<p>No, those are easy. You don’t even really need to go to college if you want to get into CS, finance, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, any other engineering, mathematics, any natural or physical science, any humanities or fine arts, or anything besides business (econ is not a business degree, so you’re just wasting your time studying that). In fact, all majors aside from sports management are questionable, even business.</p>
<p>Thanks, Calcozzo. :D</p>
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<p>I guess handling a professional athlete’s ego is much harder than doing rocket science.</p>
<p>What about Actuarial Science</p>
<p>How does that stack up against engineering, math, physics, etc.?</p>
<p>Same ballpark as statistics and industrial engineering. Here’s how I would rank disparate academic programs in terms of objective difficulty:</p>
<p>Physics
Mathematics
Computer Science
Computer Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Aerospace Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Chemistry
Civil Engineering
Geology
Actuarial Science
Statistics
Software Engineering
Industrial Engineering
Biomedical Science / Engineering
Biology
Information Technology
Engineering Technology
Laboratory Technician</p>
<p>It’s been done before, but as a fun exercise, let’s see what everybody’s lists look like.</p>
<p>Just curious, but how does everyone measure these things? Lowest GPA?</p>
<p>The hardest major by far is EE.
EE is harder than Physics mainly because EEs have to know physics while Physicist dont have to know EE stuff. EEs have to take solid-state devices classes which involve Quantum Physics (the hardest, craziest stuff ever!). Not only that, they are involve in many (maybe too many) different areas: computer sciience (programming languages - CS), computer architecture, electromagnetics, circuits theory, signals, robotics, energy, solid-state devices, biomedical (biomedical is a subEE field), software engineering, signals, communitications, networks, etc etc etc</p>
<p>My top 5 would be:
- EE - time consuming, hard, challenging, requires high math, physics, cs skills, problem-solving skills.
- Physics - They work on some of the hardest stuff but is not really time consuming. Quantum physics is just insane, crazy, out of this world. Props to Einstein and other physicists.
- ChemE - time consuming, hard concepts, research-like skills are typically required.
- Architecture - very, very time consuming - red bulls and monsters are a must
- Medical school - extraordinary memory and study skills are essential</p>
<p>Nice. Hey, do me a favor. Take my list and rearrange the majors in that list and that list only in non-increasing order of difficulty. Then we can compare our level of agreement quantitatively.</p>
<p>If you consider only those majors we have both listed, our level of disagreement can be calculated as:
(1+1+0)/4 = 50%.</p>
<p>If you prefer something closer to the Euclidean distance, we’re closer to 70% disagreement.</p>
<p>Another benefit of everybody doing a similar list is that we can get the average ranks of each major, and use that as our answer to these questions in the future. Quantify!</p>
<p>If you wouldn’t mind completing the thing, we can work this out all the way. Thanks!</p>
<p>“medical school” is a major? are we talking about phd’s in all those other subjects then?</p>
<p>Yeah let us cap the comparison only at the undergraduate level since due to the cross-discipline and independent curriculum of graduate school, it’s really a toss up on which one is harder.</p>
<p>Anyway, Pre-medical isn’t really a major and from my personal experience is far-far-far easier than any engineering major. The “hardest” class is probably organic chemistry which is required for ChemEs and can be simpler conceptually for engineers–just follow the electrons. </p>
<p>I have to put Physics/Math as some of the hardest majors due to the sheer creativity, mathematical rigor and general craziness (I’m looking at you Topology) that some of the classes entail.</p>
<p>Why is computer science considered harder than aero?</p>
<p>Are you asking in my opinion?</p>
<p>I’ve seen aerospace work at my institution, and I’ve seen CS work, and the CS work is harder. It’s more mathematical and requires more creativity. I don’t want to say aero is plug-and-chug, but it’s certainly more that way than CS.</p>
<p>Make your own list, and then we can compare them quantitatively and come to a group consensus.</p>
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</p>
<p>Well, I’ve seen a ballet before but I can’t tell you the dynamics behind performing a tour jete. Maybe your institution just has a weak aerospace department and a strong CS department.</p>
<p>It all seemed hard at Illinois, to me. I don’t think it’s possible to rank them. There are varying degrees of difficulty that you can achieve within each field. You can write “Hello World” and you can write an operating system and you can call both things “computer science”. The quick glances that most of us take at each field aren’t going to give us enough insight to compare. The full understanding that we have for our own fields makes us biased.</p>
<p>What’s with this absolute need to quantify this?</p>
<p>It’s better than making horsespit threads about what the hardest major is, over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.</p>
<p>Soooo… You’re trying to settle it once and for all, and stop these threads from happening…?</p>
<p>Ohhh, ohh, ohh: join date January 2009. You just haven’t recognized the futility of it all yet. Give it time, give it time. You will become as jaded as the rest of us. ;)</p>
<p>My roommate is a double ME/Physics major. He constantly tells me that the mech. engineering is easy, and the physics is ridiculously hard. I’ve seen both of his homework/tests and I will have to say I agree. </p>
<p>I personally think physics is the hardest major. Engineering and for that matter CS may be more time consuming especially the applied stuff, but I think that the concepts in high-level physics require significantly greater amounts of effort to understand.</p>
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<p>I have met a lot of engineers that would have a hard time in the highly theoretical side of physics and a lot of physicists that would have a hard time on the practical side of engineering. It all comes down to an individual’s aptitudes. I bet if you tried to teach the average engineering Ph.D. high level physics, they would have no problem understanding, and if you tried to teach the average physics Ph.D. some high level engineering, they would also have no problem. Engineering and physics are really two sides of the same coin. Which one is harder is really more of a personal thing, not a cut-and-dried, measurable thing.</p>
<p>math is hard.</p>
<p>– barbie, the doll</p>
<p>Thanks for your post. PEOPLE!! listen there is no such thing as a more difficult major, it’s like the 'beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" phrase. It all depends onyour frame of reference. You basically have to have the aptitude for certain subjects for you to excell in them. Nuclear Physics may be easier to grasp for one than philosophy. Chemical Engineering may be easier to grasp for on than Accounting. Computational Finance may be easier to grasp for one than biomedical secinces… basically it depends onyour aptitude for reasoning on that subject. I have had Engineering students who switched to my major because they believed it was easier and they flunked so bad! They could not get the abstract’ness and subjectivity and volume of reading that was required in my Major. Then again we have all-round smart-bright-gifted-intelligent kids/people who have a more encompassing aptitude for a variety of subjects across the board.</p>
<p>So the question is not about the easy’ness’ of the subject but should be more of the aptitude of the student towards the subject</p>
<p>-my two cents…</p>
<p>^
Love it. I think he/she is right.</p>