<p>Engineering student here, 3rd year.
Finding my major pretty difficulty (mechanical engineering), getting a little over 3.0 GPA at my university (UC San Diego)</p>
<p>That translates to a B average, but I find that I really am not producing B work since some classes a 65-70 percent on tests/classwork becomes a B-.</p>
<p>Wondering that if I am finding my coursework difficult will whatever my job as a mechanical engineer be even more difficult?</p>
<p>I like engineering and passionate about, but just wondering how job work compares to school work.</p>
<p>I guess it depends on the job, but a lot of people on here seem to act like the university coursework was more difficult than the job it led to.</p>
<p>There are plenty of jobs where the coursework is harder than the job. Probably most jobs. </p>
<p>There are some jobs where the jobs are harder than the coursework. It depends whether you are designing something based on known techniques, or developing new techniques. </p>
<p>Basically, you will graduate with a certain set of capabilities (knowledge of techniques, degree of difficulty of problems that you can solve, etc). If you learned more, that set would be larger. As long as you have the set of capabilities that your job needs, you’d be fine.</p>
<p>Here is the thing, most students in your class are pretty competent people, and you are doing better than average. You may be getting lower grades than you are used to, but your teacher understands that he is writing pretty difficult tests and will curve the grade accordingly. I just finished Solid Mechanics with a 83.5. That 83.5 got me an A. Why? Because the class average was a 65 and the average for the final was a 59. This stuff isn’t supposed to be easy.</p>
<p>College grading scales are not the same as high school grading scales. In high school, where a 70% is the threshold for a C, tests and assignments may have a lot of easy problems to allow students who have an acceptable passing knowledge of material to get the 70% for a C.</p>
<p>But a college test or assignment may have, for example, one ordinary difficulty question that a C student should be able to answer, a harder one that a B student should be able to answer, and an even harder one that an A student should be able to answer. In this case, 33% may produce a C and 67% may produce a B.</p>
<p>How is a 3.0 a B average? On a 4.0 scale isn’t that a 75% or a C?</p>
<p>In regards to your question, I think that if you are passing your classes you should be fine. IMO the coursework should just lay down the foundation for what you need to know. When you get into your job you will learn so much more. It’s important that you have enough understanding that if faced with a certain task at work you will have the ability to find the correct answer not necessarily always have the answer immediately.</p>
<p>Many engineering programs’ classes’ exams are curved when graded, and that curve can be quite extreme. Engineering majors’ curriculum is often harder than liberal arts majors’, and there’s a great deal of objective memorization and calculation paperwork, rather than subjective writing and class discussion grading. First semester can be a difficult transition from HS, but if you figure out how to effectively study and crank out homework, your grades will improve.</p>