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My brother went to a top Canadian engineering school and while it was hard work, most of the students spend most of their free times getting drunk and doing drugs: their lounges were usually covered in empty beer bottles. That's actually what scared me away from being an Engineer. He was out till 2 or 3 am many nights and still got straight A's so it's not that difficult.

I don't really believe it is that easy, some students there might have very high IQs so they can study effectively in short time, have some free time and get A's but I don't think it's that easy for the average student. if your brother was a straight A student in math and physics at school then it wouldn't be so surprising to have As in engineering.

I did pre-engineering curriculum at a major U.S. university, partied my ass off, and got straight A's. It's not that difficult if your brain is wired that way. I would have a lot more trouble with the format of law school or med school, where (based on what I've been told by people I know who are doctors and lawyers) more emphasis is placed on endurance of semi-hostile conditions and sheer stamina than is placed on the subject matter.

That's really news to me, because it's not what I've witnessed from engineer students, and their curriculum have more courses than any major - and Engineer students while often were the best students from school often graduate with lower GPA (they often have the lowest GPA in average) than graduates of Social sciences, economics and business. The math in Engineering is certainly harder than the math used in business, finance and economics, the physics is even harder than physics in computer science.

Unless you WP people all have above 150+ IQ; Engineering was never considered an easy and "party major", yes they study less than med school but not a party major at all.


The internet is also full of jokes about how hard engineering is.

^ love the internet engineering joke

Subjects tend to vary in difficulty from country to country and within country from University to University.

Also, there are issues of industry relevance. Is your engineer being groomed to drill for oil, build hydroelectrics, transport infrastructure or does his job consist of going around the suburbs checking buildings for subsidence or overseeing a routine operations in a processing plant.

I am told that getting degrees in Germany is the hardest and longest. Probably why so many are in the UK.

Anyway, according to my current place of work, physicists are the smartest, I evidence this by the tortured faces of people from other disciplines when they have to interact with them. Also, they publish an insane number of of papers in a mind numbingly short time which is, btw, obvious proof that time travel has already been invented but they are just not sharing with the rest of the class.

I like Engineers the best after physicists - I really am yet to meet a physicist I don't like. I stay well away from medics, they all be completely bonkers and finance and economics peeps are too boring, social science peeps are too whiny and lawyers are too demanding.

Excuse me, I must no go and sign up on the Too Picky To Date thread.

And what are you btw? Your avatar makes me think you're some sort of biologist.

I don't work as a scientist but I do have a Biology degree, yes.

I did say "easy if your brain is wired that way."

There are degrees of difficulty within engineering, too. Civil engineer is generally considered the least difficult, aerospace the most, with mechanical, electrical, geologic, and various others falling in between the two extremes. Difficulty also depends to some extent on the school, as well. Technical colleges and universities such as MIT, Caltech, Cal-Poly, etc. will be tougher to get into as well as tougher to graduate from.

I was so amazed to hear recently an engineer joke about his 'licence to kill' at a talk and say how things are so much harder for them nowadays because 10 years ago he was allowed leeway when building - as in he had dispensation to kill up to 10 people and now it's 1 or none. Oh how we laughed. But then as you say, aviation is even more stringent than that, there is just no room for error at all. So obviously you'd have to be pretty smart and capable to be able to go around making things that don't kill people. I must say, it really always astonishes me how people manage to build so much without killing hardly any people given how many potential variables are discarded in mathematical calculations as 'irrelevant'. But this is why it's impossible to synthesize a living organism. Because all those 'irrelevant' variables come and bite you in the ass. Just don't tell that to geneticists.

I'm majoring in Biology.... I want to work in Forensics....

Now I'm afraid that I won't be able to find a job in Forensics..

Why, was it because of something I said?

I tried to get into Forensics too but my inability to follow imprecise instruction got me booted off the program. Just as well really, it was boring lab work I wouldn't have enjoyed, it's nothing remotely like CSI and Bones etc.

From other posts of yours it sounds like finance or accounting may be more your cup of tea

Forensics has been a special interest of mine since I was 12 years old. I stopped reading fiction and would only read non-fiction, mostly True Crime and a little bit of Psychology and Sociology.
I would only watch Court TV, later Investigation Discovery, Discovery Channel and any and all channels that will have Forensics or true crime shows.
My favorite video games are puzzles and mysteries. My favorite movies are mysteries and psychological films that can involve critical thinking.
Anything and everything relating to solving a mystery, puzzle, the unknown, blah, I am obsessed with.
I still only read non-fiction and watch non-fiction shows. I can't stomach fiction. There's been maybe one or two fiction television shows I've been able to watch in the past decade.

When I'm at home, I keep my television on one of those aforementioned channels, right up until I fall asleep. Most of the time I'm not exclusively watching it, because I've already seen all the episodes of pretty much all the shows but I just like it on. I have gone to a summer school twice to take forensic science classes.

I contemplated majoring in Psychology so that I can work in Forensic psychology but I thought to myself what I could realistically see myself getting up and doing every day for x amount of years.

Finance interests me in the sense that I want to be as educated as I can about it so that I can make the right decisions for my future. I save a percentage of everything I earn and put some into a savings account and some into a mutual fund. I don't like taking loans.. I just never want to buy anything I can't afford upfront, (at least for now).

Shows like CSI and Bones don't interest me. They're dramas. I don't like dramas. I personally would feel sorry for anyone who wants to go into Forensics solely based off of those sorts of shows.

Trust me, an engineering degree isn't the cake walk some here seem to think. It isn't so much the difficulty in the material as it is the time commitment expected of you. Our senior project required a 150-page report that we had to write in 3 months (the length wasn't fixed, but to include all the content that the professor wanted it couldn't be much shorter). And that was just for one two-hr class out of a total of 12-15 credit hours. None of us who graduated slept that entire year. Typically freshman/sophomore year aren't bad at all in engineering, but junior/senior year they really pile it on you.

Out of my class-mates, only the ones who were D or C students on the constant verge of failing really partied or got drunk with any frequency. The rest of us were way too busy until the semester was over! And IQ has little to do with it in many of the classes, you can be the smartest person in the world, but to complete a project, report, or homework you still have to spend X amount of time actually writing or doing it.

PS: Not all engineering degrees were made equal

Stargazer, I in no way intended to make getting an engineering degree sound like a piece of cake! As you say, the lower division courses (which is what I did) are not too bad if you have an aptitude for math and science. Since I didn't go on to upper division, I have no personal experience in what it takes to complete a degree. I absolutely believe you as far as the time commitment is concerned - it's the reason I didn't go on to upper division. Not enough hours in the day for me to work enough hours to support myself AND spend the necessary time on the classes I would have been taking.

If you don't mind me asking, where did you get your degree? (And I agree, not all engineering degrees are created equal!)

Engineering students @ a lot of Canadian Universities, esp. those in Ontario have a reputation of being 'Animal House" type characters. Heavy drinkers & Party Hardy guys! Many try to live up to that image.

(I rest my case...)