Difficulty Levels: Comparing Different Fields of Engineering

[danago]

Hey. Not that it will sway which field of engineering i end up deciding to study, but i was just curious, is there any field of engineering which students generally find harder than the others?

Ive heard things about civil engineering generally being a bit easier than the others, but i can't confirm that it was from a reliable source at all.

 

[will.c]

The one you're the least interested in.

I always enjoyed hearing my MechE, AeroE, and EE friends talk about what they were learning and working on. Industrial seems like it isn't too tough, work-wise, but when those guys told me about what they were working on it seemed excruciating.

 

[Mindscrape]

I'd say physics or aerospace, but analog EE can get tricky if you are hardcore about it. But yes, Will is right that if you are not interested in what you are doing it will be very tough to focus and do well.

Civil is the easiest, I'll confirm that. My friend who graduated with his bachelor's in civil said that if they ever showed an integral in class, everyone would freak out.

 

[danago]

Yea that's a good point. I've heard so many people at uni say they are going to do civil engineering because its supposed to be the easiest, but like you say, its not going to be easy if they arent interested in it.

 

[Defennder]

You must be kidding about the integral story. I'm not a CE major but I seriously doubt any engineering field, excluding perhaps biological engineering would have that little maths. For example, the Euler-Bernoulli equation which I'm pretty sure every CE major would have to learn in their first year is a 4th order DE.

 

[Cyrus]

You must be kidding about the integral story. I'm not a CE major but I seriously doubt any engineering field, excluding perhaps biological engineering would have that little maths. For example, the Euler-Bernoulli equation which I'm pretty sure every CE major would have to learn in their first year is a 4th order DE.

Yeah right. Bio engineering is all fluid systems in the body!

 

[f95toli]

It depends on the school and in which country you live.
I studied engineering physics in Sweden (at one of the "better" universities) and that is usually considered to be the hardest MSc engineering program (4.5 years) in Scandinavia. About 50% of the students who started the program finished and got their degree (the year before it was about 30%, many left during the third year which was quite insane).

 

[Astroman]

ChemE is supposed to be really hard from what I hear. I'm AstroE though, so can't confirm this.

 

[Nick M]

From what I hear... (most difficult at top)

Chemical/BioChemical
Electrical/Computer
Mechanical/Industrial
Civil/Environmental

But I think it also comes down to the classes you select as well.
Many of the Senior Environmental Eng. classes at my school merge with the Chemical/BioChemical Eng. curriculum.

I do know that EE requires the most courses in the mathematics department (at my school at least).

Like others said, I think it also comes down to what interests you as well. If you're slogging through hours of work that seems boring to you, it's going to be hard no matter what.

 

[turbo]

I can attest that the work-load in a high-level Chem E program is killer. If you're not really interested in your classes, it's a heck of a grind. You can expect lectures, recitations, and labs in the Chemistry and Physics courses at a minimum, and your mathematics courses will be accelerated to keep your math skills up to the demands of your other science courses.

 

[shamrock5585]

i agree with whoever said that it depends on where you study... i am electromechanical and some of the hardest subjects end up being easier because of, interest for the most part, and because of a teacher that knows what he is talking about and knows how to communicate it. Either way you will have to know a lot of mathematics and physics for electrical or mechanical... but i enjoy them and find them logical so they are not incredibly hard for me... but then you ask me to make some abstract art and i lose my mind haha... its all about interest.

 

[Fearless]

I would say engineering physics at a school that is taking it's programme very seriously. like the elite schools of developed countries.

 

[shamrock5585]

true but not only that... there's a lot of factors... some of the smartest teachers i knew were also the worst teachers... they new exactly what they were talking about and had many patents but had trouble conveying their knowledge!

 

[Fearless]

shamrock5585: Of course. But the best courses are actually the courses which get graded on the fail side of things. That means a normal person fails two or three times and a gifted person doesn't get more than a pass the first time. A engineering degree with only exams like that would really be an elite degree.

 

[Cyrus]

Who the hell cares if one is harder than another? This is such a bullsh!t compairson. Anyone who does not realize this is well...not cut for engineering. Or, more likely, they don't have a clue about anything.

 

[Astronuc]

I tend to agree with Cyrus's last comment.

A degree is hard work - if you want to be the best.

I don't think comparing different engineering disciplines is useful. One needs to find a discipline in which one enjoys and is willing to make a contribution.

The level of rigor will be program dependent, and personally I prefer a rigorous program.

 

[turbo]

The level of rigor will be program dependent, and personally I prefer a rigorous program.

That is key. The Chem E program at the University of Maine was a key feeder program for the Pulp and Paper industry, which was HUGE in Maine in 1970. The program was tough and thorough.

 

[NEERAJRWH]

Dear friends

i have gone througu your replies let me introduce my self i have done my B.TECH,M.TECH in civil engineering and presently pursuing Ph.D in civil engineering , so who believes that civil engineering is the easiest branch, kindly make ur mind set update civil engineering is the oldest and most toughest branch of engineering and it is the only branch which has more than 12 para branches like structural engineering, environmental engineering, water resources engineering, construction management,transportation engineering, geoinformatics,soil mechanics,town planning and housing,valuation,concrete engineering etc.

so its my request that do not under estimate any branch not only civil engineering , all branches are great in their own so please do not insult their greatness by comparing with this little word of hard and easy.

For your knowledge as per experts maximum use of mathematics( caluclus,trignomertry) ,physics, chemistry(in environemntal engineering) is available in civil engineering , one can confirm this...

 

[Klockan3]

You must be kidding about the integral story. I'm not a CE major but I seriously doubt any engineering field, excluding perhaps biological engineering would have that little maths. For example, the Euler-Bernoulli equation which I'm pretty sure every CE major would have to learn in their first year is a 4th order DE.

Nope, they don't necessarily treat the Euler-Bernoulli equation properly, since it is roughly the only piece of higher maths a CE undergrad need they often just teach them how to solve that equation for special cases.

But of course they will have to learn the fundamentals of maths like multi variable calculus etc like all other engineers, it is just that they barely use it in other courses so they get bad at it.

NEERAJRWH, calculus and trigonometry is the bare fundamentals any engineer should know, it is not advanced maths. Also you can't combine all the tough parts of all the branches you can go afterwards since you don't do all of that as a single person and people usually talk about the undergraduate degree when they talk about engineering.

 

[Angry Citizen]

NEERAJRWH, calculus and trigonometry is the bare fundamentals any engineer should know, it is not advanced maths.

To be fair, at my school, I'll only have ODE's and PDE's after the three-course calculus sequence... I'll actually be taking linear algebra just for fun. I'm in aerospace, btw.

 

[Medwell]

I'm not an engineering major, but at my school, Chemical is often considered the most difficult.

Conversely, Industrial/Systems is always considered the easiest. Any engineering major will answer this if asked.

 

[clope023]

Who the hell cares if one is harder than another? This is such a bullsh!t compairson. Anyone who does not realize this is well...not cut for engineering. Or, more likely, they don't have a clue about anything.

engineering majors at my school have a schtik to be weak mathematically by the math and physics majors, some of whome can be pretty elitist, like saying engineers pick up the scraps of the physicist's research and then sell it etc etc, the engineers will look at most theory or math and find it pointless (some engineering professors even say calculus is pointless in the 'real world' but he was an industrial engineer so that's probably why) they all just brush it off since all a big joke on both sides anyway but I they believe it at least a little bit deep down they believe what they say

 

[Angry Citizen]

It's true that engineers don't know as much math as physicists and mathematicians, but as we're in the business of applying their otherwise useless knowledge, perhaps we just pick and choose what's really useful and what's rubbish.

Hey, I could get used to this mini-war...

 

[johnnyies]

Chemical Engineering is notoriously hard for its workload. PChem is the hardest undergraduate class, from what I hear.

 

[thrill3rnit3]

Chemical Engineering is notoriously hard for its workload. PChem is the hardest undergraduate class, from what I hear.

nope, Math 55 is.

 

[johnnyies]

nope, Math 55 is.

that's only @ 1 school :p

 

[ehilge]

I always thought bio-mechanical would be the most difficult with chemical following a close second. I figure the bio-mechEs need to know nearly as much about mechanical engineering as a mechE but also take a healthy dose of biology classes. I've never liked biology much though so my answer is surely a bit biased.

 

[NEERAJRWH]

Dear

I don't say that other engineers are not using trignometry and calculus but my quote and exactly it was not my quote its interantional engineering association's outcome that maximum use of calculus and trignometry is done by Civil engineering at advance level, so i am not taking any undue favour of civil engineering but just conveying the facts i have.

 

[Klockan3]

its interantional engineering association's outcome that maximum use of calculus and trignometry is done by Civil engineering at advance level.

That sounds like an awfully strange study to make, can you link or quote it?

Edit: Also structural engineers uses a great deal of maths, but that is just one discipline within civil. Most in civil do not become structural engineers and you don't make that distinction at undergraduate levels.

 

[cgibs14]

Its hard to say what engineering field is the hardest. it depends on many things. but i got to agree with some of you that said civil is pretty easy. before getting into a school and picking an egineering field i compared the work load of each degree and found that Civil was pretty straight forward. But you would not even have to go as far as finding out what classes you would have to take; Just think about it. Civil engineers deal with designing bridges, buildings, roads. stuff that humans have been making for centuries. while mechanical and Aerospace people are making things that no one would of imagined 100 years ago. A know of at least 10 people who switched to Civil just because they could not handle how far into thermodinamics, physics, etc. they had to go in other fields.

 

[Kevin_Axion]

Nuclear Engineering and Nanoengineering although rarely found in Universities, are very difficult in their own right.

 

[kjohnson]

Who really cares? They are all science related, they just look at different problems from different perspectives. For instance I have my degree in mechanical engineering and took and ME version of thermodynamics, likewise my school also offered physics, metallurgical, and chemical versions of thermodynamics. Each discipline looks at pieces of of the puzzle very differently, but they are all correct. Also you can't really judge how smart a person is based on their major. I've seen people with Phd's that seem to not know basic physics..

I'm sure in any major you can get very in depth. I know in mechanical engineering the math behind solid mechanics and fluid mechanics gets really advanced. I'm talking about "real" solid/fluid mechanics involving tensors,calculus of variations,etc..

 

[aggie85]

Howdy!

I'll be graduating in Dec with my BS in Electrical, and over at A&M we pretty much have the respect of other engineering majors. I know its the most Math and Physics intensive, I started from 3 Calc course, then Diff. Eq., Linear Alg and Vector Calc, than if you choose to do communication courses or DSP than you need a Fourier/Wavelets course and Cryptography. In physics you can get away with mechanics, elec., and modern physics assuming you aren't studying controls(need statics & dynamic) or semiconductors than you need one more physics course.

Not to mention we do need to learn programming, without it we can't really build anything so strap up for c, c++, and Matlab.

My roommates are Chem. and Civil, i am sorry civil is easy! Chem has really really crappy courses like fluids, polymer, or thermodynamic, bleh..

 

[nlsherrill]

Who really cares? They are all science related, they just look at different problems from different perspectives. For instance I have my degree in mechanical engineering and took and ME version of thermodynamics, likewise my school also offered physics, metallurgical, and chemical versions of thermodynamics. Each discipline looks at pieces of of the puzzle very differently, but they are all correct. Also you can't really judge how smart a person is based on their major. I've seen people with Phd's that seem to not know basic physics..

I'm sure in any major you can get very in depth. I know in mechanical engineering the math behind solid mechanics and fluid mechanics gets really advanced. I'm talking about "real" solid/fluid mechanics involving tensors,calculus of variations,etc..

I agree with your post. It always seems like with the "technical" majors, i.e. math, physics, engineering, that its always a contest to see who has the hardest stuff. The truth of the matter is is that ALL of these majors are hard, should be hard, and/or CAN be hard. Some people find chemistry confusing but are able to do differential equations without hardly any effort, and vice versa. Once you get into the "real" courses in science/math/engineering like real analysis, upper level mechanics E&M and Quantum, fluid dynamics, heat transfer etc... all this stuff is difficult for most people, and can't really be generalized to "harder" or "easier"

 

[Klockan3]

If a major takes strictly more of these hard subjects than another then you can say that it is a harder major though.