<p>I am not tempting to change my major but just a curious question?
Besides the "________ studies" what else is there?</p>
<p>The top 5 easiest
The top 5 hardest</p>
<p>IMO:</p>
<p>Easy:
American Studies, Society & Environment, but seriously ___studies are significantly easier</p>
<p>Hard:
Chemical Engineering, EECS, MCB, Mechanica E</p>
<p>ehhh. im in mech engineering -_-</p>
<p>How hard is the Economics major?</p>
<p>The mathematically based one (the one you have to do to have a chance at grad school)?</p>
<p>Hardest:
astrophysics
physics
EECS
MCB
Mech E</p>
<p>Ah shoot, i'm in a hard one.</p>
<p>This is such a stupid thread. How do you determine what's "easy?" For example, someone very talented in math or hard sciences may be terrible at polisci or history, and therefore those very reading- and writing-intensive classes may be incredibly difficult for them. The standard of determinant is just so vague that this is....ugh.</p>
<p>The difficulty of the major is usually judged by its average GPA. ChemE, for example, has the lowest average GPA from what I heard.</p>
<p>Haha, I'm majoring in Society and Environment! But yeah, the requirements seem really easy, thus I'm gonna double major in EEP.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This is such a stupid thread. How do you determine what's "easy?" For example, someone very talented in math or hard sciences may be terrible at polisci or history, and therefore those very reading- and writing-intensive classes may be incredibly difficult for them. The standard of determinant is just so vague that this is....ugh.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think your question actually points to its answer. Take 2 distinctly different majors, X and Y. Now imagine 2 people, each of whom is good at one subject but terrible at the other, and imagine each of them majoring in the discipline in which they are terrible. Furthermore, have them put in minimal effort. Hence, you are combining both laziness and unsuitability. The question now is: who is more likely to flunk out? Or, put another way, which major is more likely to flunk out the lazy and untalented students? That major is the easier one. </p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that there are certain easy majors in which you can put in hardly any effort at all and have no idea of what is happening..and still pass anyway. Granted, you'll probably get a mediocre grade. But you'll still pass. Other majors have no hesitation in flunking you out, and in fact, seem to delight in doing so.</p>
<p>Heck, you may not even get a mediocre grade; sometimes you'll get a very good grade. I'll give you an example. I know a guy who took a class that shall remain unnamed in which he never showed up to class, * not even once, not even on the first day*, nor did he do any of the reading. Most of the course grading was based on papers about the readings, with a minor percentage of the grading based on class participation (in which he took a 0 because he never went to class). But, since he did not do any of the readings, in order to do the papers, all he did was go to Amazon.com, looked up all of the assigned readings, and simply read the user summaries of those books, and then reformulated them in his own words. He estimated he perhaps worked a total of 3 hours during the entire semester on that class, including lecture/discussion (which he never attended). His final grade? An A-minus. </p>
<p>Contrast that with other classes, like the engineering weeders, where I know people who were quite talented in the field and worked extremely hard, and still can't pull off an A-. For example, I remember a bunch of guys who did undergrad chemical engineering at Berkeley who clearly had some talent in the subject as they went on to complete their PhD's in the subject. {Granted, they went to lower-ranked PhD programs, but in order to complete a PhD anywhere you have to have some talent. You can't be terrible at a subject and still get a PhD in it, even at a low-ranked PhD program.} I distinctly remember them studying extremely hard for each of the ChemE weeders, in fact, probably spending, including lecture/discussion time, an average 3 hours a day for ChemE 140 alone (contrast that with the other guy above who invested no more than 3 hours during the entire semester). Yet these guys didn't get an A-minus in that weeder. In fact, their grade was not even close to an A-minus.</p>
<p>That just shows that there are clear distinctions in difficulty among classes, and indeed, among entire majors. There are certain classes where even talented students who work extremely hard can nevertheless wind up with worse grades than will other students who take other classes, despite those students being extremely lazy. </p>
<p>I remember how the first guy was laughing that he got such a high grade for such poor effort, and he even came up with the concept of 'grade efficiency', which was basically a ratio of your final grade divided by the amount of effort you put in, and how he might win the "University Medal of Grade Efficiency" if such an award existed. He was especially laughing at the engineers and natural science majors for their pathetic 'grade efficiency' scores, of which they would put in massive amounts of study time yet still not get good grades. It was a tragicomic thing to hear; the tragic part being the fact that it was all true.</p>
<p>That story sounds like that of me and my peers in high school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Heck, you may not even get a mediocre grade; sometimes you'll get a very good grade. I'll give you an example. I know a guy who took a class that shall remain unnamed in which he never showed up to class, not even once, not even on the first day, nor did he do any of the reading. Most of the course grading was based on papers about the readings, with a minor percentage of the grading based on class participation (in which he took a 0 because he never went to class). But, since he did not do any of the readings, in order to do the papers, all he did was go to Amazon.com, looked up all of the assigned readings, and simply read the user summaries of those books, and then reformulated them in his own words. He estimated he perhaps worked a total of 3 hours during the entire semester on that class, including lecture/discussion (which he never attended). His final grade? An A-minus.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I can only say...respect.</p>
<p>Looks like it'll be OK for me to continue what I've been doing all the way through high school with the literature classes. lol Only I usually use Wikipedia.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Only I usually use Wikipedia
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ha! Well, all I have to say about that is, why can't there be a really really killer Wikipedia article that will get people a top grade in, say, Chem 3/112 (Organic Chemistry)? Or physics 7B (Electromagnetism for Engineers)? Or CS 61B (Data Structures)? Why is it only the humanities and certain social science majors that are so easily 'wiki-able' (or in my friend's case, Amazon-able)?</p>
<p>Or perhaps that's just another way to answer tastyb33f's concerns regarding which majors are the easy ones.</p>
<p>It's okay, I've learned way more from Wikipedia than I have from my professors too.</p>
<p>Good structure, sakky - props. And I am convinced. But hopefully you understand my frustration at these types of threads. You can definitely say which majors are easier and which are harder, but to RANK them Top 5? Pointless. Everything is relative.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's okay, I've learned way more from Wikipedia than I have from my professors too.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But only for certain topics, right?</p>
<p>Why</a> Does Wikipedia Suck on Science? | Wired Science from Wired.com</p>
<p>Coincidentally (actually, probably not coincidentally), the majors for which wikipedia sucks also just so happen to be the majors that are generally considered to be hard at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Thats why I said IMO. Everyone's got their own opinions about this.</p>
<p>redzune: that wasn't my point. My point was more geared towards the OP, richard10, to even begin a thread like this.</p>
<p>
[Quote]
This is such a stupid thread. How do you determine what's "easy?" For example, someone very talented in math or hard sciences may be terrible at polisci or history, and therefore those very reading- and writing-intensive classes may be incredibly difficult for them. The standard of determinant is just so vague that this is....ugh.
[/Quote]
I'm pretty sure that 90% of the engineering majors will do just fine in polisci and history becasue these guys don't get in Cal engineering with sub 600 SAT reading/writing scores and B's in high school english and history. On the other hand, if you put the polisci and history majors in engineering, my guess is a third will flunk out and a half will have gpa between C and C+.</p>
<p>Yeah, exactly. </p>
<p>Which begs the question of why do these differentials in difficulty and grading schemes persist? I don't know about anybody else, but I know that if I was department chair or program director, I wouldn't want to be seen around campus as the guy who runs the 'joke' major that attracts students who don't care and are just interested in getting easy grades for no effort. From a professional standpoint, I would be embarrassed to be running such a major. As an academic, you are supposed to working to gain respect from other academics, which is why professors spend so much time publishing. I don't see how running what is dismissed within your school as a joke garners respect from academics, or from anybody else for that matter.</p>
<p>One word, sakky: tenure.</p>