<p>Hey...could someone please give me a little info on the relative difficulty/competitiveness/popularity of these couple of SEAS majors?
And in general, which majors (out of all SEAS majors) are considered the easiest/hardest.</p>
<p>-Applied Math
-OR
-OR:FE
-BME
-ChemE</p>
<p>And what about job prospects (i-banking and such) for Applied Mathematicians compared to OR/FE majors? Does the presence of FE recruits make it much more difficult for Applied Math kids to get a job?</p>
<p>Bump. I'm also interested in studying chemE and bmE at SEAS and would like to know the rigor of these majors. From a general search on these forums I'm getting the sense that the first two years of the majority of SEAS majors are relatively not that difficult due to core requirements and such, while the last two years are more focused on specific difficult courses that are related to each major. Details would be appreciated especially on how difficult it is to maintain a high gpa at SEAS.</p>
<p>all i know is, in general chemE is considered one of the most difficult engineerings and bme is one of the most time consuming (not too sure on difficulty, however).</p>
<p>FE I hear is not particularly difficult, but has numerous requirements that make many concentrations difficult to add.</p>
<p>I would assume applied math is comparable to math, which is one of the most difficult majors for arts and sciences students.</p>
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From a general search on these forums I'm getting the sense that the first two years of the majority of SEAS majors are relatively not that difficult due to core requirements and such, while the last two years are more focused on specific difficult courses that are related to each major.
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</p>
<p>The first two years harder than the last two in some ways -- you're adjusting to college, you're in larger classes with harder curves, etc. The last two are mostly spend on courses in your major, which means the material is more challenging, but the curves are often more generous and there's much more collegiality among your classmates. </p>
<p>
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Details would be appreciated especially on how difficult it is to maintain a high gpa at SEAS.
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</p>
<p>Depends how smart you are and how much you want to work.</p>
<p>for bme:</p>
<p>first year is pretty straight forward, nothing too hard except adjusting to college as C02 mentioned.</p>
<p>second year is tough because you have to take things like orgo which is a hard basic science course and you now have to take things like mechanics and whatnot which are also difficult....some ppl fall behind here because their ego gets inflated first year</p>
<p>junior year is just brutal u pretty much plunge into really difficult classes and into actual bme classes without enough preparation. You take bio and quant. physiology at the same time which is one of the biggest weaknesses of the program. Bio is considered one of the hardest classes in CC (there's a thread about it too) but it should be one of your easiest that year....if you don't have a solid background in bio you are in for an even harder time.</p>
<p>senior year is pretty laid back....most of your worries will be about making sure u fullfil all the requirements and working on your senior design project but its much more laid back than the previous two years. </p>
<p>in general though chemE has the most requirements (63 credits if i remember correctly) and BME has the second most</p>
<p>ChemE is the hardest-core major at SEAS. It's an accredited program and they have to flog you through untold amounts of s**t to get you through things. the guys i knew who did the most work were ChemE's. Secondarily, the guys I knew who spent the most time (perhaps because on average they weren't quite as brilliant) were generally BMEs. Shraf can tell you more specifics on that, but every SEAS student who had it drilled into their head by their parents that they need to go to med school and be a doctor, they all end up trying to be BMEs.</p>
<p>All majors in the IEOR department are, generally speaking, the easiest in the school. OR isn't a total joke (but EMS - Engineering Management Systems - is definitely a joke), but the kids who want easy As tend to flock there. FE is a fairly new program but probably similar in rigor to OR.</p>
<p>I was applied math. I think it's harder, material-wise, than OR or FE. On the other hand, it has slightly fewer requirements. But I will say this, in its defense: applied math offers the greatest marginal time savings on skill in the discipline. What I mean by that is, if you're the best (say) History student in the department, you can't avoid still having to do all the readings, do the research, write all the papers, attend recitations, etc. You still spend the SAME amount of time on the major as the worst history student. Being better doesn't save you anything (although it will get you better grades). Applied Math, on the other hand (or normal Math, or physics, or any other highly quant-driven major), offers the opportunity to those who are good at it to basically never have to go to class ("it's all in the book"), and to knock out problem sets really fast. Very good math students get their stuff done much faster than lesser students - so there is value in being better, besides just better grades. And my whole time at Columbia was built around maximizing the amount of time I had for non-class stuff, so this was a big deal to me.</p>
<p>In my experience there is essentially no difference in ibanking recruiting based on that selection of majors. they'll take you less seriously if you were a sociology major or art history major, but any engineering major is pretty much just fine. what opens the door is the fact of attending Columbia and having a good GPA, everything beyond that is personality-driven.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>