Is Electrical Engineering any easier than Mechanical eng. ?

[phy_freak]

I was told that M.E is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, engineering fields, so my question is, is E.E any easier than M.E ?

 

[fss]

If you are looking for something "easy" major in communications. There is no way to meaningfully answer your question.

 

[Travis_King]

I agree with FSS, difficulty of the job varies depending on place of work, type of work, support, and a whole mess of other things. Both can be somewhat simple for an engineer or an experienced tradesman to do, and both can be incredibly complex.

Or are you talking about school?

 

[phy_freak]

yes I mean when you are studying at college, ME has more mathematics which can make it harder than EE.. I don't know that's what heard

 

[Travis_King]

They are different. MechE might have more differential equations, but I doubt it is much harder mathematically. I was AeroE and MechE and I can tell you I did not envy my EE friends. It has more to do with the stuff you are comfortable with.

 

[Applesmack]

yes I mean when you are studying at college, ME has more mathematics which can make it harder than EE.. I don't know that's what heard

Who is the one that told you mech has more math than electrical? The accepted stance is that electrical engineering is the most mathematically intensive program out of all the engineering fields. In the end, it depends on what you like more.

 

[PatrickEE]

I'm starting to think that every engineer thinks his/her field is the hardest.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

Not being an engineer I'd be inclined to think that electrical engineering has the most math. (Except for perhaps engineering physics)

 

[DrummingAtom]

I'm starting to think that every engineer thinks his/her field is the hardest.

Yeah.. The only thing that would make one harder than another is the interest someone has in it. I would fail out of Civil and ChemE because I have zero affinity towards those subjects.

If you want to read 15 page-arguments of which field is hardest go over to College Confidential's forums, those kids (and parents..) love to talk about meaningless topics. Just do what you like and it won't feel like work.

 

[Shaheers]

All of this depends upon ur interest, as if economic makes u bore but math is interesting subject to u, so u relies math as easy subject. . .

However where advanced education involved, all of the stuff is deep and tough. . .

 

[meldraft]

I believe that the overall impression really depends on where you focus your studies after your bachelor.

To give you an example, I am a mechanical engineer with a master in aerospace and focus in numerical optimisation, and my ongoing PhD is in biomechanics and bioelectromagnetism. In my university, mechanical engineering was considered to be the hardest overall, even though electrical engineering was harder to get into. Make no mistake though, if I had studied electrical engineering I'm sure I would have had much more trouble, because I simply like ME much more, and my mind is geared towards these types of problems.

I can tell you that if you choose to go towards any sort of continuum mechanics, there will be a lot of math. Some good examples are fluids, viscoelastic solids, and of course electromagnetics. The same goes for grids, projections and mappings, where you have a lot of tensor calculus. Most of the other stuff I think are easier math-wise, and the problem solving paths are more standarised. However, what ultimately shapes your opinion is how deep YOU choose to into the mathematics and modelling. Often, you can pass a course without having really understood the physics of what it describes (usually attributed to knowledge gaps as to the meaning of the mathematics used).

My overall impression on peoples's perception on this, is that fluids are usually considered to be the hardest. What is hardest to YOU however, depends on how much you like something. For instance, I never failed a course in fluid mechanics, while I failed a lot of times in mechanics, which is considered by a lot of people to be easier :P

Edit: Also keep in mind that a reason that a lot of people consider ME to be the hardest, is because its curriculum usually has a lot of diversity. This pretty much guarantees that more often than not, you may stumble upon things you simply don't like :) This also depends on your faculty of course.