/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6744323
just do your best and you will probably succeed, since there are a lot of students who do not do their best.

>>6744323
>german mechanical engineer reporting in
if you don't have problem with math, you'll be just fine. If you do, consider something else. Physics is mostly intuitive so it is not hard to understand but i saw many people failing on math, even though it is not that hard most of the time. Hard stuff gets done by computers anyways.

It's competitive because a lot of people try to get into those programs, and then there is competition for EIT positions (or whatever the post-graduation training program in your country is). The coursework isn't really any harder than that of any other program, but your grades may actually mean something.

Medical school isn't really that hard either, from what I can tell. You have to work long nights and stuff, but welcome to the world. The people I know who made it through were not that bright and spent a lot of weekends partying.

>>6744527
What if you don't have a problem with math but you dislike doing it anyway?

>>6744575
you'll suffer through some classes, but there are many areas, which has less to do with math, like materials engineering, design, production. In each of these topics, you will encounter some math too, but it is either easy or not necessarily a main point of interest for many.
tl;dr you can suffer through some classes and choose areas with less math.

>>6744323
Engineering is a very heavy workload. The materiel in a single class is never impossible, but keeping up with six classes at once causes a lot of people to burn out.

Engineering students don't really have a competitive attitude towards each other. In sciences and most other undergrad programs everybody is at each others throats because its grad school or serving coffee, and only the best go to grad school. Engineers are trained to work in teams and can get the jobs they want with only an undergrad degree without being top of their class. They form study groups, help each other out, and even help each other find jobs after university.

What's Nuclear Engineering coursework like? Super math-intensive, or does it not need much beyond calculus?

>>6744653
All engineering is super math-intensive.

>>6744669
Most engineering is math-intesive.
>fix'd

>>6744669
I disagree. Not much of engineering is more math-intensive than calculus (up to a working knowledge of differential equations). Beside analysis, the most common branches of math that are frequent in engineering are linear algebra, counting, and probability theory / statistics. In my experience, probability theory is what ends up being the hardest since it can involve a combination of all other domains.

However, compared to what you'd do as a math major, it's definitely not as mathematically complex. A lot of the math courses in math majors are on more abstract subjects. Topology, for instance, is often considered harder than calculus, as typical things you'll have to do that involve calculus only involve applying methods that you can just remember, while topology requires you to understand an abstract problem well enough before you can start solving it: you can't just write expressions and progressively simplify them.

>>6744653
this is what it looks like at my school. calc 1-3, linear algebra and dif eq, and another math elective, usually pde or grad level multivariate calc.

>>6744862

>>6744862
>>6744863

>>6744323
>med school
>implying that's harder than engineering
The actual program is piss easy in comparison to any engineering field(not nearly as hard math, mostly memorizing and simpler math/chemistry/biology).

>>6745195
Some people find memorization to be much harder than learning to solve physical problems.

>>6745208
but often times the problems involve things that arent explicitly easy to visualize, like the particle orbits of ions in time-varying magnetic and electric fields

>>6744323
Get on a research project and do internships during summer. You really shouldn't rely on doing the bare minimum if you want a job right after graduating.

>>6744323
after i failed second semester of electrical engineering twice because i was too lazy to do exercises and get used to the fucking maths, i decided to fuck this and went for a dentist, since i have steady hands and shit

now i do pretty much nothing all the time and just memorise stuff a week before some important exam or whatever

gonna make mad dosh

>>6744323
>why do people say engineering major is competitive? what's so competitive about it?

Because in every engineering group, you do group assignments usually in 5. There is 3 slackers, 1 retard and 1 person that does all the work. Good companies only want that guy, the rest of them are shit and will design buildings that fall down.

>>6746522
>Because in every engineering group, you do group assignments usually in 5. There is 3 slackers, 1 retard and 1 person that does all the work. Good companies only want that guy, the rest of them are shit and will design buildings that fall down.

Oh God, it's like I'm really back in school

>>6746522
Please tell me you're joking

I don't wanna put up with this bullshit in Uni too.

>>6746547
>I don't wanna put up with this bullshit in Uni too.
I've got some bad news for you then.

is the job market really that competitive for Engineers in America?

Here, my local university boast a 100% employment rate for graduates and an average starting salary of ~70k

>>6744323
educational competition is cancerous bullshit

>>6746547
>I don't wanna put up with this bullshit in Uni too.

It's fine, it's just preparation for when you have to face the same thing in real life.

its not competetive in the same way as medicine or pharmacy or something where everyone fights for a spot into the program but you need a strong GPA and internships, which everyone wants and only some will get. Most engrs, especially within your major are close and study/do homework together, plus there are lots of lab classes and projects for other classes that you have to work together on, so that limits competitiveness a bit. Engr is pretty chill in terms of competitiveness, nobodies out to get anyone else

>>6746522
>the rest of them are shit and will design buildings that fall down
but anon, all civil engrs are retarded

>>6746522
During senior design, one group had a girl that was alpha as feck. She wouldn't put up with any BS. If you slacked off or weren't up to par, she made your life hell. One guy dropped out of her group in the middle of the year and did senior design again the next time 'round. Oh, gosh, I was so attracted to her.

Seriously, though, she had the right mentality. Fellow students might have been put off by her, but professors and employers loved her.

>>6746547
He's exaggerating. In a group of 5, there's usually 1 smart guy who knows what he or she is doing. there's 3 other guys who can follow directions well enough and are can reliably get their portion of the work done. Then there's this one slacker who will flake and do other typical lazy-group-member shit.

>>6746522
>Good companies only want that guy, the rest of them are shit and will design buildings that fall down.

bad companies want bad and mediocre engineers so that everyone else doesn't look bad.

>>6746761
>>but anon, all civil engrs are retarded

>implying they aren't the ones developing your FEA theory and techniques

>>6746522

mechanical engineerfag. this anon is right:

>>6746761

>>6744865
>>6744862
>>6744863
Boiler up

>>6747816
Hammer down mah nigga

Senior ME at private university. Just started senior design. The one super lazy girl in our class that gets D and C in all of her classes couldn't find a group so she was put with us. The entire time we were talking about the project, she would reiterate the same thing people had just been talking about when she wasn't doing last nights homework on her computer. She had no original ideas or thoughts of her own. Impossible to ask here to do anything because she would drift back to her computer or obvious had no idea where to even begin. Year's gonna be a bitch for me. What ever you do, dont be like her.

>>6744527
What if I love math but I'm just not very good at it? Would I just be better off being a scientist instead?

>>6748717
try social engineering

>>6748717
if you really "love" math, and not very good at it, you'll be fine, since you'll have a lot of time to learn the basics, won't use almost any because of computers post graduation. so don't let that stop you, as long as you find a subject that you really want to learn i.e. building cars, robots, buildings etc.

>>6746761
>but anon, all civil engrs are retarded
Civil Engineering covers everything from sewage outflow, pipe design, Tunnels, building parking garages, contaminant plumes, earthquake design, intersection design, oh, and how to actually build all of that shit that you guys don't even think about.

We also typically don't have as much control over our materials. Concrete is highly variable. Steel is pretty regular, but soil? Fuck, you physically see less than 1/10,000,000'th of the material that you have to build on, and the error and variability of your tests is enormous. Pavement is also highly variable.

Throw in a multitude of standards and regulations because almost every project you have will be in the public eye and have disastrous consequences if it fails, and you have a large component of CiveE that has to deal with policy, regulations, and 'cookbook design'. Innovation is tightly controlled, and the threat of a lawsuit overshadows everything we touch.

Oh, and earthquake design. Massive forces, highly nonlinear material response, and huge uncertainty.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that Civil Engineering is a field where 'Jack of All, Master of None' is more the rule than the exception.

Yeah, if I have to write a program that uses Cuda, it'll take a while. Yes, my calculus and differential equations background may not be as strong as other engineering fields. Yes, my understanding of viscous flow and modeling is less than that of an Aero engineer, BUT

None of them know anywhere near as much as I do about soil.

Not all Civil's are dumb. Some are. Not all.

>>6748717
>don't love math
There's more to math than ax+by=c

Take a logic class. If you like it, there's a huge field of continuum and solid mechanics for you to explore. Math can be so much more than what you get in your 6th grade algebra class.

>>6749708
>mfw civil engineering is boss
Designing, optimizing, and building something that people rely on tens of thousands of times a day is pretty sweet.

>>6749722
like cars, airplanes, submarines, guns, home appliances, electronics etc.?

>Nigga please, it is a mediocre engineering branche at most

Seeing as computer science is the future and its where most of the money is, why does anyone go into traditional engineering (mech, civil, etc) any more?

>>6749708
>multitude of standards and regulations because almost every project you have will be in the public eye and have disastrous consequences if it fails
that's like every engineering discipline, imagine being a nuke
>Jack of All, Master of None
thats more ME than civil, and nukes are surprisingly well-rounded in their studies
>Not all Civil's are dumb
i didnt mean literally all civils but the ones ive had the privilege of knowing were fucking retarded, one of them went through the semester in a course to be found out as a cheat like 10 days before the final and got a zero lel

>>6749763
so you're basing your views of a profession of hundreds of thousands of people if not millions worldwide on your impressions of a handful of students. you must be profoundly retarded. please don't ever reproduce

>>6749769
lel its a fucking stereotype stop being so insecure about whether your bridge will kill someone

>>6744728
Most math is kind of math intensive.
>fixeroo'd

>>6749772
i bet you're one of those faggy mech undergrads with a cartoon view of civil engineers in which one guy designs a bridge, makes one error, and the bridge is then built with no one checking the design first and so it collapses
really just kill yourself you silly gook

>>6749777
>ME
nah i switched out of ME, actually considered civil as a top choice but didnt find it interesting enough

>>6749758
because, mech and e/e engineers will always be needed. Also tastes etc.

>>6749763
>nuke engineering masterrace
OK. have fun doing the foundation, construction and structural design of your plants.
Hope you learned how to do a PSHA, cuz you obviously don't need a geotech.

Oh, and if your Structural or Geotech or CM guy fuck up, it's their fault, and you can sue them.

There's obviously things that others are specialized in, but as the builders and designers of infrastructure, we enable others.

I agree that ME's are perhaps more well-rounded, but the emphasis of my post was that infrastructure is incredibly varied, and when trying to teach and learn it, particularly at an undergraduate level, the variety ends up whitewashing most of the details.

CivE is a long way from "boss" as
>>6749722
might suggest because as it is necessary, literally almost any other engineer could drop what they're doing and learn the needed component of Civil Engineering. Some could do a pretty good job at it too.

But there's certainly CivE's that could stop doing traffic flow design and start doing circuit design or whatever the fuck it is IndE's do.

CivE isn't the masterrace. Not by a long shot. But we also don't quite deserve to be the butt of the jokes of the Nuke's, Aero's and Comp's that strut around with their noses up their own asses so far that they don't even pay attention to the fact that their faucet works and their shit gets flushed.

>>6749758
>>6749787
>cont
most money is not in computer sciences. Not yet anyways.

/sci/ nerds in 3,2,1...

>>6749791
usually the people with their noses up are EEs and compsci, usually aeros and nukes are pretty bro, same with materials guys. civils are just the butts of the jokes because its seemingly the easiest (read: simplest) of the "big" engr majors. everyone know IEs are fucking retarded but its more of a niche program, not really sure what they do anyway

>>6749794
>engineer
>weak troll
>will reply anyway
most but not all natural sciences is born from engineering. Hell Egyptians, Greek, Romans, babylonians, indians etc. All excelled at engineering. We mostly got things working first and could explain later. At least until 17.- 18. century. After that, science mostly took the lead. All in all, i think you can't exclude science from engineering and engineering from science (since those theories must be proven some way)

>>6749805
Doesn't help our case that we worry about things like 'poop streaking' in toilets

>>6744323
I have noticed this effect in the contemporary media also.
University level work used to be described
with phrases like "have to be smart to go to
college" or "a lot of hard work to get a degree
young man".
Nowadays they talk about it like it's a giant contest to see who can make the best YouTube
video.

>>6744323
because anybody can suck dick but not everybody can appreciate all the hard work and practice you guys put in to it.

>>6749805
>people with their noses up are EEs and compsci
I wonder what makes them so smug. I don't see it.

>>6750759
EEs a think that's it's that hardest engr discipline and compsci fags are just autistic

>>6744734

Actually if you're a good mechanical engineer topology and topology optimisation problems is one of the directions you can take your career.

as an electrical engineer lyapunov stability theory and fractional calculus is a posible career path.

but as you said MOST engineering is calculus, linear algebra and statistics - regarding math intensity.

>>6750810
Don't forget diff eq

>>6750796
>EEs a think that's it's that hardest engr discipline
tbh it is the hardest discipline

>>6750827
idk i'd say that EE, chemE, and nuke are all in the hardest tier, but to peg one as the hardest isnt all that straight forward. I'm a nuke and my roommate is a EE and we shit talk all the time about whats harder, but i'd probably find EE harder just because its not interesting and i'd have a hard time learning all the shit with signal processing and microprocessors and stuff, whereas he would likely have a tough time with thermal hydraulics or reactor kinetics/neutron transport

Petroleum engineering masterrace reporting in.

>>6744323
Let me put it this way. At my university, which is in the top 20 STEM schools in the USA, the requirements to get into the School of Science are basically "open the door". If you can manage a GPA worth the digits it's composed of, you're in, no questions asked.

The School of Engineering, on the other hand, requires a written application, letters of recommendation, and an interview. Most people with a GPA > 3.0 get in, but most != all.

The School of Medicine, for comparison, has the same requirements, but their standards are so insane that I've seen sophmores retake classes they got an A- in because that was an unacceptable hit to their GPA, and where "letter of recommendation" in Engineering translates to "Impress one of your 100-level Engineering profs enough that he thinks you have more brain cells than toenails", in Medicine they want actual MDs to vouch for you. It's madness.

>>6750827
>EE
>Hardest discipline
>Not medicine or architecture
Do you ever bring a sleeping bag to studio because your projects won't get done unless you literally camp out? Architecture students consider that a totally normal thing. Do you put in 50 hour weeks in hospitals doing everyone's shit work 12 hours a day at the same time you're attending classes? Medical students call those weeks "semesters".

I love it when STEM majors get so far up their own asses that they can't tell the difference between Womens Studies dipshits and people whose workloads would shatter them if they had to do the same.

>>6750928
>Architecture
lel, arch and medicine may work long hours but their coursework isnt on the same level as engr

>>6750848
signals are ez, but then again I'm ee lel

>>6750934
Again, leave your circlejerk for once in your life. Engineering and mathematics are piss easy compared to other disciplines. Why do you think the average salaries of medical people are so absurdly higher than any other field? It's because medicine is a living hell.

As far as architecture, despite what Hollywood may have taught you, it does not mean faffing around with cardboard and the Sims. The exactitudes and OCD it demands would make a mechanical engineer curl into a ball and cry.

I really do not know why engineers have such an overinflated opinion of themselves. Your field is B list at best.

>>6750949
>Why do you think the average salaries of medical people are so absurdly higher than any other field?
idk but here's a pretty decent salary considering you only need 4 years of schooling, as opposed to medicine/pharmacy that requires much more + residencies. what do you actually do btw, or are you just talking out of your ass

>>6749784
I wish I could switch. I'm just stuck because there's too many EE in my uni

>engineering undergrads

I hate these people so fucking much. Why are you bragging about a major that 90% of you retards will change when you run into a wall.

Smug little shits.

>>6744323
It's not real competition. You just have a bunch of people that aren't smart enough to be engineers in the first place dropping out. In a real competitive environment you'd have genuinely good engineers not passing because of artificially low cut offs.

If you have the right level of talent there is no competition, except maybe for the really cool jobs at top firms. But, not competition for A job.

>>6750810
>this
also thanks for calling me good^^... doing a PhD on topological optimization of dynamic structures

>>6751309
nobodies bragging, and i havnt switched, well from one engr to another, but only because i didnt really know what i wanted to do then realized.

>>6744323
>Engineering is competitive
>Medical School pushes you to the limits

I lol'd pretty hard when I realized you were serious, but then I realized that most people seem to believe this and felt sad for humanity.

I just started a level 2 college course for EE in the UK, and apparently its piss-easy to get a job with a level 3 NVQ, as long as you're willing to move around the country, which I will do next year. Hell, I know people who got decent jobs after just the year-long level 2 diploma I'm doing now.

I'd like to go to a real uni at some point, but I'm kinda old (27), so I really need to start making serious money first. Gonna be doing 3 nights of hard labour to support myself, followed by 3 days of coursework for the next 2 years. I will be working on my maths in the evenings, pass the A levels exam within the year.

Being an immigrant with no education or serious employment history in the UK is interesting, to say the least. You really can go a long way with simple confidence, even if you lack the paperwork.

>>6751325
The reason for why people think med school pushes you to the limits is Scrubs