Most difficult branch of engineering?

boneh3ad
Sat, 04 Aug 2012 13:49:49 +0000

That’s just it. There is no general consensus. The question and answer is as subjective and personal as asking what is the best ice cream flavor. What is hard for one person is not necessarily hard for another. That is the only objective fact.

For example, I found circuits to be absolutely mind boggling at times (at least at the time when I took it 6 years ago), but things like fluid mechanics (another subject often cited as hard) came easy to me. At the same time, I had plenty of friends who could do circuits in their sleep, but fluids was an opaque subject for them.

There simply isn’t a correct answer and it is laughable that so many people think that one exists. More times than not, the answer a person gives is either their own major (to make themself feel good) or the major that they personally have the most trouble with (again, to make themself feel good).

There is no objective measure of the difficulty of a major just like there is no objective measure of the deliciousness of an ice cream flavor.

I would also like to point out that out of all my interaction with various engineers, the only ones I have ever heard claim that ChemE is the hardest are ChemE’s themselves. That isn’t to disparage the degree, but to illustrate that it is not a universally accepted answer as you seem to claim.