<p>I say electrical and computer engineering is the most academically intense in terms of:</p>
<p>(1) time committment/workload
(2) intellectually challenging
(3) demands the highest level of rare skills, especially an uncommon level of math skill
(4) most pressure/deadlines
(5) competing against highly motivated, brilliant students (curve breakers)
(6) hardest problem-solving
(7) most competition from international students, not just USA
(8) level of complexity
(9) understanding at both the micro level of tiny subatomic details and at the macro level of global economics, teamwork, etc.
(10) no BS-ing, it is either right or wrong
(11) no time for coasting
(12) work gets harder from freshman to senior, not easier</p>
<p>What else could involve so much pressure, pain, frustration, and sleeplessness…for four years?</p>
<p>I would say mathematics or any science related field (w/ some exceptions of course), though level of difficult and intensity varies form person to person, so it’s just how each person handles it.</p>
<p>People definitely give too much credit to science majors. Yes, science majors are difficult. But at the same time, they’re just memorization of a pre-existing body of knowledge. Who needs to actually major in science if they have a photographic memory?</p>
<p>The liberal arts majors are actually thoughtful. Yes, it’s possible to bs your work in some subpar classes. But I imagine that studying literature in a top university is very, very intensive. And what about those who major in things like Chinese without prior knowledge? That’s definitely difficult.</p>
<p>Most of my physics classes actually require no memorization at all: in fact you get all the equations on the final! Science is, at its finest, a subject in which you are given a problem out of nowhere and you just solve the problem best you can. Plus if you want to be a scientist you’d be pretty horrible if you just “memorized a pre-existing body of knowledge” now, wouldn’t you?</p>
<p>I realize this isn’t the case in many bio or chem classes, organic chemistry being a prime example, but the point of something like organic chemistry class is to get you to talk a language, of sorts, and you can’t do that without learning vocabulary somewhere.</p>
<p>Stargirl, you make sense, but only assuming that we’re talking math and science in its purest form (“a subject in which you are given a problem out of nowhere and you just solve the problem best you can”). And seeing as students rarely do scientific sort of research as an undergraduate, I’m not going to count research types of things. In its “purest form” – “easy” things become difficult. You might say Photography is an easy major, but not when the photographs you’re taking are extraordinary, that Journalism is an easy major, but not when there aren’t many stories to be found, that Creative Writing is an easy major, but not when you have to actually write a tight story with relevant, engaging characters and prose.</p>
<p>I’d say it varies from person to person. I mean, I’d say engineering, because I struggle with math. But I’m sure there are people who are amazing at math and would say history or english is very hard.</p>
<p>yougotjohn- I wasn’t even thinking about research when I said my opinions, actually, I was thinking about how different my physics final was last week compared to the history one. They were both at advanced levels and I’d studied a lot for, but guess which one was the completely insane one asking for problems that we hadn’t done before? I promise it wasn’t the history one…</p>
<p>Here’s also an interesting bit of food for thought, which is relatively famous in academia. Say the humanities departments of a university were completely destroyed and the science/engineering/etc departments were all that survived. After a few months those departments would be able to cobble together a humanities program: one that would have gaps in it, unquestionably, but it would definetely be doable.
Now say the same thing happened but the reverse: the sciences were wiped out, and the humanities departments would be left to scrap together those departments. Do you think there is any way some sort of program could be possible beyond the most basic courses, or at least one that would be better than the humanities program the science departments throw together? By and far the answer would be no, and if you answered differently I really want to come visit your university!</p>
<p>Edit to add: the above isn’t supposed to be elitist or anything, it’s just a general observation of how science people are by and large far more literate of other fields than vice versa, and its implications.</p>
<p>No, no, I agree with you. But I think that’s just because liberal arts and humanities are more internalized, more natural. It is possible to write a book about English lit without having read one book by an American author. But I don’t think it’s possible to have write a book about biology without knowing anything about chemistry.</p>
<p>And that’s what I was going for here tying back to the origional question: all in all if all things were equal, the subject that requires you to have the most breadth is probably the most difficult as you have to be good at a great many number of things instead of just one thing.</p>
<p>Regarding the second comment though, if it were philosophy I could argue something during the final based on the predisposed facts, and my grade would be assigned based on no definitive answer. In science, on the other hand, there is only one right answer! So while you can know quite a bit about philosophy and hence be able to go in and at least write answers for a final, I would not guarantee the same for someone who knew a lot about engineering who went in to take an engineering final.</p>