Most difficult branch of engineering?

NeoDymium
Sat, 04 Aug 2012 05:17:04 +0000

It varies, but the general consensus is ChemE and EE are the hardest.
ChemE is hardest because you have to master quite a few things. You take a lot of math, physics, and upper level chemistry and you have to learn how to use it for engineering. Really, the major teaches you to do engineering with chemistry on top of that. Paradoxically, you usually end up having to take a few more humanities classes than most engineers. This is because a ChemE is supposed to be both a specialist and a generalist. In some ways, ChemE is the most versatile major. It’s not the most versatile because there’s the most areas a ChemE can work in(that would be MechE), but because ChemEs tend to be the best at being interdisciplinary(hence they’ve been referred to as “universal engineers”). About half of ChemEs work in traditionally non-ChemE fields(biotech, electronics, medicine, law/consulting, finance, large engineering projects), which helps support the “universal engineer” title. Having to learn your field in depth and everyone else’s work to the extent that you can understand it is quite hard. Though it’s often a goal to be both a specialist and generalist, most students fail to become both (You’re not exactly forced to be a generalist, but it’s an implied purpose of the major. Also, some are less than excellent at high-level ChemE courses). However, ChemEs are better than most at this task.

EE (which, IMO, includes NukeE) is about as hard as ChemE, although for entirely different reasons. EEs seldom try to be good generalists, and for that reason, EE tends to have a number of concentrations/specialties (ex: power, telecommunications, AI, specialized electronics such as integrated systems). All of these specialties share a common toolbox. Though this toolbox isn’t very general, the difficulty is in the fact that you really have to know it inside-out. Basically, you have to be quite skilled at various types of math (discrete, continuous, and statistics), E&M Physics, Computer Science, and to a much lesser extent Mechanical physics. Granted, you don’t have to know CS quite like a strong CS major (less focus on design, CS theory, and the like, more focus on high-performance programming such as C++ and Assembly), and you don’t need very much theoretical math, but you have to be able to use all four of these specialized tools effectively to do EE work.

In short: ChemE and EE are the hardest. ChemE because you have to be a specialist and a generalist, and EE because you have to understand a LOT about your specialty.