Im sure most people know that calculus and early engineering science courses are where the students who picked engineering but aren’t meant for it drop out. I have just finished up calc 3 which wasn’t to fun but i made it through okay. I have 3 siblings and they are all engineers. From what they have told me, they think calc 1 and some parts of calc 2 are what is really important for engineering. I know diff eq is important but im just talking about calc 1-3 right now. They claim that if you struggle a little on the hardest material in the calculus courses you will still be okay because in your engineering courses you don’t really see the hardest types of calc problems. Is this true? I know the problems will still be difficult but am i gonna still see integrals where multiple methods of integration and the use of trig identities are needed or series where there are lots of tricks on deciding if it converges or not? 2 siblings graduated in ME from the University of Pittsburgh and the other graduated EE from Penn State. So they were in serious engineering programs. Im at penn state for ME but possibly may switch to aerospace. I just am curious on if the math changes and if so in what way?
It really depends on your field and subfield. Some are “mathier” than others. I can say that I’ve not used much in the way of series convergence but I’ve certainly used a ton of integration in aerospace/mechanical.
If you can make it through multi-variable calculus then you will be fine for undergraduate engineering. I personally never used Diff Eqs after I took the class but other people may use it when modeling systems.