etc.
I also think what makes EE tough is that we are expected to be very good programmers and know about computer hardware too. There is a higher expectation from an EE in programming than other fields. In my job I program a lot and am expected to have a quite high knowledge in programming. EE’s are often groomed to be sort of swiss army knifes in the field. We have to know a little of lot of stuff and then of course in depth in our field.<br>
Also within EE there is a difficulty range. Most people would agree that analog design generally is tougher than digital design where there are so many layout tools already and so much automation. Really depends.
However honestly a lot of other engineering majors would probably be harder for ME. I just don’t have any interest in a lot of other majors, so it would be a super chore to study them.</p>
<p>I respect that choice. It is among my favorites as well. I am also a fan of the somewhat schticky moose tracks.</p>
<p>Of course the debate is kind of funny; after all, all of these ice creams are made from the same basic ingredients of sugar and milk plus flavoring.</p>