What are the top 3 hardest college majors for average students?

[MarcoD]

We can pretty much rule out a major if a student majoring in that subject can find time to go out partying Sunday night thru Thursday night, taking Friday and Saturday off because those are amateur nights. A major that let's you start partying Thursday night is still a bit breezy; you can find plenty of students in various majors who just can't afford that kind of party time commitment. Engineers: you might see them out the town on Friday and Saturday nights. That's still not hard enough.

You've ever been around PhD students? I didn't make it myself, but after sampling the data from friends around me, it weren't the partying people who didn't make it. Effectively, the most social ones end up with the most prominent careers. It isn't about the hard skills only; at PhD level, you'll need everything for a career, at best in abundance. (Most of the PhDs I know just got stuck in a work-hard/party-hard cycle.)

 

[lisab]

A party-time analysis is needed. I would venture that the amount of time various students can set aside for partying is quite indicative of the difficulties of their majors.

We can pretty much rule out a major if a student majoring in that subject can find time to go out partying Sunday night thru Thursday night, taking Friday and Saturday off because those are amateur nights. A major that let's you start partying Thursday night is still a bit breezy; you can find plenty of students in various majors who just can't afford that kind of party time commitment. Engineers: you might see them out the town on Friday and Saturday nights. That's still not hard enough.

None of you have named the hardest major. The hardest major is that whose students you never see at parties, you never see hanging out with friends, you never see period. In my school, it was architecture students. They crawled out from their nerdy digs once or twice during the course of a semester, then partied like mad once the semester was over.

When I was in college, the heaviest partiers were education majors. I had an education major as a roommate once - she had a class (4 credits!) that required only one project to be turned in: a collage intended for a second-grade class. Yep, she cut pictures out of magazines and made a poster, and got an A for her "effort". But I digress .

And I agree, architecture students had to put in the very long hours.

 

[CheckMate]

Engineering is much harder than any other degree, if harder means heavier courseload .

I'm taking EE and in my university, we don't take math courses in 3rd year but we take a a lot on electrical engineering (math, physics and some design) , we also have to take an engineering economics course and take computer science courses. I have taking a lot of economics courses as electives.

On top of that we have a full year course that involves designing a project in the final year.

It also has to be harder, because it is the only professional undergraduate degree. With an undergraduate degree in engineering, you're much much more attractive in the work field. Where as with physics and math, you have to get a PhD.

 

[Functor97]

You guys do realize that without philosophy there would be no mathematics?

Mind you, i agree that philosophy is a rubbish major, but philosophy is the basis of all rigorous thought.

There have been many mathematicians who have been quite capable philosophers and the converse, which Russell, Leibniz and Godel could attest for.

 

[Dembadon]

You guys do realize that without philosophy there would be no mathematics?

...

Prove it.

 

[Functor97]

Prove it.

 

[Evo]

I agree Good try, if you were serious.

Wittgenstein in his Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939 criticised Principia on various grounds, such as:

It purports to reveal the fundamental basis for arithmetic. However, it is our everyday arithmetical practices such as counting which are fundamental; for if a persistent discrepancy arose between counting and Principia, this would be treated as evidence of an error in Principia (e.g., that Principia did not characterize numbers or addition correctly), not as evidence of an error in everyday counting.
The calculating methods in Principia can only be used in practice with very small numbers. To calculate using large numbers (e.g., billions), the formulae would become too long, and some short-cut method would have to be used, which would no doubt rely on everyday techniques such as counting (or else on non-fundamental and hence questionable methods such as induction). So again Principia depends on everyday techniques, not vice versa.
Wittgenstein did, however, concede that Principia may nonetheless make some aspects of everyday arithmetic clearer.

[edit] Gödel 1944In his 1944 Russell's mathematical logic, Gödel offers a "critical but sympathetic discussion of the logicistic order of ideas"[22]:

"It is to be regretted that this first comprehensive and thorough-going presentation of a mathematical logic and the derivation of mathematics from it [is] so greatly lacking in formal precision in the foundations (contained in *1-*21 of Principia) that it represents in this respect a considerable step backwards as compared with Frege. What is missing, above all, is a precise statement of the syntax of the formalism. Syntactical considerations are omitted even in cases where they are necessary for the cogency of the proofs . . . The matter is especially doubtful for the rule of substitution and of replacing defined symbols by their definiens . . . it is chiefly the rule of substitution which would have to be proved"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica#Wittgenstein_1919.2C_1939

 

[Functor97]

I agree Good try, if you were serious.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica#Wittgenstein_1919.2C_1939

I did not state that we had succeeded in basing mathematics upon logic, merely that our choice of meta mathematical parameters was a philosophical one, or more precisley a dearth of philosophical necessity allowing for the continuation of mathematical reasoning without having the type of discussion we are currently engaging in.

 

[Willowz]

Engineering is much harder than any other degree, if harder means heavier courseload .

I'm taking EE and in my university, we don't take math courses in 3rd year but we take a a lot on electrical engineering (math, physics and some design) , we also have to take an engineering economics course and take computer science courses. I have taking a lot of economics courses as electives.

On top of that we have a full year course that involves designing a project in the final year.

It also has to be harder, because it is the only professional undergraduate degree. With an undergraduate degree in engineering, you're much much more attractive in the work field. Where as with physics and math, you have to get a PhD.

Actually DH pretty much nailed it. In order to do "architecture" you have to already have the sets of knowledge that engineers have, to a certain degree. Not even mentioning synthesising that knowledge into applicability.

 

[gravenewworld]

Embryology is harder than any math class I ever took. God I absolutely hate embryo..

 

[Functor97]

Infact Principas failures do more to vindicate the importance of philosophy in substantiating the mathematical realm than i think many would have liked. It is a shame it failed as it elucidates the fact that the basis of mathematical thought is a philosophical question and thus unanswerable and arguably pointless to discuss. : (

 

[KingNothing]

Infact Principas failures do more to vindicate the importance of philosophy in substantiating the mathematical realm than i think many would have liked. It is a shame it failed as it elucidates the fact that the basis of mathematical thought is a philosophical question and thus unanswerable and arguably pointless to discuss. : (

Are you by chance a philosophy major?

 

[Functor97]

Are you by chance a philosophy major?

No, Mathematics and Physics double major. In my spare time however, i read a lot of mathematical philosophy.

 

[Dembadon]

No, Mathematics and Physics double major. In my spare time however, i read a lot of mathematical philosophy.

emphasis mine

Contradiction!

 

[Proton Soup]

You're all wrong. It goes like this;

1. Communications
2. Art
3. Guitar

thank you, you are the first person in this thread to make me smile. i was just reading the "pure math" responses and thinking to myself "let's approach this from another angle: what would be the top 3 hardest college majors if you were Paul Erdos?"

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

Anything in the exact sciences is a lot harder than let's say humanities.
Philosophy, IN THEORY, is a difficult subject, to be a great philosopher it's hard, to be able to get A's in philosophy school not so much.
You just write anything and as there is no really right or wrong you will get an A.

Yes, when we are kids we learn every field is important and hard(and everybody is equal,everybody is intelligent...), but it's not true at all. Even if you don't like it.

I'm an eng major, I don't really like literature but I know I could do a lot better in literature without studying much at all than in engineering.


Except if you are some kind of savant that can only do math and can't talk to people.

So my list is
Math, Physics, engineering. No particular order.

 

[Char. Limit]

Pure math is easy. Philosophy is easy.

Wanna know a hard major? Physical chemistry. Every person I've ever talked to calls it a nightmare.