Progression of difficulty/work through 4 years in ME?

I’m curious as to what other people’s experiences are with what years of school had the toughest classes, which required the most studying/homework, etc. I heard from a friend that the first year or two have the most homework but the easiest concepts, and as it goes on the concepts get harder but there’s a much lower workload. I guess I just always assumed that each year of college would be increasingly harder.
Last semester I had all easy classes (calc 1, chem 1, and some electives out of the way). This semester I’m taking calc 2, chem 2, statics, CREO class, linear algebra and my wellness. While we haven’t gotten into any super hard concepts yet I’ve noticed a big jump in workload. I don’t mind it, just curious how much harder it gets.

Not being an engineer and only knowing from my son’s experience who’s a year or so ahead of you, it is extremely variable. There’s no hard and fast rule as to what concepts each student will find challenging. On top of that, it is very professor dependent. I can tell you that last week he got a Thermo homework set that was 23 pages long. That’s not easy simply because of fitting the bulk into your other work. How much it will tax ones intelligence and foundation is a different story. Then there’s the simple variable of testing and grading. His physics prof dinged him 30% for leaving the vector hat off his final answer even though it was right and even though in his engineering classes they don’t care because the type of calculation makes it obvious if it’s a vector or a scalar. His problems weren’t bulletproof hard, there were just so many of them it was hard to finish and certainly not enough time to hunt down known mistakes. In another class, the prof bell curved to a median C of 82%! So, it’s sort of a multi-pronged question. Hopefully some of the MEs out here will give a better perspective than I did.

Sure, your first two years you may have a greater workload. However, just because workload may decrease your last two years doesn’t mean you will have an easier time. As your course level increases, exams tend to weigh more heavily in your grade. You might not have as much graded work to turn in, but you will need to put more effort into studying for exams. In addition, because weaker students will keep dropping out of the major (I have seen it happen even in one’s junior and senior year), competition will be increasing every semester.

Every college is different and student’s abilities differ. But from my experience and what I see in others;

The first year of engineering is more of the general basics, math, chemistry, physics, etc. There may be a seminar type class that introduces some real engineering concepts, but usually not too rigorous

Second year is where the real engineering classes begin. They can seem like a bunch of different topics, somewhat disconnected. Lots of new principles to learn and many times lots of homework to drive those principles home. Grades may drop at this point.

Third and fourth years you start to get the overall picture of what’s going on. You will take lab classes maybe a design class. Fourth year (if not before) you will have to do a project where you apply what you are learning. The grasp of the overall picture helps focus the classroom work and your grades go up.

The workload is ever increasing but the upper division classes are much more interesting, so the more homework actually can feel like less.

AP classes can get some of the first year classes out of the way before you even get to college. That will time shift forward your experiences.

From my personal experiences and that of my son finishing his junior year in ME, I would say the work peaks in the first half of junior year. At that point the majority of the key concepts that are the core of ME have been introduced and/or shoved into your head. One you get through some thermo, fluids, and solids. The rest is building depth of knowledge.

Workload tends to be higher fo classes with labs or large term projects (including humanities and social studies as well as engineering design project courses). Intellectual difficulty can vary all over the place. Advanced classes do often require knowledge from previous ones.

Thanks guys. This gives me a good idea of what to expect. Luckily I enjoy my homework so far so hopefully that’ll keep me going in the more demanding courses!

Freshman year depends most on your high school preparation, the admission policy of your school ( there may be plenty of C-D-F students to curve off of if engineering is not limited enrollment or if all students are taking the same math, chem, physics), and the level the particular college professors want to teach at (including whether specific prof is a good teacher and whether their level of theory vs practical matches your interests and HS prep well). Math skills are important for physics …

Sophomore year highlights can include organic chemistry, otherwise I don’t remember any really difficult classes as a ChemE. Other majors may differ … I thought statics and dynamics was easier than Physics 1, but probably more time spent solving lots of problems that were easy.

Junior year is really difficult, I had a similar thermo class as above that involved 30-40 hours of work a week for that one class. Transport phenomena, heat and fluid dynamics are all difficult. You may have some practical classes as well, which can be difficult.

Senior year we had a plant design project which was not particularly hard, but the professor still curved to a majority of Cs … which was brutal … with very high standards for A and Bs.

@eyemgh I enjoyed your response (#1). My D (Chem E) had both Reactions and Separations this past semester. She would tell me that she had 2 homework problems and she expected to take around 10 hours or so for each of them. She did well in the classes but other than writing research papers I don’t think I ever spent near that much time on a problem. I guess that’s why I’m not an engineer.

By his choice he has a job, plus he’s filling out internship applications. I didn’t have the organizational skills at that age to even come close to succeeding with the load engineers endure.

My own experience:

First Year - Lightest workload, easiest but most important concepts, harshest grading
Second Year - Moderate workload, less easy concepts but still very important, less harsh grading
Third Year - Heavy Workload, really hard concepts, can be forgiven if you don’t remember everything, fair grading
Fourth Year - Impossible Workload, really cool concepts and prep for grad school, easiest grading with a couple exceptions

Classes I found hardest to get through (most difficult listed first): Control of Aerospace Systems, Space Navigation & Guidance, Dynamics of Aerospace Systems, Linear Algebra (math majors version with proofs), Computational Astrophysics, Organic Chemistry I <-- started off materials

1 is senior year, 3 are Junior year, 2 are Sophomore year. YMMV

Junior year is the hardest.
Dynamics (in my day) was the killer class.