<p>just wondering, what are the top 5 toughest majors that involve lots of math and science in which most people drop out in?</p>
<p>The first one that pops into my head is EE - electrical engineering. I know a couple of people who got into college, started taking EE courses and dropped out by the next semester.</p>
<p>BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULDN’T TRY IT FIRST. You could be awesome at it - I also knew people who started taking EE and stuck with it so don’t let anything discourage you. </p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, biochemistry is a tough one. Not necessarily because it’s hard but because it’s very time consuming - a lot of studying involved and a lot of details you need to know.</p>
<p>:/</p>
<p>While “pre-med” is not a real major, it would not be surprising if the great majority of freshmen who enter college or university intending to do pre-med drop that idea after seeing their GPA after a few chemistry and biology courses, or see their MCAT score.</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering is said to be extremely hard.</p>
<p>Nobody thinks that pure math would be considered one of, if not the, toughest?</p>
<p>Just wondering what makes EE more difficult than math or physics</p>
<p>i’m a pure math and computer engineering double major. my pure math classes were a piece of cake compared to the ee courses i take. the cs courses aren’t that hard either.</p>
<p>My dad nearly quit electrical engineering, too. It was painfully boring, he says–until junior and senior year. At that point, it apparently became awesome.</p>
<p>I think pure math isn’t necessarily seen as being as difficult as engineering is because you get to choose a lot more of your classes. In most engineering programs there’s not a whole lot of wiggle room for courses, so you wind up with a decent number you generally don’t care a whole lot about. My friends in math tended to have a lot of freedom in specializing in whatever they liked, so they didn’t feel quite as bogged down by killer classes like thermo and fluid dynamics.</p>
<p>Biochemistry is a cakewalk…but I’m a tad biased 
If you have a good foundation in organic chemistry, like really paid attention and understand the mechanisms then there’s not a whole lot of memorization that needs to be done other than the biology portion of the major.</p>
<p>Hardest majors IMO are electrical engineering, computer science, material science engineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering, and history (no shortcutting this one…straight memorization through and through)</p>
<p>Pure math is tough for those who find math proofs to be much more difficult than the computation oriented math seen as a freshman or sophomore. But those who can handle math proofs will probably find it not that difficult, since it does not have time consuming lab courses or large numbers of course requirements compared to some other majors.</p>
<p>Many of those who think best logically and quantitatively may find their toughest courses to be humanities breadth requirements like courses emphasizing literary analysis.</p>
<p>I am extremely surprised that physics has not been mentioned more. I would say that it is more difficult that any engineering discipline conceptually. As far as work load, I will hand that one to the engineers. I have heard that EE can be quite difficult. ChemE tends to have very stingy course requirements, and the semesters are packed down with classes so I could definitely see that being a tough grind. That tends to be the trend with all the engineering majors here. Also with the history thing mentioned above, I have a roommate who was thinking about going down the whole phd history track, but the basic credentials you need to gather during undergrad are pretty immense. As far as just getting a b.a. in history, probably not as bad, but if you have any intentions of higher education the difficulty skyrockets. Near fluency in 2 languages other than English is almost a must (unless you are looking towards U.S. history which apparently is the most sought after/least possibility of getting a job), and the work/reading can be very time consuming. </p>
<p>But when it is all said and done, the most difficult things are going to be in the subjects that do not come naturally to you.</p>
<p>Why is it that math types always have to start threads like this? No one cares how big and bad you are at math. </p>
<p>(and I’m a math major)</p>
<p>The toughest major is musical performance.</p>
<p>And yes, it’s a form of ****ing contest. The “hardest major” depends on one’s strengths and weaknesses. Most majors can be made arbitrarily hard by picking the more rigorous, advanced courses in the discipline (or just the work intensive ones). Some can be made almost arbitrarily easy if the required courses are few and the low-level options numerous. There are culturally ingrained “math is hard”, “arts degrees lead to flipping burgers/serving cofee” preconceptions that make a lot of people think they are true.</p>
<p>Just answering the main questions in term of math, Physics and applied math are the hardest. When I went through college my 2 roomates were EE and Civil Engineering. When talking math compare to Physics, EE is a joke (it’s math is like the first chapter of our Physics books), CE is a bit more math intensive but not to the level of Pure math or Physics. Now EE becomes extremly hard when you start taking their specialty courses (i.e circuits, etc). Trust me I help my EE roomate on his math stuff and compare to Physics everything looked like 2 + 2 :P</p>
<p>When I was a student decades ago, Chemical Engineering was considered the toughest major at Georgia Tech (250 of us as freshmen, but only 35 at graduation four years later). However, my daughter is a physics major at Harvard and her course work is much more difficult than what I experienced.</p>
<p>Does the “ice cream” response apply only to the engineering threads?</p>
<p>“When I was a student decades ago, Chemical Engineering was considered the toughest major at Georgia Tech (250 of us as freshmen, but only 35 at graduation four years later). However, my daughter is a physics major at Harvard and her course work is much more difficult than what I experienced.”</p>
<p>What does that mean? You were a chem engineer and you looked at work for physics… Obviously it’s going to seem difficult if you just take a look at the work in the middle of the course.</p>
<p>The hardest major is the most boring major.</p>
<p>But in the fields of all things science related, most people will agree that at the highest levels (phd, graduate levels) pure mathematics is the toughest.</p>
<p>First it depends on which schools you go to. But if you consider the top schools for every subject, I would say the hardest majors are music, fine arts, and design for workload and difficulty curb but physics, math and philosophy as far as conceptual understanding. </p>
<p>It depends on strengths and weaknesses. I talked to someone in electrical engineering and he said it wasnt too difficult but then I remember someone in art history that had to study french plus italian as well. It really is based on the program and ones familiarity to the subject.</p>
<p>A history major who is planning to go to graduate school is almost certain to have to learn at least two languages other than English in order to be able to conduct research. I would say that is pretty difficult. The architecture workload is insane from what I have heard also.</p>