<p>None, but I know people who have been to graduate school in engineering at UCLA, Cal, and Stanford. I also know people in other Ph.D programs at top schools. I have also checked out the requirements of these schools and engineering have to take the fewest number of units.</p>
<p>Also engineering isn't as hard as engineers would have you think. I have taken courses in C, C++, and Algorithm, and found them easier than many of major courses. I am a non engineering/cs major.</p>
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Also engineering isn't as hard as engineers would have you think. I have taken courses in C, C++, and Algorithm, and found them easier than many of major courses. I am a non engineering/cs major.
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If you are coming from another technical major, it's not hard to believe. However, engineering can (and is) difficult for other reasons - heavier workload (credit wise), time consuming projects, etc. At my school some classes are very hard, where at a similar school they might be considered easy, and vice versa. Departments usually assign certain professors to teach certain classes which can influence difficulty and even reputations of certain classes (and certainly reputations of professors).</p>
<p>I will admit though at the undergraduate level engineers seem to have a ton of major courses they are required to take. I am stat major with a math minor, and even with my minor I only have 120 out 180 quarter units for my major+minor. CS here have about 120 out 180 units in their major, but all of the engineers here have about 170+ units. So they have almost no freedom in what classes to take. It also makes adding a minor very difficult, and a double major almost impossible.</p>
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I will admit though at the undergraduate level engineers seem to have a ton of major courses they are required to take. I am stat major with a math minor, and even with my minor I only have 120 out 180 quarter units for my major+minor. CS here have about 120 out 180 units in their major, but all of the engineers here have about 170+ units. So they have almost no freedom in what classes to take. It also makes adding a minor very difficult, and a double major almost impossible.
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<p>Mistake most engineers here have 140+ not 170+ restricted units. </p>
<p>I am not including GEs.</p>
<p>At some schools, the graduate courses in engineering are nothing more than "graduate versions" of courses already taken as an undergrad.</p>
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At the graduate level, engineers tend to take fewer classes than other majors, and they don't tend to be as math or science intensive.
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None, but I know people who have been to graduate school in engineering at UCLA, Cal, and Stanford. I also know people in other Ph.D programs at top schools. I have also checked out the requirements of these schools and engineering have to take the fewest number of units.
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<p>Yeah, but this is rather irrelevant particularly when you're talking about the PhD. Few PhD students of any discipline get tripped up by the coursework. Coursework isn't the real objective anyway. What people get tripped up on is that they either can't or don't want to do the PhD thesis. </p>
<p>Personally, I think all classes for PhD students should be P/NP. The point of classes is not really to get a high grade. The point is to teach you something that will help you write your thesis. Grades are only a minor factor in determining whether you will get hired for a post-PhD research position anyway - the most important thing will be the quality of your thesis, and second will be the recommendations of your advisors. Grades run a distant third. </p>
<p>What tends to trip up PhD level engineers, if anything, is that they know full well that they can get a decent job without finishing. Either that, or they can, in many cases, start a tech company with what they know. That's what the Google guys did - they dropped out of Stanford to convert their research project into a company and it evidently worked out extremely well for them. </p>
<p>So the biggest problem that PhD engineering students have to face is that they know that they don't "really" have to finish - that they have a perfectly acceptable alternative career path. In contrast, in other degrees (like, say, Art History), you really don't have much choice but to continue to the bitter end. Furthermore, let's face it, the doctoral stipend you get is not far off from what you could make out in the working world with an Art History degree. So, heck, might as well stay in school until you finish the PhD or the stipend runs out.</p>
<p>What about at the master level, even there engineers have it easier than most other majors. They have fewer units to take, and their classes aren't as intensive.</p>
<p>No, no.... The classes <em>are</em> as intensive. They definitely were at UIUC, at least... Fewer units to take, but they're <em>all</em> hard-core engineering. You're just supposed to be able to handle them all, once you get to the graduate level.</p>
<p>Surely you read phdcomics.com! It's not <em>just</em> UIUC...!</p>
<p>engineering is hard because engineers are whiners.</p>
<p>Aw pebbles...I've heard my fair share of whining from friends in the Physics for Premeds course ;).</p>
<p>Or... maybe engineers are whiners because engineering is hard.</p>
<p>Chicken, or egg? Why is this forum pink?</p>
<p>It is a mystery...!</p>
<p>lol, physics for Premeds. physics-for-people-who-hate-physics.</p>
<p>chicken!</p>
<p>Physics for pre-med? lol, that reminds me of Calculus for the Social Sciences. Such dumb down courses are pointless.</p>
<p>Grades do matter in Ph.D programs too. Most schools require you maintain atleast a 3.0 to stay in. Getting a Bellow a 3.5 in a Ph.D program is considure terrible.</p>
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Such dumb down courses are pointless.
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<p>But required for the MCATs!</p>