What is Systems Engineering like?

<p>Does anyone know what majoring in Systems Engineering would be like? I'm stuck between this vs. Materials Science and Engineering, but I am not sure what Systems is really. I looked up the courses, I think there's one required course dealing with circuits and one dealing with programming, but the rest are like probability/optimization/other things that aren't quite clear I think. Do any of you know what is basically taught (is it a lot of programming/computer science or a lot of circuits, such as dealing with electrical engineering)? Since I am not very good with things dealing with circuits (resistance, Ohms, Amps, etc.) and electrical engineering, but I can stand one class of it to get better at the concepts. I guess I'm kind of more interested in it because it seems kind of broad and looks at things at a larger scale.</p>

<p>Also, if anyone here knows about the Systems Engineering specifically for Penn, that'd be great too. Is systems similar to industrial engineering, and what is the difficulty (course-load, concepts hard to grasp, etc.) in comparison to other engineering majors? Thank you</p>

<p>edit: It's kind of difficult for me to figure out which one I'd be most interested in learning, since so far I'm just a freshman taking intro courses and don't have much experience with either. I'm trying to pick out some courses for the following semester, and worst comes to worst I will change engineering majors, but it's quite difficult to lean towards MSE and Systems Eng at the same time, so I'm hoping I can right now lean towards one and then switch if I really don't like it or really like another one. It's just that I'm not really sure which to lean towards for a start</p>

<p>Which program is this exactly? UPenn or PSU? Probability and Optimization is what we do a lot of in my program (Industrial & Systems Engineering @ NC State) so it sounds similar but I’m not sure without looking at the program.</p>

<p>program is at upenn, sorry for the confusion</p>

<p>any ideas?</p>

<p>This is what I found from UPenn on their SSE Program:

</p>

<p>To me, this sounds very similar to a lot of the stuff I am learning in my Industrial and Systems Engineering program so yeah I would consider it one. I looked it up on ABET and it is accredited for Systems but not Industrial, mainly what I would care about is your career fair. Take a look at who is recruiting and if they are recruiting for this major.</p>

<p>As far as the work load, like it says, it is less of the physics and more math/modeling. I actually like that, but some people don’t. Workload is very subjective. I really like IE because there tends to be less emphasis on busy work and more emphasis on making us come up with solutions. Forcing us to actually think and innovate. YMMV
Chuck</p>

<p>Thanks a lot chuck! yeah, i was thinking it was sort of like that, and it sounds really interesting and pretty useful. I’m not a fan of heavy physics or anything. The modeling/logistics/solutions sounds pretty fun. I’ll give it a shot</p>