<p>Engineering is not really that hard intellectually. Mathematics and Physics are harder. I guess what makes engineering hard are the long problem sets, the labs, and the course load each semester. If you know how to study effectively and can manage time well then you will do fine.</p>
<p>
That is true of nearly every major. The thing is, you cannot judge a distribution solely by the average and the maximum - the numbers between are pretty darned important.</p>
<p>When I was at PSU (ending 2006), the percentiles of note were approximately:
50%: ~3.00
66%: ~3.25 (Eligible for some honor societies)
75%: ~3.50 (Dean’s List)
88%: ~3.75 (with Distinction)
94%: ~3.87 (High Distinction)
98%: ~3.97 (Highest Distinction)</p>
<p>I have seen the odd number from other big engineering schools that suggest a similar distribution - a little higher or lower, but still a good number of high performers.</p>
<p>
Well, 120 credits over 8 semesters is 15 credits a semester, compared to 140/8=17.5 credits a semester. About a course a term over minimum, but that conveniently ignores a couple of important facts: first that most non-engineering loads are in the 125-130 range, and second that many people outside of engineering take or even are expected to take a minor, somthing that engineers almost never need and are frequently discouraged from taking. My wife was an education major, and I never had a noticably heavier credit load than she did!</p>
<p>My point is that school-to-school variations in grading are substantially larger than major-to-major differences, and that the workload difference is more about the types of students and course content than it is about the number of credits.</p>
<p>
I like honors courses, but not because they will help your applications or resumes - if anything, an honors course is likely to come with a lower grade! Rather, I like that they are generally more challenging and usually teach you more about the subject. But I would be surprised if an adcom cared.</p>
<p>What study methods are people using to achieve such high grades? During my first two years of engineering school, I did well in calculus, physics, and chemistry by doing every problem in the book 2-3 times over. It worked well but was very time consuming. By the time I entered my upper level courses, that technique just didn’t work. The coursed were so abstract and I couldn’t grind them out. But yet, a few people kept acing those courses.</p>
<p>Frugal: DD studied in small groups of friends who took apart sections of problems and would learn their part well enough to describe it, take notes, and copy those notes to each partner. Then each partner would look at notes and study the sections. They would work well into the night for each class. Yes, they were exhausted, frustrated and tired, but that’s the only way they could figure out how to do the upper level coursework.</p>
<p>
Cannot give you precise study methods because everyone studies differently. I got a high GPA and did not think it was tremendously difficult. Someone asked for adive on getting a high GPA in a different thread, and this is what I said:</p>
<p>
Will that get you a high GPA? Maybe not - but it will get you the best GPA you are going to get. The truth is that some people will struggle hard to get a 3.0, and that is fine - you can get good places with a 3.0!</p>
<p>
Understand the problems in terms of concepts and physical events, even if they seem abstract and counter-intuitive. The brain is wired to look for patterns, not data (because there is way too much data in the world - you could spend a lifetime analyzing every last detail of what you see and hear within one second).</p>
<p>Even for something pretty abstract and difficult to understand, you can conceptualize enough. Take fluid flow for instance: [Pipe</a> Bend](<a href=“http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/metal/Sheet-And-Plate-Metal-Work/images/Quarter-Bend-For-Round-Pipes-21.jpg]Pipe”>http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/metal/Sheet-And-Plate-Metal-Work/images/Quarter-Bend-For-Round-Pipes-21.jpg)</p>
![http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/metal/Sheet-And-Plate-Metal-Work/images/Quarter-Bend-For-Round-Pipes-21.jpg]Pipe](http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/metal/Sheet-And-Plate-Metal-Work/images/Quarter-Bend-For-Round-Pipes-21.jpg%5DPipe){kind=link}
<p>I assume you’ve taken a fluids class since most engineers do by year 3. Momentum calculations on a pipe can be pretty messy simply because you can make so many mistakes. But if you just think of it as a fluid being redirected along the path of the piping (so therefore the wall just pushes it as necessary to make that happen), then the correct calculation becomes pretty obvious (the momentum flow is the same as it was before, but now in a different direction). Is this a gross oversimplification? Yes, because fluids don’t exactly follow any pattern that makes sense on a purely intuitive basis. But it’s a useful one.</p>
<p>You can conceptually see anything from intuitive ideas to purely mathematical constructs if you really try. It makes you much better at the subject and it’s not as tedious as anything most people do to succeed. </p>
<p>Obviously YMMV, but from what I have seen this is what people who actually make advancements in science do.</p>
<p>Let me preface my response with the fact that I completed my EE UG degree about 20 years ago. But often, I wonder if I could return to school and succeed in the courses that really challenged me. Being an engineer was nothing like the schooling. Loved being an engineer and it was do much easier. However, I can’t figure out why 3rd and 4th years were so hard in school.</p>
<p>Probably because the material was the most difficult in years 3 and 4.</p>
<p>The other thing I noticed that makes it more difficult is that there is less and less to help you as the material becomes more specialized. If you hit a snag (100% chance you will sooner or later), you’ll have a harder time dealing with it.</p>
<p>“My point is that school-to-school variations in grading are substantially larger than major-to-major differences,” - Agreed…very true…lots of school-to-school variations. </p>
<p>But per my experience and CC threads (acedotal evidence - not a nonscientific polling method), there are lots of VERY bright hs students entering college and adjusting to much lower GPA… and many seem to be engineering students.</p>
<p>Oh man…</p>
<p>Here’s a link that would support the idea, offered by others, that engineering GPA are not lower. It shows CU summary by school. There are also more detailed charts by major for those that are interested.<br>
[url=<a href=“http://www.colorado.edu/pba/records/cumgpa/131/colClass.htm]CU-Boulder”>http://www.colorado.edu/pba/records/cumgpa/131/colClass.htm]CU-Boulder</a> PBA: Cumulative Undergraduate CU GPA - Boulder Campus Total<a href=“Others%20might%20be%20able%20to%20find%20links%20more%20typical%20that%20CU,%20which%20admittedly%20has%20a%20bit%20of%20a%20party%20school%20reputation…especially%20for%20non-STEM%20majors”>/url</a> </p>
<p>I would still maintain that the engineering students are often working harder for those GPAs than some of the other majors.</p>
<p>While the GPA by different schools with CU posted above is interesting, I think it doesn’t really answer the question of if the GPA for an individual would be higher in one school than another, since the people who attend each school are self-selecting. Lots of students start out in engineering and get really bad grades and then transfer to business or arts & sciences and get better grades. If they stayed in engineering, their GPAs would have been much lower, but they didn’t stay, so the average engineering GPAs appear higher.</p>
<p>When I was an engineering undergrad, my business major roommate and I were both in the same economics class. She found it really difficult, and for me it was easy and by far my easiest class (compared to Calc, physics, and EE classes).</p>
<p>If you can approximate engineering students as part of the natural sciences category, then the decade average line comparing humanities to natural sciences on gradeinflation.com shows about a 0.3 GPA gap.</p>
<p>The GPAs in engineering are not as high as in other majors for the simple fact that the curriculum is much more rigorous due to the stress on science and mathematics. Like mathematics classes, engineering classes are usually cumulative, so you need to climb the ladder one rung at a time in order to get to the next level. Homework and tests aren’t designed for you to memorize and regurgitate facts. You need to have a conceptual understanding of the material and know how to apply these concepts in order to succeed. And that is not such an easy thing to do.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, if you are an engineer you are among the best students on campus, regardless of what your GPA is. I major in optical sciences and engineering and minor in mathematics and history. Based on my experience switching between engineering classes and history classes, I can tell you that there is a stark difference in the work required to succeed as well as the rigor of the curriculum. Most of the students in my history classes had near 4.0 GPAs while mine hovered about 3.6. Yet I was able to ace every homework assignment and test at the same standard as these students.</p>
<p>Engineering is a difficult major, but it is very rewarding. If you find a field that you love, it is all worth it.</p>
<p>***Quote NeoDymium:</p>
<p>"You can conceptually see anything from intuitive ideas to purely mathematical constructs if you really try. It makes you much better at the subject and it’s not as tedious as anything most people do to succeed. </p>
<p>Obviously YMMV, but from what I have seen this is what people who actually make advancements in science do." ***</p>
<p>NeoDymium, I read this post of yours with great interest bordering on enlightment. Can you please elabo? Particularly, the first sentence quoted here, did you mean:</p>
<p>“You can conceptually see anything (under the sun) RANGING FROM intuitive ideas to pure math…”</p>
<p>or did you mean “you can conceptually visualize anything from an intuitive idea (the start point) to pure math (the end point)…”</p>
<p>You gave a good example on the pipe bend, but if you can further elab on what it means to conceptually see, that would be great!</p>
<p>
Just try to visualize whatever it is that you’re studying in a way that helps. It’s a much easier way to understand things that doesn’t really involve straight up memorizing.</p>
<p>What I meant is that in every field you study, you can make useful visualizations and associations between concepts like that. If you can make a simple one that works for the type of problem you’re doing (as tested by examples), then you can use that. In math, this usually involves thinking of moving along a function with tangent lines to see what is happening (although there are plenty more ways that you can think of to understand any given concept).</p>
<p>You don’t have to use any specific visualization. Just anything useful.</p>
<p>I think a big part of the problem is how people approach a problem.</p>
<p>In high school, students are used to following a sort of template to solve a problem. They just learn to read the numbers, plug it into formulas to find the missing variable so to speak.</p>
<p>I used to do this in senior year during AP Physics. Because I was so used to solving problems by expecting a set template with steps, I though all I had to do was plug in numbers and find the answer when in reality, it’s not that simple. In short, I learned to plug numbers into formulas but not to apply concepts and the formulas for when there is not a set series of steps to get the answer.</p>
<p>Many high school students get into college thinking that they can solve problems with a certain template of steps but in the real world, especially engineering, where problems are not of the cookie cutter variety, and struggle.</p>
<p>Part of the blame probably lies with the education system. Most classes I’ve had with the exception of AP Physics had very cookie cutter problems. They all had pretty much a single path to the answer and usually, those steps are identical to similar problems of it’s type.</p>
<p>I’m quite certain, however, that college engineering problem sets are nothing of the sort. Problems would require abstract thinking beyond mere comprehension of formulas. To solve those problems would require a true, deep understanding of the concepts and their range of applications to allow one to get to an answer. Simply knowing a formula is useless.</p>
<p>I learn this the hard way during AP Physics but I was not quite able to get around this failure in improper problem approach. Near the end of the year, I would think I understood a concept and a formula but when problems came up involving them, I was never quite able to solve them on my own.</p>
<p>I’ll just have to find a way to properly approach these sorts of problems.</p>