<p>.. Not that it's easy, but from reading some of the posts on this forum you'd think that engineering required you to devote your entire life to school work. Calling it tough and brutal, asking about if you have any time to go ball games, join a frat or go out on weekends. Of course there's time for that! Most surveys indicate that engineering students spend less time, in total (homework, in class, labs, etc), than a low-demanding job (40 hours/week) requires, and this without having any "real" obligations besides school. </p>
<p>It is somewhat higher workload than most other majors, but should not be unmanageable.</p>
<p>However, some students make the mistake of scheduling too many high workload courses (those with labs, large term projects, or computer programming assignments) in the same semester. Spreading them out to even the workload, or taking more credits of low workload courses one semester and fewer credits of high workload courses another semester, may be a better method of scheduling.</p>
<p>It probably also depends on which year you’re in. In first year, I had about the same thoughts as you, especially since my school doesn’t accept AP credits and I have seen lots of the material before. This changed in second year.</p>
<p>Now I am in third year of electrical. Out of 4 of 5 days, I have classes and labs from 8:30 till 5:30 with about a 1 or 2 hour spare each day (the final day still has class till 2:30). I am now in the midterm months and also have many projects due as well, so I am quite busy after being burnt out from being in school all day. There’s lots of studying to be done late in the evening and during the weekends, and if you want to get involved with any school group at all… you’re going to be doing work at almost every moment.</p>
<p>I would say my third year right now is probably tougher than a full time job.</p>
<p>It can be difficult…but I wouldn’t say hard if the student is prepared. What’s difficult is putting the time in to actually learn the concepts, not just turn in assignments for a letter grade.</p>
<p>I would like to know what school the OP goes to if they are studying engineering.</p>
<p>Engineering is much more difficult for some people than for others, depending on whether intuitive math/science type problem solving comes easily to them or not. Similarly, playing a musical instrument comes easier to some people than others, or learning foreign languages, etc.</p>
<p>I do not think that engineering is really THAT hard… the problem is that most people do not have talents and interests in the relevant areas, but pursue engineering anyway for other reasons. The hard sciences are certainly (to me) as least as hard as engineering, but you don’t hear complaints about it because relatively few people go into physics for the money, as a backup plan, or because it could be a stepping stone. Engineering gets all of that, and it is (in my opinion) THESE people that struggle and fail and complain about how hard engineering is.</p>
<p>You must be kidding yourself if you think ANY student has no real obligation besides school.
It’s possible to spend less than 40 hours a week on school. But those that are capable enough to succeed with less are not the ones that would complain in the first place.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter who thinks engineering is hard and who wants to “beat their chest” to say it isn’t. At the end of the day, the grad who thought engineering was not that hard is sitting right next to the grad who had to take 5 or 6 years to graduate…at company X.</p>
<p>Engineering is hard for some and easy for others. There is also a tendency to put weed out courses up front, which usually knocks off at least a quarter of your cohorts in the first year. Once you get into your sophomore standing it tends to lighten up and information becomes more relevant to your interests.</p>
<p>I’m going to school in Norway, a 5 year bachelor + masters degree in petroleum engineering at the University of Stavanger. Currently I’m an exchange student at UT-Austin.</p>
<p>As a professional engineering student for a decade and a half I’ll chime in. I have studied engineering in Europe (in a little country called Elbonia :)) and in the US. Engineering is difficult in the US for a few reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li>it seems to attract a lot of ‘it pays well therefore I should study it’ people</li>
<li>it seems to attract lots of good students overall, raising the competition </li>
<li>base grade for passing here is 80%, a B, while in a lot of places in Europe a passing grade is a lot lower</li>
<li>people may not be as obsessed with grades outside the US</li>
<li>weed-out mentality of many US university engineering programs</li>
<li>success in Engineering school is largely a factor of success in non-engineering or weedout classes like Calc, Physics, and the like. Get past those, learn the material, and in general you’re home free</li>
<li>additional stress from having to worry about tuition - a lot less stressful if you don’t</li>
</ul>
<p>Engineering is not the only major that requires long hours. My older daughter is studying architecture and she spends more hours per week in class and working on projects than I ever did in engineering…</p>
<p>Engineering is a tough major, but not the only one that is tough.</p>
<p>In a typical engineering program, you do the basic math and phsyics your freshman year, basic engineering principles your sophomore year. Both of these years contain quite a bit of new material to master and usually quickly. You can view some of this as “weeding out” classes but they are only really trting to get you prepared to start using that knowledge to do “engineering”. Junior and senior years typically start to focus on using that knowledge gained to now solve engineering problems.</p>
<p>As a engineering manager (now retired) I would place more emphasis on how a person perfromed in college in their junior and senior years. A lot of times you would get applicants whose GPAs were tending upward as they progressed thru college. That would signal to me that they “got it” and were ready to become a professional engineer. Most students I talked to would also enjoy those upper class years in college (as I did) as it was more fun applying the knowledge they learned rather than the painful process of acquiring it.</p>
<p>So, what makes engineering appear tough is that freshman/sophomore years.</p>
<p>I don’t care what people say, Engineering is very demanding. I have a degree in Economics, which some consider a “hard major”. I am 35 years old, have been around the block and now I am doing a second B.S in Industrial Engineering. </p>
<p>Even though IE is not one of the hardest Engineering majors, we still have to take Calc I, II, III and Differential Equations, Classical Physics I and II, Thermodynamics, Statics, etc</p>
<p>Anybody who claims that any of these courses listed above are easy is a LIAR. They are not exactly “rocket science” but like in the case of Calculus, it takes a LOT of practice and time spent to master the subject.</p>
<p>I have literally spent entire days at the library studying for a Calculus I and II exam, most “normal” courses don’t demand this much effort and time spent.</p>
<p>Really, saying that a class is considered very hard because it is more time consuming for some individuals COULD be said about any class.</p>
<p>For example, I’m taking this algebra/trig based physics course with a lab. I go home, read the chapter(s), do the problems, go back in, do the lab with my group (which I have to lead because no one else gets it), get a 100%, take the test, and score over a 100%. Everyone else does just as much as I do, if not way more (Several people say they spend countless hours reading and practicing and getting tutored), yet I’m the only one out of 20 who seems to really get it with minimal effort. Because of that, two things have happened over the course of years, and including my class: Both the class AND my professor have been rated as difficult and unfair. In fact, some people have left horrible comments about this professor on RMP. Personally, I like him. We’ve talked quite a bit via email, and several times outside of class, and he’s referring me for a tutor position at the school.</p>
<p>Yes, Calculus may have a higher ratio of THOSE WHO SPEND A LOT OF TIME TO GET IT to THOSE WHO SPEND SMALL AMOUNTS OF TIME AND STILL GET IT, but there exists those people who just excel almost naturally (and of course all of those in betweeners). And because of that, it’s relative.</p>
<p>Again, I think it applies to almost all (if not all) classes, especially those that I consider “stepping stone” courses, where you’re building knowledge on the base of previously gained knowledge.</p>