Why do people say that Engineering major is a "GPA killer"?

[sakky]

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How is bringing up a tangentially related subject hitherto undiscussed providing context? Looks like a desperate grab to turn this thread into another of your “engineering is hard, liberal arts is easy, business is evil” threads. Or is that off base?

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<p>Uh, how is it ‘tangentially related’? The title of this thread is “Why do people say that engineering major is a ‘GPA killer’” which naturally implies a relative comparison of the GPA’s in engineering to some other major, almost certainly to HASS. After all, if every major utilized the exact same grade curve, then engineering would not have a reputation as a GPA killer and this thread would never have been born. </p>

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So what if they aren’t particularly challenging in the first place?

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<p>Again, the ‘so what’ is that the differential in grading schemes serves as the entire rationale for this thread. Seems to me that you disagree with the entire premise of this thread. If so, then perhaps you should take it up with the OP. I didn’t create the thread.</p>

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That doesn’t change the fact that students who are majoring in that and succeed are, indeed, prepared for the challenges of the major. You’re only splitting hairs over the difficulty of the challenges, not answering my question: if you succeed at something, you are prepared for the challenge of it.

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<p>Which is merely a tautological statement and doesn’t speak to the concerns of the OP that engineering is a GPA killer. According to your logic, if everybody majoring in Leisure Studies received an A+ and everybody majoring in engineering received an F, then the OP is exactly right to think that engineering is indeed a GPA killer. </p>

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If liberal arts is easier than engineering, that’s another discussion, and frankly I’d rather not get you started on this again.

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<p>Like I said, I didn’t start this thread. </p>

<p>But even if I had, so what? If you don’t like my posts, then don’t read them. What gives you the right to dictate what people can and cannot say on this forum? </p>

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Computer science curricula often give tests in programming courses where they ask you to design an algorithm or piece of code, or to design some sort of language or automaton, which is an inherently creative process. Doing anything more than teaching the syntax and asking students to exercise creativity would be to give them the answer. Consider an example. Problem: write a sorting function in C. Student’s question: how do you want me to write it? Instructor’s answer: that’s your problem. Essentially every assignment in CS is similar: you are taught the syntax and semantics and are required to demonstrate that you can use it to solve problems. Undergraduate mathematics is essentially the same, at least once you get past the calculus/diffy-Q service courses. Those are for engineering majors, anyway.

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<p>And now I see that you’re constraining yourself to only the subset of CS courses that implement a substantial element of design - not dissimilar to design-oriented seniog capstone engineering courses. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, such CS and (yes) math courses represent only a minority of the total undergraduate coursework. Much CS coursework is largely analogous to math coursework, to the point that schools such as MIT actually cross-list CS and math coursework together. Hence, such coursework can be discussed jointly. And the exam grading of those courses generally revolves around proofs (or implementations of 'best-performing ’ algorithms which are analogous to proofs). Unless you happen to be the rare genius who can devise proofs that nobody else had ever thought of, there is generally only one, or at most a handful of methods, to solve each exam question. If you don’t provide one of those methods (and hence, can’t complete the proofs at all), then you fail. </p>

<p>Don’t believe it? Then let’s consider the exams and quizzes of MIT’s ‘Introduction to Algorithms’ course, a foundational course within the CS major that is also cross-listed with math. I see little if any evidence of room for ‘creativity’ involved in devising the solutions to any of these questions. Certainly seems to me that there are no more than a tiny few ways to correctly answer each question, and if you don’t score sufficient points, then you fail. </p>

<p>[MIT</a> OpenCourseWare | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 6.046J Introduction to Algorithms (SMA 5503), Fall 2005 | Exams](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/exams/]MIT”>Exams | Introduction to Algorithms (SMA 5503) | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | MIT OpenCourseWare)</p>