<p>Where would you guys rank environmental engineering? That's what my major is going to be. Just curious to what you guys think of it.</p>
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You should know as well as I do the type of people who come here. They are young, impressionable, high-school-aged overachievers who worry about whether getting a 93 versus a 100 will hurt them in their quest for life success.
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<p>Hence it seems to me that they are precisely the type of people who would prefer a major in which it is easier to get that 100. Why work hard to get a 93 when you can take it easy and get a 100? </p>
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And as far as math goes, I love it but I don't find it hard at all. I find other things harder than it. Much harder. I had more trouble in my freshman music appreciation class than I have had in all calculus classes, linear algebra, differential equations, discrete math, statistics, numerical analysis, information theory, and theoretical computer science (formal languages) classes combined.
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<p>Nobody is saying that the categorization is deterministic. Maybe you really a budding Paul Erdos. Just like I'm sure I can find some people who can smoke for decades and enjoy perfectly good health. In fact, I happen to know a guy who smoked several packs a day and still lived to be over 90 and died not because of disease but from a car accident. </p>
<p>What matters is where the data points congregate. In general certain disciplines are harder than others. That is why, for example, you get quotes such as the following:</p>
<p>The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976," stated Rine, "while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, and the biological sciences had no consistent pattern."</p>
<p>Undergraduate</a> Education Colloquium, The College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley</p>
<p>Or consider the fact that when Princeton decided to institute harder grading requirements, the science departments reported that they wouldn't have to change anything, as they had already been using tough grading standards anyway. It was the Princeton *humanities*departments that were under the gun.</p>
<p>*Princeton began in the fall of 2004 to employ guidelines for grading distributions across departments. Under the new guidelines, departments have been encouraged to re-evaluate and clarify their grading policies. The administration suggests that, averaged over the course of several years in an individual department, A-range grades should constitute 35% of grades in classroom work, and 55% of grades in independent work such as Senior Theses. To date, the administration has not taken steps to strictly enforce these guidelines, instead opting to rely on departments to apply them. Since the policy's inception, A-range grades have declined significantly in Humanities departments, while remaining nearly constant in the Natural Science departments. *</p>
<p>Grade</a> Inflation: Recent Instances - K12 Academics</p>
<p>Or consider the comparative grading at Harvard. </p>
<p>Grades
in humanities courses are notably higher than those in the social sciences, and
both are higher than grades in the natural sciences. Yet would anyone say that
Harvard's best students are in the humanities and its worst in the natural sciences?
In fact, science students regularly do better in nonscience courses than nonscience
students do in science courses.</p>
<p>The point is that there is quite a bit of evidence to demonstrate the grading standards (and hence, difficulty) vary widely from major to major. Obviously there will always be some unusual people who will find the 'difficult' major to actually be easy, but this does not seem to be the case for the majority of people.</p>
<p>What about Bioengineering/Biological Engineering/Biomedical Engineering?</p>
<p>Sari, engineering's going to be hard no matter how you look at it, but in the end, it depends on you. I'm terrible at bio, so those subjects you listed would be h**l for me, but maybe (not saying that you are, this is just an example) you're terrible at physics, which means that mech/aero (my concentration) would be harder for you.</p>
<p>That is true, you are talking about workload too right? That was about learning style right? I have decent memorization, well, actually I forget easily after awhile, but I remember concepts like from C++ and Calculus. Does Physics work the same way? I mean does it reinforce or builds upon itself? I'd like some guidance to see if mechanical or materials science engineering would be right for me. Also, is engineering the safest degree to keep a job even during economic downturn?</p>
<p>Billy, I think you're referring to what I posted, so I'll try to answer some of your questions.</p>
<p>What makes engineering rigorous is probably the extremely time-consuming projects. Classwork-wise, engineering programs are no harder/time-consuming than other math and science programs, but the design projects where you apply theoretical concepts take forever and a day. </p>
<p>I wasn't actually thinking about learning style when I previously posted, but engineering's really good in that it incorporates all three types of learners. If you're visual, read the book or your notes, if you're auditory, listen to the lectures, and if you're kinesthetic, the design projects/psets are helpful. Now, you'd have to overlap all these activities to do well, but I think you get my point.</p>
<p>Memorization will only get you so far; it is infinitely better to learn the concepts. Ten years after you graduate, you probably won't remember the intricacies of Taylor series, but you'd have the reasoning skills to figure the problem out. Physics definitely works like that. I can't remember formulas to save my life, but I can work out problems despite this because I know concepts. Now, you do have to remember the some things, such as the basics (formulas for the area of various shapes, simple trig functions, etc.), but those aren't too hard.</p>
<p>I can't help you too much in choosing between mechanical or materials science, but maybe some other poster here could chime in. Most engineering programs' first year curriculum is the same across the board so you have time to talk to people, take some intro classes, etc. before you choose, though.</p>
<p>No degree will guarantee you a job. Work hard and learn to think and you should be fine. Engineers do have some job stability, but some would also argue that you could find job stability even without a college degree. I'm beginning to digress a bit, so I won't go further. :)</p>
<p>Hm,, thank you smith, yes I was referring to your post. This helps to know from the experience of another, insightful thanks. Still, I hear physics is scary for some people, even the introduction classes. I took conceptual physics, and well, I didn't understand the concepts mainly because I had a professor that I couldn't hear too well. Anyway it was an easy class. So, I wonder if you need to pick up concepts on your own in physics to see whether you should move on in engineering.</p>
<p>smithiegr, I understand that it will be more challenging (the word I like to use) than just regular biology or mathematics; that's part of the reason why I want to study it. I meant where on the list would other people place it in comparison to the other engineering majors; the last time the list appeared on this thread, BME/BioE wasn't on it.</p>
<p>It's probably more rigorous than biology(don't know about organic chem though) and math, but I heard math is more intellectually demanding and takes more brainpower. Especially abstract math, that's why there is not a lot of math majors for one reason, and that I hear 80% of the US hates math, hahaha.</p>
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What makes engineering rigorous is probably the extremely time-consuming projects. Classwork-wise, engineering programs are no harder/time-consuming than other math and science programs, but the design projects where you apply theoretical concepts take forever and a day
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<p>Actually, I would say that the difficulty of engineering still springs from the grading of engineering courses, and the time-consuming nature of projects merely serves as a moderating variable.</p>
<p>What I mean is that it's not enough for a class to assign lots of time-consuming work for the class to be difficult. The class also has to punish you from a grading standpoint if you don't actually DO those projects, or at least, don't spend sufficient time on the projects. In other words, classes that assign massive amounts of work but still give out high grades to people who don't put in the time are not difficult classes. </p>
<p>I'll give you a case in point. I know a guy who took a upper-division Literature class. The grading of the class was mostly based on a final paper that was due on the Friday of the last week of class. You were supposed to read a whole boatload of books and work on that paper for the entire semester, and the paper was envisioned to be the equivalent workload of an entire undergraduate thesis. </p>
<p>That was what was supposed to happen. In reality, this guy didn't even start reading any of the books for the paper until Sunday. No, not the Sunday before the Friday due date. I'm talking about the Sunday after the paper was already due. Of all the books that he was supposed to read, I think he ended up maybe reading 2 of them, both on that Sunday. He finally finished the paper on Tuesday morning (4 days after it was due), and he freely admitted that it was the worst paper he had ever written. Nevertheless, he still got an A- for the course. And he found out later that the only reason he got that grade was because it was the lowest grade given out in the class that semester, with most people receiving A's or A+'s. </p>
<p>So here's a guy who by his own admission was poorly motivated, handed in the main paper late, hardly did any of the reading, and was the worst student in the class gradewise, yet still ended up with a very good grade anyway. I remember him saying that every time he thinks about it, he just has to laugh. </p>
<p>What really makes engineering so difficult is the fact that you will be actively and severely punished if you don't put in the proper time and effort. The same cannot be said for other majors, in which you can put in very little work and know very little of what is going on, and yet get good grades anyway.</p>
<p>Just to make sure, class projects, are like one big project where engineering majors have to create objects that function right? It's kind've like architecture or art I guess where guys have to carry around big objects haha.</p>
<p>And do mechanical and civil engineers in particular have projects done in labs? Or does civil have more lab work than projects? Why is Civil considered the easiest? And if you get stuck, that's why you have to get into study groups to get help huh. I was thinking of doing something that I can have more chances of passing, and to gain a set of problem solving skills even if I don't end up in the field, ah well.</p>
<p>Sakky, I completely agree with you. I obviously didn't do a very good job of expanding and articulating my argument :)</p>
<p>sakky hit the nail on the head .... if you fall 2 weeks behind in engineering you pretty much fail the class, whereas in other majors like liberal arts generally stuff doesn't build on itself and you can always pull yourself out of a hole</p>
<p>honestly, engineering majors are the most difficult ones. </p>
<p>To be an engineering mjr, you must be a very math/science inclined person. And for practically all engineering mjrs, this simply isnt enough. Once you meet that requirement, you must then be willing to work long hours on challenging hw, lab reports and proposals to pass the classes. </p>
<p>I would have to agree that ChemE is the hardest major, simply because it has the most breadth out of any other engineering major. Also, chemical engineering is all about big fat long processes, so some of problems take forever to solve.</p>
<p>Every engineering major has their own special difficulty though. In EE, its the circuits, in ChemE, its the long processes, in CS, its the programming.</p>
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And do mechanical and civil engineers in particular have projects done in labs? Or does civil have more lab work than projects? Why is Civil considered the easiest? And if you get stuck, that's why you have to get into study groups to get help huh. I was thinking of doing something that I can have more chances of passing, and to gain a set of problem solving skills even if I don't end up in the field, ah well.
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<p>I'm not sure how you're defining "projects"... but I'll give your question a shot. There's both lab work and projects in civil & mechanical engineering. Sometimes (but not always), you'll be making something... I've built steel bridges and made batches of concrete. There's also some less exciting stuff, such as testing the bearing capacity of soil samples and determining the head losses in pipe flows. Sometimes, these experiments/lab work are tied in with semester projects. Other times, you'll be working on projects that take place only on the computer screen. </p>
<p>I imagine civil engineering is perceived to be the easiest of the 4 traditional disciplines because you don't used high-level math as often as you do in other majors, like chemical engineering. There simply isn't a need to use calculus or differential equations to solve all the problems, even though quite often it is based on advanced math concepts. The precision you get just won't be found in industry, so sometimes we use simplified equations or graphs. Can you really model the properties of soil in an equation very precisely? Of course not; there can be a lot of variation, even in nearby areas. Can you determine the strength of concrete just by knowing how much of each material goes in at the plant? Of course not, because there are so many uncontrollable factors in transit to the pour site, during the pour, and after the pour. </p>
<p>What it all comes down to is that you can control practically everything in the chemical and electrical engineering industries. Lab conditions are carefully monitored and taken care of. In civil engineering, everything you design gets built outside in the elements. This difference is probably why the math is usually simpler, thus making civil engineering easier than chemE and EE. </p>
<p>I'd say chemical engineering is the toughest of the 4 traditional engineering majors, simply because of all the math. I've had chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering roommates (and i'm a civil engineer) and I've seen that the chemEs by far spent the most time doing calculations.</p>
<p>1) Industrial Engineering</p>
<p>j.k. :D</p>
<p>Whats everyones take on Aerospace Engineering?</p>
<p>Why does this argument always persist when we all know its relative....As a computer science major I actually like my programming classes which my other engineering friends would call terrible, however I despised Physics mechanics....</p>
<p>There is no hardest subject.</p>
<p>It is irrelevant to that state everyone is different and has different strengths and weaknesses. There is intellectually hard subject matter. A mathematics degree is hard. A physics degree is hard. An engineering degree is hard. A computer science degree is hard, ad infinitum. An individual's strengths and weaknesses is what makes them easier or harder.</p>