What is toughest undergraduate major?

[liluqt]

It's always great how the average in an organic class is like 60%

 

[simms]

Originally posted by: liluqt
It's always great how the average in an organic class is like 60%

I hear ya.. my exam is on Friday.

 

[Cleaner]

Where's the PE (physical education) that's hard 'work' and what about the medieval studies people. Gamers need love too.

 

[eno818]

nursing.

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: Siva
Every major is different, what kind of moron thinks there's a "hardest" major.

I spent 8 hours a week in labs which I get no credit for in addition to a full course load. Meanwhile most theatre majors at my school would faint at the idea of more than just 6 hours of classes a week. But if you asked me to act, I couldn't, no amount of classes or learning could make it easy for me. Meanwhile if you put any of them in a lab they'd probably freak out.

College is about finding what you like, what you want to study, and what you want to do with your life. That's what makes a major easy. If you're major is so difficult to you maybe you oughta switch.

<---- Chemistry major btw.

yup...if you hate the major, you are gonna fail. Ever since i started doing real EE/CE course, my grades have been down. Not because it is hard, but because i cannot get myself to do it b/c i find it so broing and i am starting to hate it. WIth math and physics though, i love learning that stuff. I am thinking switching to a EE/Physics dual major or physics/math dual.

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: Schrodinger

Originally posted by: TheLonelyPhoenix

Originally posted by: Schrodinger
Wow...EE is that much more difficult than a physics major?

Content-wise, probably not. I think it has more to do with the skills expected out of an engineer.

Howso? (I'm not experienced with engineers)

Engineering school is survival of the fittest. They want to weed out as many people as possible, so they make the course work more painful. For example, in engineering, you may have to memorize something while in physics or math, they would allow a cheat sheet (this is very broad, but you get the idea). It's not harder, they just expect more.

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle

Originally posted by: Schrodinger
Wow...EE is that much more difficult than a physics major?

Not harder, just more work intensive. In physics you solve for ideal cases and theoretical constructs mostly while your labs mostly focus on demonstrating that the theory does have a basis on physical reality.

In EE, you have to design things with practical applications in mind. Things get messy in the real world, there are all sorts of imperfections that come in and throw a monkey wrench in an elegant design. Case in point, I had a lab where we got very simple chip fabbed and built a rudimentary operational amplifier. It's a huge pain in the ass just to get the thing working like the simulation does, without taking into account the fact that there is up to 20% variation in every element manufactured.

Anyhow, I'm rambling now... Does anyone want to proof-read my lab report, I'm almost done and it's due in tomorrow

yeah, i remember my discrete math prof telling my class that how people at MIT always joked about how Electrical Engineers know complex numbers better than math or physics majors.

 

[Spike]

I would say Bio/Chem are the hardest. I was a Ind E and loved my classes, something about the mix of hardcore engineering with actual people skills is great. I love designing interfaces and doing buisness work mixed with math equations and mechanical design. And yes, I am an actual working Ind E.

On the flip side, my wife has a masters in English and is getting her Doctorate now. She is incredibly intelligent and just by reading a short paper, can tell you all sorts of things about the writer and their background (and yes, it is usually right on the money). She has a gift with the written word and can say so elequently in 5 words what I struggle to get out in 20. Though it is deemed a 'dead-end' or 'teaching' major by most, I highly respect her and most of her peers. I would never pretend to have half the skill they do in simple speech.

-spike

 

[Tiamat]

At my school, its Chemical Engineering very closely followed by Electrical Engineering. And to thnk I tired to double major in both :laugh:

BTW, Im a junior in Chemical Engineering and it just heated up 100 fold in work load

 

[LordSnailz]

Originally posted by: Spike
I would say Bio/Chem are the hardest. I was a Ind E and loved my classes, something about the mix of hardcore engineering with actual people skills is great. I love designing interfaces and doing buisness work mixed with math equations and mechanical design. And yes, I am an actual working Ind E.

On the flip side, my wife has a masters in English and is getting her Doctorate now. She is incredibly intelligent and just by reading a short paper, can tell you all sorts of things about the writer and their background (and yes, it is usually right on the money). She has a gift with the written word and can say so elequently in 5 words what I struggle to get out in 20. Though it is deemed a 'dead-end' or 'teaching' major by most, I highly respect her and most of her peers. I would never pretend to have half the skill they do in simple speech.

-spike

:beer:

 

[virtueixi]

Chemistry is lame. I hate organic chemistry.

 

[Gibson486]

In Math, Engineering is "tougher" in that respect because things like line integrals, triple integrals, Green's Theorems, will never be taught to them. However math is tough - I'm not saying it's not, but math doesn't have the diversity of applying that knowledge to different fields, plus math majors have no science (which is also pretty tough).

ummmm...every college i have seen requires that math majors take physics 1-3 (4 in quarter system) and 1 or 2 chem classes.

 

[KEV1N]

This is subjective... I know a lot of engineers who struggle in English and communications classes.

For what it's worth I did Computer Science and an English minor.

 

[abracadabra1]

Originally posted by: Horus
HISTORY. When you EE majors write 30K+ words in 2 months for essays, come back and talk to me.

HAHAHA....i'm just going to laugh in your face.

I'm an EE major and I have history course requirements and they are definitely GPA boosters. Fifteen page history papers are little more than research, read, write, revise.

real tough, champ.

 

[abracadabra1]

Also, as an EE, I don't think EE is the toughest undergraduate major. I don't know what is, but I'm sure there are tougher areas of study.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Originally posted by: werk
BME

Yes lots of people here would say that.

Architecture and CS are also thought of as hard here.

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: liluqt
It's always great how the average in an organic class is like 60%

Organic chemistry required a lot of studying, but I thought the concepts were very easy to understand. In fact, I really enjoyed o-chem because everything just makes sense. Physical chemistry is another story. P-chem is the reason I don't have a chemistry degree.

Most people I know don't think their major is the hardest. Sure, there are some who just like to brag and think they are smarter than everyone else, but I readily admit that engineering is far more difficult, in terms of workload and complexity, than CS.

The hardest class I took as a CS major was Discrete Structures. The only thing that made it hard was that it was totally different from any other math class I'd taken. I didn't have any problems with calculus, but discrete math was totally different. Not super complex, just a very different way of thinking.

 

[Apathetic]

I have to go with Chemical Engineering.

Dave

 

[Juno]

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete

Originally posted by: werk
BME

Yes lots of people here would say that.

Architecture and CS are also thought of as hard here.

Architecture is not that hard. It is actually more fun to build model projects (or using AutoCAD/Architectural Desktop programs) than puzzle-solving problems in CS.

 

[Mermaidman]

You left out the liberal arts majors!

I do well in sciences, but I would fail, for example, English or Philosophy.

 

[simms]

Originally posted by: DT4K

Originally posted by: liluqt
It's always great how the average in an organic class is like 60%

Organic chemistry required a lot of studying, but I thought the concepts were very easy to understand. In fact, I really enjoyed o-chem because everything just makes sense. Physical chemistry is another story. P-chem is the reason I don't have a chemistry degree.

Most people I know don't think their major is the hardest. Sure, there are some who just like to brag and think they are smarter than everyone else, but I readily admit that engineering is far more difficult, in terms of workload and complexity, than CS.

The hardest class I took as a CS major was Discrete Structures. The only thing that made it hard was that it was totally different from any other math class I'd taken. I didn't have any problems with calculus, but discrete math was totally different. Not super complex, just a very different way of thinking.

Just FYI, ChemE's take Organic Chemistry too along with P-Chem.

 

[Jzero]

Music. And not because you have to be a whiz to take it. No, it's because you still have to take the same gen-ed requirements, and you are still required to maintain the same number of credits to get full-time status, but your classes are all .5-1.5 credits despite meeting 2-3 times a week.

I could take a CS lab class, a Science lab class and 2 non-lab classes and be full-time with a day off every week.
The music majors had to take 8 classes just to be full-time. It's lunacy. I had a brief stint as a band instructor this summer and I thought how awesome it would be to go back to school for music ed until I remembered the ass-tastic curriculum I'd have to endure to get there.

 

[simms]

Originally posted by: Jzero
Music. And not because you have to be a whiz to take it. No, it's because you still have to take the same gen-ed requirements, and you are still required to maintain the same number of credits to get full-time status, but your classes are all .5-1.5 credits despite meeting 2-3 times a week.

I could take a CS lab class, a Science lab class and 2 non-lab classes and be full-time with a day off every week.
The music majors had to take 8 classes just to be full-time. It's lunacy. I had a brief stint as a band instructor this summer and I thought how awesome it would be to go back to school for music ed until I remembered the ass-tastic curriculum I'd have to endure to get there.

I would agree in the sense that musicians have the "toughness" in the sense that they'll have it rough finding a job afterward.

And yes, it also requires a lot of hard work too.

 

[meltdown75]

my major was English the 1st year, and Communication Studies for the rest (4 years for a 3 year degree... heheh). My 1st year was also my 1st away from home, living in a 500-student co-ed dorm. Good luck getting any work done if you are even 1% inclined to party.

My wife however is just finishing her masters in Movement Science, which is her focus now and that came from the Human Kinetics program. She has it pretty tough, I wouldn't want to do any of that math/science stuff myself. She is a graduate assistant for Advanced Biomechanics, and her notes look like Chinese to me. So, although I don't have those smarts, at least I have good access to them.

"Go honey go! Make them benjamins! More hardware for daddy!"

 

[eLiu]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms
I'd say that ChemE or EE are found to be the most difficult undergraduate majors by most people

I think those people would be totally annihilated by theoretical math...