<p>People say Chemical Engineering/Aerospace Engineering are the hardest and Industrial Engineering is the easiest. I’m actually interested in all three because I like chemistry, astronomy, and pure math problems. Is there truly a difference in the difficulty of ChemE/AeroE and IndSysE?</p>
<p>Why would you think everyone is wrong? </p>
<p>Also, if you decide to do Aerospace thinking it’s just Astronomy + a job, you’ll be sadly mistaken. Aerospace Engineering has nothing to do with Astronomy.</p>
<p>There isn’t really a difference in difficulty. It is all relative to the person taking the classes.</p>
<p>yes, there is.</p>
<p>I think IE and Arch E are merged with softer topics business, art. And BME is merged with bio plus a mix of EE/ME so the undergrad curriculum does not have the depth. </p>
<p>But still I don’t think they are easier…because there’s a lot of things to consider; take med school for example, hard as hell right, hard even though they don’t take any advanced topics in physics math …so there’s more to it see.</p>
<p>YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING cyclone10 !!!</p>
<p>ENG. ARch is one of the toughest majors out there</p>
<p>just imagine all the studio workload and none-sleep of an Architecture major plus all the physics ans math of a Engineering Major</p>
<p>that is insane to handle</p>
<p>Individual ability and prejudice counts for a lot more than content in determining difficulty of a subject.</p>
<p>No, there is no inherent difference in difficulty among subjects. Among majors… that’s a harder question to answer. The best answer to that question is “not necessarily”.</p>
<p>I tend to think the harder majors are the ones with the best students. There is varying student quality across engineering majors within schools.</p>
<p>EECS at Berkeley is certainly harder than Mechanical Engineering, etc.</p>
<p>Yes, although it varies between schools. But there is absolutely a difference, especially in the last couple years.</p>
<p>ok let me re-phrase, I would not say one engineering major is necessarily easier than another. There’s several variables that dictate difficulty, the biggest one being the student.</p>
<p>Take a look at the curriculum for all engineering branches across universities in the US. All engineers are required to take Calc I-III, Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations (ok, the majority). What makes ChemE “hard”? The curriculum for ChemE seems to “overload” after the 4th semester; more than likely many people can’t cope with the workload. Other factors may include the strengths of a particular program, faculty, location, etc.</p>
<p>No, the best students are not in the hardest majors. The best students are found in any major they happen to enjoy.</p>
<p>^ +1</p>
<p>Nice post Enginox. I agree pretty closely with all of that.</p>
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<p>Not only do ChemE curricula tend to have more hours than other engineering majors, but they usually include multiple courses in organic and physical chemistry, which are topics with which many non-Chemistry oriented students struggle. By comparison, less students tend to struggle with courses like Economics (as part of an IE curriculum).</p>
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<p>I bet just as many random people would struggle in Electromagnetism or Boundary Layer Stability or some of the other “hard” classes in other engineering majors. This is not isolated to just ChemE, it is really just a matter of what people are good at.</p>
<p>At an individual level, it is all about the topics at which you excel. That’s why you have some people that think Astrophysics is easy and Latin is impossible and vice versa.</p>
<p>However, at a population level, it’s about what the general population generally considers to be easy vs. hard. More people in the general population find economics to be easier than physical chemistry. So the population considers physical chemistry to be more difficult than economics. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you will find that to be the case, but it is the general opinion.</p>
<p>For example, more people find Scarlett Johansson to be attractive than unattractive, so the general population believes that she is attractive. That doesn’t guarantee that any specific person finds her to be attractive, however.</p>
<p>@BanjoHitter: </p>
<p>You are throwing too many generalizations around. If more people in the US found economics to be “easy” more Americans would live within their means. Now, why would people find economics easier that physical chemistry? People practice economics more often than physical chemistry (dollar menu, anyone?); that is simply my observation, though.</p>
<p>Take English. The vast majority of Americans speak English yet many Americans can’t utilize proper grammar in their own native language. I think it comes down to popular perception: somebody gives you information about a subject you are not familiar with and that information is what you will use at first when you initially deal with said subject.</p>
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<p>But economics isn’t even close to relevant here. If you are comparing engineering majors, you can’t take the perceived hardest class from ChemE and compare it to a class that is just required as part of campus general education requirements. You have to compare it to the classes that are equivalent within the other majors, like electromagnetism, boundary layer stability, upper level controls courses, or something like that.</p>
<p>I would say that at a population level, there would be no statistically significant difference between the number of people that find physical chemistry to be hard to the number of people who find stability or magnetism to be hard.</p>
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<p>Two counterpoints: first, “more” doesn’t equate to “most”. If 1% of the population found P-Chem to be easy and 2% found Economics to be easy, you’d still have 98% of the population that thought Economics was difficult while twice as many people with consider Economics to be easier than P-Chem. </p>
<p>Second, the issue with debt is more an issue with immediate gratification vs. delayed gratification. People understand the economics, but they still overvalue immediate gratification. </p>
<p>But that’s getting off-topic.</p>
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<p>I was taking the non-engineering requirements of ChemE (chemistry) and comparing those to the non-engineering requirements of IE (economics). Sure Mass Transport is a more difficult class than O-Chem, but unless you’re a ChemE, you won’t know that. You’ll perceive ChemE’s difficulty based off the chemistry requirements. And we’re talking about perceptions in this case.</p>
<p>My purpose isn’t to claim that one type of engineering is more difficult than another. My point is to explain why the general population perceives one type of engineering as being more difficult than another.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. At my undergraduate Civil Engineering was considered the easiest and chemE was probably the hardest. Where I’m at now industrial is considered the easiest and I’d say EE/CS are considered the hardest. But I may be biased.</p>
<p>Those percentages are still within the margin error ;)</p>
<p>I’ll concede you the points, however. I think the general population will perceive any major with “engineering” in it to be more difficult than economics. If you think about it, the general public probably considers basic algebra to be difficult.</p>
<p>Within engineering students, many probably consider ChemE hard because of the workload.</p>