<p>"MIT and Cal-tech are by the far the most difficult schools" --OR--- "Cornell engineering is so much more difficult than yours" ---OR---"Harvey-Mudd engineering is ruthless". </p>
<p>So it got me thinking. What are the top 10 most difficult schools in engineering (please rank them in order).</p>
<p>My guess is:</p>
<p>1) Cal-tech
2) MIT
3) Cornell, Harvey Mudd, and Cooper Union on the same rank
4) UIUC and UMAA on the same rank
5) I can't say for the rest.......</p>
<p>I wish there was a website that gave the rankings of the most difficult engineering schools.</p>
<p>I hear Cal-Tech is the most difficult. Supposible they have one of lowest 4-year graduation rates, and massive grade deflation due to the difficulty.</p>
<p>a theory that i heard re. caltech's low 4 year grad rates is that since it's a VERY specialized school, students with interests in fields other than sci/math/eng are forced to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>on the other hand, schools like stanford or cornell are high up in areas other than just sci/math/eng, and as a result, a student can switch out if needed.</p>
<p>I think your ranking is probably pretty accurate.</p>
<p>A note: at MIT, it's not that all the classes are drop-dead hard. A lot of them are hard, many of them are very hard, and a small subset are take-over-your-life-and-make-you-their-slave hard.</p>
<p>i have to agree with this. i attend a top 10 engineering school, and recently took differential equations, and aced the class. well anyways i'm preparing to test out of a modern physics test the following semester, so i decided to use MIT opencourse ware to help supplement some of my education. i decided to take a look a the differential equations course there and it looked god awful hard. not that the material wasn't familiar, it was, but it seemed like the way it was taught was from a very theoretical standpoint with a lot of attention on proofs. in addition in the honors vers of the diff-eq there were a lot of topics i had never even heard of.</p>
<p>i'm somewhat glad that i do not attend MIT, because i know for sure i wouldn't be able the gpa that i have whilst putting in the same effort. plus going there would almost certainly kill my chances of getting into law school (which i intend on going to)</p>
<p>o and if you want to gauge how difficult MIT is, look at their material. MIT opencourseware is a online resource for all things MIT, you can take a look at tests, quizzes, homework, lecture notes for almost every course and every major there.</p>
<p>Gauging from personal experience, Rice was harder than UIUC... I've been to both. Can't say anything to the other programs, but I can chip in my own little ranking of two.</p>
<p>i've used MIT's open courseware as well. I think the quality of teaching is better.(maybe they only record the best lecturers) the material is similar to michigan. Their Organic Chemistry test is easier than Michigan's. Overall, i sense that MIT teach more thoroughly, at Michigan, i pretty much have to goto office hours a lot and do a lot of self-studying.</p>
<p>I think this topic is SOMEWHAT (not completely) subjective. A professor can make a course as difficult or as easy as he/she wants to, likewise as theoretical/analytical as they want. My professor for my analog electronic class recently complained how most of his peers do not follow the guideline from course overview but instead improvise to their likings. I've had numerous classes where I easily got an A in, whereas my friends with similar gpa as me struggled with a different teacher just to get a C-, or vice versa.</p>
<p>Oh also, I've used exams from michigan/cornell/uiuc to study for my signals and systems class (a required course for almost all EE majors no matter what school), and like i said some exams are easier and some are more difficult...entirely up to the professors.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd gets its rep from the insane courseload -- usually 8 or 9 courses a semester, from what I hear. Don't know whether those courses are easier than at other schools to compensate; hard for anyone to know, unless they've attended both.</p>
<p>Seems like there are three main determinants of difficulty:
1. Student Strength
2. Renown in regards to Engineering
3. Specialization of school, ie tech schools are generally harder than universities.
A possible fourth: Orientation of school towards theoretical aspect of engineering. More theory -> More difficult.</p>