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<p>Yes, I did study engineering at Berkeley. As far as the social studies and engineering being between sciences and humanities on grade inflation, that was from gradeinflation.com for universities in the US generally (not Berkeley specific). But note that engineering students do take mostly science in lower division.</p>
<p>The Hilfinger 1999 study does indicate that EECS majors’ EE and CS grades were within 0.1 of their overall grades, except that their lower division CS grades were higher than their overall grades.</p>
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<p>Are you saying “easy” in terms of grade inflation, competition, workload, or (lack of) difficulty in understanding and learning the material (for majors’ courses, not the “10” courses for non-majors)? Note that most of the concentrations in the Earth and Planetary Science major do require Math 53 and 54 and Physics 7A and 7B, which are the same lower division courses that engineering majors take. The biology majors get to compete with grade-grubbing pre-meds.</p>