<p>At top engineering schools like MIT, Caltech, Michigan, Cornell, etc. what is the difference between majoring in Physics and Engineering?</p>
<p>If I understand your question:</p>
<p>Physics = science. What are the “rules” of the physical world, and, to the extent we can discern, why? And let’s uncover more of them. At Cornell this department is in CAS, not its engineering college, hence you have a liberal arts college distribution & course requirements, including foreign language requirement, not the engineering school’s requirements.</p>
<p>Engineering = application of science to make stuff.Given the rules of the physical world already discovered, let’s make something to do something. At Cornell you take engineering distribution requirements & major in an engineering field: Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Chemical, some others.</p>
<p>a hybrid: Engineering Physics is a major at Cornell’s engineering college. It is basically a physics major done through the engineering college, so in that case you’d have the engineering college’s distribution & other requirements + the engineering physics major requirements. The latter are very similar to a physics major in CAS, except they have various tracks that can take a more “applied” slant: application to materials, semiconductors, lasers, some other stuff. But a CAS physics major can take these courses too if desired, for the most part. One’s subsequent path after either a physics major or an engineering physics major can be identical or at least have substantial overlap. depending on how you structure either program.</p>
<p>I don’t know anything particularly about the other schools you listed.</p>
<p>bump please</p>
<p>Basically what monydad wrote is all there really is to say. I’ll give a basic example though to show the difference. In physics, you learn about Newton’s 3 laws of motion. In civil engineering, you apply these laws to build a structure. </p>
<p>Physics vs. engineering is the same at all schools, whether it be something local or it be MIT. The departments are typically housed in two different colleges. </p>
<p>When’s all said and done, the purpose of physics is to learn and discover new laws of physics (knowledge). The purpose of engineering is to design and create a new product that is useful to mankind.</p>
<p>Which is the “smarter major”?</p>
<p>Define “smarter” in this context of majors.</p>
<p>Physics is more theoretical and engineering is more practical. Most people tend to lean towards one or the other.</p>
<p>by smarter, I mean, which one is the harder major. Please stereotype here, because I want to know what the general feel is.</p>
<p>physics is the harder major.</p>
<p>engineering generally has a relatively heavy workload, but physics is conceptually more difficult</p>