The Hardest Engineering Major and How To Learn It

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[kensingsta]

What I remember about undergrad engineering was that we were always in the library studying, while the business majors were out at the bar every night.

[willgordge]

Electrical engineering student here. What I love most about EE, is that while all engineering majors at my university will take the core mathematics classes, EE is the only one that will immediately take almost all of these topics and apply them to circuit analysis, signal processing etc… it makes math far more enjoyable. As an example you’d come across early on, when you begin learning the Laplace transform and suddenly apply it to reactive components, you magically dodge the horrific differential equations you’d otherwise have to solve in a high order circuit. But then, you realise that this domain, which used to (untransformed) relate output to time, can now plot frequency. You see that a clever arrangement of capacitors and inductors allows you to capture certain frequencies and suddenly you have a frequency-selective filter, the building block of radio communication and so much more . What’s that? An annoying hiss being picked up in the speaker that’s picking up a sound signal? Apply a Fourier transform and single it out. Then, in vector calculus you’ll learn about line integrals, force fields, divergence, curl… Next semester Maxwells equations describe electromagnetics using these very concepts in what anyone else would consider magic. As challenging as it is, the math and physics within EE is the most beautiful thing I’ve come across in my entire academic journey. This looks like a great book, however, what is undoubtedly the best book for introductory EE is “Electric Circuits” by Nilsson and Riedel. It’s extremely fundamental, covers tons of math (including but not limited to almost everything I’ve spoken about here), and explains topics better than most professors by just reading through it. Seriously, I would skip classes just to work from the book as it was a better use of my time.

[kenshi_cv]

Hey Math Sorcerer! I actually took your Calculus I class in real life two years ago and am now studying Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. It's very hard but the skills I learned in your class and in your videos have helped me greatly.

[ananthpurohit]

Electrical Engineering is the perfect blend of Mathematics and Physics. Being a graduate in EE, I'd say it was definitely not easy to complete the course... We had to put in a lot of time & effort to understand concepts (probably higher than other engineering majors). However, it was really fun domain to study!
Although I'm now working in data science, the values and discipline i learned in those years are really coming handy in my career now.

[lkern]

My son got his EE degree a year ago. It was very math intensive, and for 4 years he had no social life. He got an 80k/year job the week before graduation, and then walked into the local Tesla dealership and bought a car a week after he got his diploma with nothing down. He says his job is easy, and acknowledges they are paying him for the "piece of paper" (diploma).

[tiago]

I am a retired Electrical Engineer and I honestly think that dealing with Fluid Dynamics is harder.
Lots of partial differential equations!

[skybox]

As an electrical engineer, I just have to say that I love Laplace transforms. It made seemingly impossible differential equations into simple arithmetic. Circuit analysis was literally easier in senior classes than in junior classes.

[elmer]

I received a BS degree in EE in 1967, back when some classes were still teaching how to design electronic circuits containing vacuum tubes. Thirteen years later I received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering because I found ME to be more interesting and in line with what I wanted to accomplish. Since 1967, EE has advanced so much more than ME, I truly believe it may be the most difficult engineering curriculum.

[boogerie]

Fun fact: Sylvanus Thompson, author of CALCULUS MADE EASY was an electrical engineer

[sergioperez]

In my opinion, the reason electrical engineering is harder is that it's more abstract than most others.
You have to imagine many things that in other majors you can actually see, you cannot see electrons running on a wire after all, nor you can see electrical fields, you have to imagine them while you can see a mechanical machine working.
Math is not harder than in other engineering but it's kind of more abstract, for example we use a lot of complex numbers routinely, linear algebra, transforms (Laplace, Fourier), Vector analysis.

[edwardsmith-rowland]

My undergraduate degree was Engineering Physics - basically a physics degree plus an engineering minor. Not many universities offer it I think. In my case I chose electrical engineering as a minor. I love fields and waves and waveguides and lasers, etc. Another thing to consider is that EE means different things to different people: fields and waves and propagation, communication and information theory, power systems, circuits, ... All these differ in what kind and how hard the math is.

[dle]

not sure about difficulty but as an EE myself, I can confidently say that electrical has the widest range of topics and applications of all engineering disciplines. you can make a living doing completely different things with this degree as a foundation: software (C, Python, MATLAB), hardware (ASIC, UVM), embedded, RF/Microwave (antenna), communications (satellite), PCB (design/fabrication), power lines (ADC/DAC), EV (battery, control system), etc.
the list just goes on and on, and frankly the hardest thing for undergrads like me is choosing a concentration :]

[joeytaft]

I hope that anyone seeing this video (and it is a good video) and is interested in electrical engineering, or any other engineering for that matter, would not get discouraged from pursuing knowledge in this field. I think every student can achieve success in this field when paired with the right resources, study habits and determination. I think the author of this channel provides a very valuable service by presenting the multitude of resources that are available for the study of math, engineering, physics, etc.

[MMMS]

I agree with that 100%. I started as a mechanical engineering major and then double majored in electrical and mechanical engineering. Without a doubt, the math is extremely intense in electrical engineering. Especially when you get to Field Theory, and even harder still when you get to information theory and communication theory. Computing the entropy of language and other systems is wild math. I later did my masters in Electrical Engineering in signal processing and AI. The math got even wilder. If there is one thing that is certain after that: I learned differential equations like it was my job. Hell, I can still model and do differential equations 15 years out of grad school. And all that math helped me learn the skills that I then used to gain nearly 25 patents.

[mattharline]

I received my bachelor (1981) and masters (1982) degree in Electrical Engineering. When I was in college most considered chemical engineering was the most difficult engineering field. My father and brother were chemical engineers. I suppose the idea of which field is most difficult depends on each individual, what their interests and talents are.

[stevenreynolds]

My education was in Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering. Chemical Engineering can be considered difficult because some aren't that thrilled with chemistry. Also they go quite deep into a subject called "Transport Phenomena" (Momentum, Heat and Mass transfer) which can get deep into applied math. However, I agree that Electrical is probably the hardest for most people. Both for the heavy dependence on math, as you pointed out, and also it deals with some difficult physics concepts like magnetic fields, etc.. It's just difficult to understand how electronics actually works sometimes. A popular book geared more towards practical electronics is "The Art of Electronics" by Thomas C. Hayes. However I get bogged down when I try to read it.

[StaticBlaster]

When I was in school, a lot of people thought electrical/computer engineering was the hardest.

[umprofessorparticular]

I have a degree in EE, and I’m not sure I agree with EE being the hardest ( as I have never studied other engineering course ), but I’d agree that it’s what most people think . Back in college people would be very impressed when I told them what my major was, “ electrical is the worst course ! You guys don’t have a life “ . I saw several people from other courses try to take EE as a minor, and then quit in ECE 101, because they said it would hurt their gpa . I’ve also heard people say that ECE 101, being the most basic EE course, was the hardest in courses like industrial engineering. As to the concepts covered in the course, I think electrical circuits can be somewhat tricky, because even though the math is not so complex, there’s a very specific logic to it, and I myself found it hard at the beginning … but ended up understand it after a lot of hard work . People find it hard because it’s very abstract, you cannot see a transistor switching with your eyes, or current flowing like you’d see a cars engine working, for it is all microscopic. And the hardest part is dealing with electromagnetism, because it involves vector calculus, and I agree that it’s very hard ( at least for me ) . But I think it’s a really amazing major, and think you shouldn’t be intimidated by the challenges ! I definitely recommend it to anyone who wishes to try it !

[mitchellhopkins]

This makes me feel better. Currently in year four of my EE major and I feel like I’m always doing school work and I’m a TA for electrical fundamentals and I have almost no free time. Thanks for making this video and now I see all of these other people with a similar experience and now they are thriving

[wescraven]

My school didn't have engineering, but I would have thought nuclear engineering would be harder then electrical or mechanical. To be fair, I don't know how much overlap there is between them. I also remember people dual majoring in mechanical and electrical engineering at another university.