I am tired about hearing how easy IOE is. I especially enjoy hearing it from students who have never taken an IOE class before.
Here is some information from this year’s CoE Engineering Graduation Booklet:
Number of IOE students who graduated (Spring 2015) with Summa Cum Laude: 19
Number of CSE students who graduated (Spring 2015) with Summa Cum Laude: 41
I did not count how many students graduated from CSE or IOE. It appears that more graduated from the CSE department. However, the number of CSE grads was not more than 2x the number of IOE grads.
If IOE is so easy, why was there a larger proportion of CSE students who graduated with Summa Cum Laude? Why were there more than 2x the number of CSE students with Summa Cum Laude compared to IOE?
I am not saying this information makes IOE more difficult than CSE. I am just pointing out that IOE is not as easy as everyone claims. Some people make it seem like everyone gets an A without doing anything.
Yes it is. There are facts and opinions. Simply saying one major is more difficult than another is an opinion. Stating that a specific number of people who graduated Summa Cum Laude is a fact.
How is my reasoning perpetuating the stereotypes of IOE students?
if you actually think that there is not a significant difference between the academic abilities of the CSE/IOE undergrad populations as a whole, you are delusional. if that’s the case, nothing i can say here will convince you otherwise.
your post demonstrates poor reasoning, which aligns with the stereotype of IOE students being dumb.
You have not listed a single fact. You haven’t explained anything.
“if you actually think that there is not a significant difference between the academic abilities of the CSE/IOE undergrad populations as a whole, you are delusional. if that’s the case, nothing i can say here will convince you otherwise.”
Where’s the proof?
When you apply to U-M (for engineering), you apply to the College of Engineering. You do not apply to a particular department. So you’re telling me that the best engineering admits end up doing CSE and the worse end up doing IOE?
It’s one thing for you to think that one group of students is smarter. However, for you to say that there are “significant” differences in academic abilities is ridiculous. If there was some academic showdown that was major neutral, I doubt CSE would significantly whoop IOE. One group would win, but I doubt it would be by a significant margin.
What is wrong with my reasoning?
Look, I said that the information I provided above does not necessarily make IOE harder than CSE. I am just pointing out that more CSE students graduated with Summa Cum Laude. IOE is not as “easy” as people claim it is. People give the impression that everyone gets an A in every class, which I clearly pointed out is not the case.
You are using one year of data with limited samples. I’m not sure you can make a definite conclusion with only this information.
I admire your effort to break the stereotype against IOE students, but you are being very defensive, which I don’t think will help others have a better impression of the IOE students. In any case, IOE is a fine major to pursue.
Number of IOE students who graduated (Spring 2015) with Summa Cum Laude: 19
Number of CSE students who graduated (Spring 2015) with Summa Cum Laude: 41
Have you checked out the demographics of the IOE vs the CSE students?
I literally majored in both IOE and CSE and I can confirm that IOE is easier.
I’m sure that there could be some test that could determine by some reasonable definition of “harder” which is indeed harder. Since no such test has been conducted as far as I know it’s hard for me to defend my position with anything more than “I did both and I say so” but you can take my experience as indicative as what you would experience or not.
For what it’s worth I wasn’t Summa Cum Laude (though I wasn’t too far off) but Nubs was.
I’m not suggesting that CSE/IOE necessarily have the best/worst engineering students, but that in general, there is a significant difference in the student bodies as a whole. To clarify, when I say significant, I don’t mean it in the colloquial sense, but rather that the difference isn’t just due to random chance.
As for your reasoning, you can’t just compare CSE/IOE GPAs at face value. You’re making inherent assumptions that the courses are similar in difficulty and that the student bodies have the same academic abilities.
As others may have stated previously, there is obviously no way to prove my claim since there is lack of meaningful data. One argument that I would pose, is that you often hear about people starting out in CSE and eventually dropping out due to course difficulty. I’ve never heard similar cases in IOE. Can you honestly argue that any undergrad IOE courses are truly difficult? In particular, I doubt you believe that any required (core) IOE course is comparable in difficulty to something like EECS 281, which every CS student takes.
I don’t think anyone believes any of the undergrad IOE courses are conceptually difficult. It may not always be easy to get an A, depending on the instructor, though.
I’d say that 366 is a bit conceptually difficult, but you don’t really have to understand it to do well enough in the class. The test is basically template problems that you memorize how to solve. Beyond that, probably the class with the most hours put in to get an A I’d say is 333.
IOE 447 was the hardest class. The material itself was not that complicated. However, the exams were ridiculous.
Before taking IOE 447, I thought I read on CC that IOE 447 was easy. This class was NOT IO-Easy. At the end of the course, the instructor released a grade sheet that had each student’s grade. Here was the grade distribution for my term:
Students with an A or A+: 1
Students with an A-: 4
Students with an B+: 5
Students with an B: 5
Students with an B-: 12
Students with an C+: 1
Students with an C: 4
Students with an C-: 2
What makes this course difficult is that the class is curved.
For instance, I think a friend showed me an announcement for one semester in which a grade in the 80s was below a B-. I also believe I heard someone say she had a 94% and that was a B+.