<p>Based on subject matter, how would you rank EE, ME, Civil, Computer Engineering, CS, Math, Physics, and Statistics?</p>
<p>How about overall, based on workload?</p>
<p>Hmm I would have to say electrical engineering, the concepts are hard to grasp compared to most other subjects.</p>
<p>It depends what you mean by "hard." You can kind of split the majors by aptitude and effort required, like so (Majors in each category are listed in no particular order, but categories are ranked in approximate order of the likelihood that your average Joe can succeed in them).</p>
<p>Group A: Majors that are inherently difficult to some extent</p>
<p>1.Majors/subfields requiring massive amounts of sheer concentrated aptitude (amount of work depends on the individual):
Abstract Math
Theoretical or Mathematical Physics
Astronomy (most varieties housed in physics departments)
Music Performance or Theory
To a lesser extent, other performance fields like drama and dance, if you actually want to be good at them</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Majors/subfields requiring large amounts of concentrated aptitude and massive amounts of work:
Applied Math
Engineering Physics
Electrical Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Nuclear Engineering
Computer Science or Engineering
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Architecture</p></li>
<li><p>Majors/subfields requiring significant general aptitude and massive amounts of work:
All other engineering
Accounting
Geophysics, physical oceanography</p></li>
<li><p>Majors/subfields requiring large amounts of general aptitude and significant amounts of work:
Biology, microbiology, botany, and zoology
Environmental, resource, and earth sciences
Oceanography and atmospheric science
Computational, semantic, syntactic, and psycholinguistics</p></li>
<li><p>Majors requiring significant aptitude, significant work, or both:
Foreign languages
Phonology, hearing, and speech sciences
Economics
Statistics
Psychology
Music, math, or science education
History
English</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Group B: Majors that practically anyone can pass, but which nonetheless include ideas of significant intellectual interest:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Majors in which students with high aptitude can distinguish themselves:
Art
Anthropology
Women's Studies
Philosophy</p></li>
<li><p>Majors in which students with strong work ethics can distinguish themselves:
Area/regional or international studies
Political science
Humanities (general)
Elementary education, middle/secondary education other than music/math/science
Sociology</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Group C: Fields where no amount of intelligence or work will give any student a particular advantage, and where the primary goal of the degree is to make connections, fill out one's resume, and/or screw around for four years without making one's parents upset:
Business
Communication
Most interdisciplinary or self-directed humanities/social science programs
Anything with the word "Comparative"</p>
<p>I left out pre-professional and specialized programs as these vary significantly between universities and should generally be placed in the same category as their nearest sibling department - for instance, pre-med can usually be filed under either biology or bioengineering, and pre-law usually fits neatly into either history or political science.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Majors/subfields requiring large amounts of concentrated aptitude and massive amounts of work:
Applied Math
Engineering Physics
Electrical Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Nuclear Engineering
Computer Science or Engineering
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Architecture</p></li>
<li><p>Majors/subfields requiring significant general aptitude and massive amounts of work:
All other engineering - Including MechEng & CivEng? Better to move those two to category 2 and replace them with CS.
Accounting
Geophysics, physical oceanography</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Who made that list?</p>
<p>
[quote]
2. Majors/subfields requiring large amounts of concentrated aptitude and massive amounts of work:
Applied Math
Engineering Physics
Electrical Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Nuclear Engineering
Computer Science or Engineering
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Architecture</p>
<ol>
<li>Majors/subfields requiring significant general aptitude and massive amounts of work:
All other engineering
Accounting
Geophysics, physical oceanography
[/quote]
I've seen very few arguments saying Biochem & Chemistry is harder than Aeronautical Engineering or Mechnical engineering - from a work or intelligence standpoint. It would be nice if you could further expand on this issue and how you got to this conclusion.</li>
</ol>
<p>"I've seen very few arguments saying Biochem & Chemistry is harder than Aeronautical Engineering or Mechnical engineering - from a work or intelligence standpoint. It would be nice if you could further expand on this issue and how you got to this conclusion."</p>
<p>Agreed, beyond that I think the list is wrong across the board and the entire concept is elitist and unguided.</p>
<p>Abstract math higher than applied math? What sort of nitpicky bs is that, get a life</p>
<p>Yeah, I typically just throw in my opinion that it's all variable and leave these threads alone. Honestly, all fields can become insanely difficult when you reach the pinnacle of the field, and all the disciplines of engineering and physics and things along those lines start to meld at the upper levels of the disciplines.</p>
<p>One of my best friends is a theoretical physicist. I once had a tenuous grasp of what she used to study in grad school, but then something shiny passed by and I got distracted... At any rate, when we were both in grad school, we once roadtripped from Chicago to Boston for a friend's wedding. In and around stealing things from Denny's across the nation and listening to way too much Cake, we got to talking about our courses. She told me about her toughest course that she was taking that semester, the one that was totally kicking her butt. It started to sound really familiar... The terminology was a little different, but it was the EXACT SAME CLASS as the one that was kicking my <em>own</em> butt in civil engineering grad school... The very same civil engineering discipline that apparently doesn't require large amounts of concentrated aptitude, apparently. How 'bout that. Kind of odd that my friend's <em>massive</em> amount of sheer concentrated aptitude didn't help her breeze through that course any better than I did...</p>
<p>All majors are hard. Pick what you enjoy, and don't worry about the difficulty of it all too much.</p>
<p>That's all well and good aibarr, but everyone knows that we can rank everyone's intelligence based on their major. If you're not an EE with a physics minor, heading on to get an MBA, and then going into investment banking, I don't really consider you a college grad</p>
<p>What about the actuarial science major?</p>
<p>It's the specialized major for those who want to be an actuary</p>
<p>I've noticed nobody mentioned it so I'm curious as to what you think</p>
<p>Here's a sample schedule if you scroll to the middle</p>
<p>Students</a> at Smeal<strong>></strong>Actuarial Science</p>
<p>Classes include risk/insurance, life contingencies, compound interest, probability, life insurance, private pensions, etc. </p>
<p>How difficult are these classes?</p>
<p>How would you compare it to engineering, CS, physics, pure math, statistics in terms of difficulty?</p>
<p>Thanks a lot</p>
<p>Dear All,</p>
<p>1- Engineering is typically more cookbook style than physics and math. Math majors take the more theoretical, rigorous and challenging math with proofs and all sorts of abstract craziness, so I'd definitely say their work is much harder than an engineer's typical problem solving and applied math with barely goes into "real" math. In physical sciences, math is definitely harder than it is in engineering (and it makes sense, we need more of it than engineers do) in the sense that it's both applications and theoretical stuff (limiting cases, etc.) than just solving differential equations, although it's not as bad as what math majors are getting. While I acknowledge that engineering is pretty hard, it is also true that profs typically provide students with all the information they need to know, but again it depends on the faculty and prof/class (it's not uncommon to have the students figure out everything on their own either!). In physics, almost always much of the stuff is being thrown at the student at some fraction of the speed of light (excuse my geekiness) and the student is not only being expected to learn it all but is also expected to find extra crucial information and much of the time figure out the math on his/her own, too. Also, it is not uncommon that a mathematical method (say, complex variables) that hasn't been learned officially yet by the students is expected to be employed in a class like, say, Signal Processing and Circuits (I know it's not a big deal of complex there, but this is just an example). In those cases, one has to learn those as well as what's being presented.
2- As per course load, it is plainly WRONG to say that science workload barely goes further than weekly assignments and occasional lab reports. The "occasional" lab reports (on average two of them in a week in a regular semester accompanied by on average five written assignments that each take a good 4-5 hours at least), especially the first year ones, take roughly 15-20 hours on average a week and are CRAZY.
3- Design projects do take ****loads of time, but so do writing papers.
4- In the end, the ordering and course load mainly depends on the school and what its strong departments are. I would say:
-Electrical/Computer Eng./Math/Architecture/Physics/Mech Eng/Materials Eng/Chem Eng./Chemistry/ Immunology/ Genetics etc.
are pretty much all the same granted you care about your grades.</p>
<p>From what I hear, acturial scientists can only dream of having the mathematical background of an engineer or someone who studied physics, math or CS.
Looking at the link you posted, the classes seem around the level of an economics program.</p>
<p>Your PROFESSOR is the hardest major!!!
Seriously, anything can be made as hard as you want but a lot depends on your professors. One of my design courses is harder than anything I've taken before.
Other than that, I think that math is the hardest major in terms of concepts and theory... mathematicians are truly something else. Second would probably be physics, once it gets up there to upper-div and on.
Engineering is the toughest in terms of a combination of work-load and concepts. ChemE and EE tend to be harder (because they involve more math and physics).</p>
<p>I think good physics students really understand the theory, and know what's going on. Otherwise, they would be screwed in their courses.</p>
<p>Sometimes, good engineering students know how to get answers, but can get by with some holes in understanding.</p>
<p>Math majors are somewhere in between.</p>
<p>please do not diminish the workload of an actuarial student
have you seen the pass/fail rate on actuarial exams</p>
<p>electrifice brings up a god point as well</p>
<p>Where do you guys think CivE falls in all of this??</p>
<p>
[quote]
Where do you guys think CivE falls in all of this??
[/quote]
</p>
<p>SUPER INCREDIBLY HARD.</p>
<p>Yeah, just kidding. Civil runs the gambit, actually. There are easier subdisciplines within the major and there are much harder ones. General civil engineering degrees cover most of the subdisciplines, so whether civ's easier or harder depends upon what subdiscipline you end up concentrating in.</p>
<p>thenyse,</p>
<p>I've seen numerous threads on this subject and EE/ChemE have been consistently named the most demanding (time-consuming) majors by posters. It's certainly the case for the two schools I went for undergrad -- WashU and Northwestern. So I don't agree they "are pretty much all the same". That said, I agree with the rest of your post.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Civil runs the gambit, actually. There are easier subdisciplines within the major and there are much harder ones.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Would you mind ranking them?</p>
<p>Some of the subdisciplines within civil engineering are tougher than other majors and some are easier. During my undergrad, I spent all of my upper division electives on geotechnical and structural engineering courses, but my graduate studies was in construction engineering and management, and I worked in traffic engineering for 1.5 years, so I've had a bit of exposure to the various subdisciplines. </p>
<p>Construction management is probably the easiest field within civil engineering, and probably in engineering in general. Construction <em>engineering</em> is really just geotechnical and structural engineering applied to temporary structures though, so that is tougher, but still not on the same level as geotech and structural. I remember spending entire days on a single problem for a construction engineering class, even though the question appeared pretty simple. It ended up taking me 20+ pages to finish... On a side note, I have no idea why civil engineering reports tend to be so long. For semester projects, they frequently end up running into the hundreds of pages. </p>
<p>Construction in practice is much tougher than it is in academia though. For one thing, in real life, nothing goes right, and there are so many more unknown factors beyond your control. In academia, the professor tells you to create a schedule with the critical path method and you do it by the books... simple as that. In real life, you have a million people yelling at you from all directions about why the schedule should be different because it's so unfair to them. Understanding the concept is not difficult, but implementing it can be.</p>
<p>Also, in practice, you end up dealing a lot with mechanical engineering and electrical engineering as well, which are some things that civEs have very little, if any exposure to. </p>
<p>So... ranking them, I'd say...</p>
<p>1-2. Structural and geotechnical, not necessarily in that order
3-5. Water resources, environmental, traffic, not necessarily in that order
6. Construction engineering and management.</p>
<p>EDIT: Concerning construction management, it can be tough if you can't read between the lines, can't infer things, can't think critically, or don't have any of the soft skills business people have tend to have.</p>