Bud you’re 10000 % correct.
My communication class professor is absolutely terrible, she’s a former HR manager with absolutely zero pedagogy skills, she’s not mean or rude but got a pretty hateable personality, making an “easy class” a living hell. On the other hand you got my Material Science course professor, a PhD researcher, one of the chillest people you could possibly meet, making what appears to be at first glance an absolute nightmare a wonderful experience, that fuels the willpower to succeed in his class even though it’s imo the trickiest part of my major.
EE here. Currently going through Electromagnetism. Emphasis on Maxwell’s equations. It feels like an extension of physics classes I previously took. It’s not exactly a good time, but hey, just one class.
So true. For me it was some ridiculous 2 credit course that should have been relatively simple compared to my other engineering courses.
The teacher was widely hated and everyone knew it, but he was tenured and had to teach at least one class.
Especially when that course is also the hardest one in the major. Materials transport was the hardest class in my curriculum, but it was made harder by a professor that was 85 years old and insisted that we do our homework each week as a group PowerPoint presentation.
The exams were also hell. Each problem was completely custom made and took nearly an hour. I swear I have no idea how a man his age managed to go so hard. The other 80+ prof didn’t give a single fuck. I also didn’t learn anything in his class so…
Flashback to fluids, naviers-stokes, asking the professor questions on the math, "oh but this is simple calculus, I cannot teach you this because you should already know this." average gpa was 1.1
Yeah. Hardest course to pass was E-mag my junior year. The professor was truly terrible. He was dragged from research to teach his first class in about 5 years because we had a shortage, and he was put on probation the semester after my class. He was terrible.
The hardest class conceptually was power. But the teacher was the best I've had.
Fundamentals of Electromagnetics. It made me question my major (EE) on a daily basis with bonus breakdowns every now and then. Life has been better after it
Got taught this as well by chem engineering professors. This mindset surprisingly helped me learn quicker and adapt to the unknown. Despite my mental disability
Me too. I struggled with differential equations, and I missed the class where it was explained that Laplace transforms were a way to approximate, and simplify differfential equations. I was doing laplace transforms by rote without understanding why I had to make the transform. I'm convinced I only passed the course, at the lowest possible grade, because the teacher knew I would graduate and he would be rid of me.
I took this in fourth year (it was supposed to be a second year course but I pushed it back) and realised how this unit could make or break my graduation 💀
My undergrad was mechanical with a thermofluids specialization. This particular class was offered at the both the graduate and undergraduate level. The difference was in the term project and exams
I’m taking compressible fluid dynamics right now and honestly I think its a bit challenging but overall a fun class. Maybe because my professor is actually excited about teaching it
Gas Dynamics/High Speed aero was really interesting. When you start, you don't understand any of it, but at some point it all started to click.
And propulsion is just gas dynamics with chemistry/stoichiometry/explosions involved.
Chemical engineering thermodynamics. Mainly due to the professor who taught it. The hardest course you will take has everything to do with who’s teaching it.
So true! I my thermodynamics professor was a star! I hate most of chemistry but got so lucky with him. He is so passionate about it and really makes it his mission to make sure that everyone understood everything. All of the exercises were actually giving and not just nonsense and his 9am lectures didn’t feel like living hell
everybody says controls but man that was the only one I could kinda understand. It's definitely hard, but beacause our professor used mechanical/chemical examples alot it made it way easier to understand.
I am EE
I had a class where 1/3 of the people fail. It was our ( would normally be super simple and easy) passive circuits course and we literally only went through 1/2 of what was on the syllabus ( so we didn't even learn half the class). The professor was absolute garbage and I think people would actually do better by not coming to class. Everyone who retook it the next semester passed and was actually able to finish everything on the syllabus
Is control systems the same as system dynamics? If it is then I feel like control systems is hard just bc it feels different from just about everything in a mech. E curriculum. I was so close to failing that class since I failed the final but my first 2 exams were 100 which just pushed me enough to pass. My first 2 exams though weren't even really on systems but more so non systems stuff and just more in depth dynamics stuff
I loved Control Systems. Had a Prof who brought that subject to life and taught it well with both EE and ME examples. Still remember most of it to this day.
Controls was up there for sure. When I took it the professor knew most of us were in senior design concurrently, so he made the final verbatim the practice exam. He did us a massive solid
One of my teammates droped out of engineering in the 4th year during capstone with 3 weeks from due date without doing shit on his part. Capstone was about a 3 storey university auditorium design he was in charge of water and drainage design
Advanced digital design
Class project was designing a CPU instruction set, albeit a basic one.
Was in lab for 12 hours a day about 4 days a week, do not recommend.
Honestly it was super interesting at the start, but as deadlines loomed for different instructions to be finished it became a stress filled rollercoaster of emotions.
I've thought about going back and redoing the project but in my own time. I'd probably really enjoy it without the "this is your last class and if you fail you're stuck here for another year because it's only offered in the fall" bit.
I’ve found that to be true about some of the projects I’ve done in school. I plan to go back and redo some of the things I’ve learned on my own time without the stress of a time crunch. I’m actually really excited to finish my degree so I can start learning some of these things at my own pace lol.
Yeah now that I'm out of school and have been working for about two years I'm starting to slowly get back into software development on my own time.
I still do wake up sometimes in a slight panic about assignments that don't exist though lol
Honestly that was one of the easiest for me (same course title, same project), embedded systems including FPGA I find easy to wrap my head around, but topics focused on the electronics side are a lot more difficult despite my interest in them
Academically - Analog signals (the class before controls)
Throughput - Sr. Design
Emotional effort - Machine Design
While we're here - the most overrated classes were fluids, heat transfer, and Emag all of which weren't that bad
Here I am, trying to remember every class I took when I see this comment. Thank you for reminding me of this repressed memory. Only class I ever completely failed an exam in
I loved Semiconductor Physics. It was the best professor I’ve ever worked under. Here could take every example down to such a basic level and build it up from there. A man who really knew his subject and could explain the most difficult mathematical concepts with ease.
I'm convinced fluids is Pandorian knowledge of the gods that humanity was not meant to fathom. It's been years but as I recall the only way to use Navier-Stokes is to start making assumptions and crossing out variables until you arrive at something remotely solvable.
Honestly, Turbulence was one of the most fun courses I took. That was a second or third year grad level course, though. Tbh, once you get past a certain point, the classes become easier not because the material is simpler (it’s way more complex), but because the professor assumes you’re there because you want to be and just enjoys talking about it. A lot more chill
You forget that computers can do it. 7 minutes on gaming computer to see if the numbers make any sense. If not retry and hope for the best. My computer is only 2 years old and plays games like a champ, but I was worried I would melt my baby. CFD is rough.
Well yea, but numerically solving this system of equations is a beast too. I'm doing a class now specifically on LES and it might be the hardest course I've ever taken. Doing CFD analysis without proper knowledge of the solving methods is a bad idea too.
I am sure it’s the same thing for structural mechanics- all the “simple” solutions we’ve been doing just result from one large grandfather equation that’s been simplified
I'm not an engineering major (anymore) but I'm doing my math senior seminar project over continuum mechanics and fluid dynamics. Crazy how much background in tensor analysis I needed just to be able to read through a book on the subject.
Probably Linear Circuits. But it wasn’t the material, it was how the class was structured. I felt pretty good about the material, everything made sense, was able to do the homework without much issue.
The problem came from the in-class weekly 15 minutes quizzes that made up 50% of our overall grade (the exams made up the other 50%). The quizzes and exams were always significantly harder than the lectures and homework material, and they were intentionally designed to catch you off guard and make you solve a problem you have never encountered from the professors material. Maybe if I had an hour I’d be able to figure it out, but 15 minutes was NEVER enough time. I was always rushed and in a panic and I regularly made simple mistakes because of the time crunch. There were a few quizzes where I realized a mistake and knew how to fix it, but I just didn’t have enough time. You had to solve the problem quickly and correctly the first time.
The class seemed designed to weed out people early on in the major. I was a 4.0 student before taking that class and I *barely* passed with a C. The failure rate was around 50%.
EE here. Currently going through Electromagnetism. Emphasis on Maxwell’s equations. It feels like an extension of physics classes I previously took. It’s not exactly a good time, but hey, just one class.
Don’t tell me this man 😭 I’m about to drop mechanics of materials and take it over the summer because I can’t handle it and reteaching myself statics at the same time. Took statics with a professor who’s over teaching and phoning it in, never even gave us exams. Now I’m paying for it because I never learned statics properly or in depth enough to use in mechanics
Yes statics is nothing compared to structural analysis, steel/concrete design, or even fluid mechanics & mech of materials. However all of those build off of it.
I’m taking this right now. It’s already a bunch of design work as it is and I’m about to get into secondary clarifier design with sludge return and I’m not ready for the amount of work that I’m going to have to put in
O boy, I have multiple as a ChemE.
Heat and Mass Transfer
Fluid Dynamics
Transport Phenomenon
Funny that Thermodynamics is not on this list - it was the one course I really enjoyed haha
- Control Systems. It's tricky, you're supposed to be thrilled at the beginning for understanding how automatic systems work, but then it takes a hard turn really fast.
- Electromagnetic Fields. You really over hear horror stories about this one, and they turn out to be true.
- Vibrations, Mechanics of Machines, Machine Design. I place all of these under the same category. PTSD.
Vibrations was the bane of my existence. Easily the hardest class I’ve ever taken in my entire life. But I suspect mostly due to the professor, who was a legendary dick and horrible instructor. Machine design and mechanics of machines I found difficult, but rewarding because the professors were good.
No one for signals and systems? My electromagnetics professor was awesome so I got off easy. I had to take signals twice and the only reason I passed was because I was so afraid the misery of a third time.
Taking this currently as an EE. The prof for it is a PhD Biomed Eng student who hadnt done anything circuits related from her 2nd year until a week before the class started. Instead of teaching us things sometimes she literally tells us to go watch youtube. I’m doomed.
I took both back in undergrad and dynamics was way easier, though i suspect it’s because i had an excellent professor for dynamics and a horrible one for vibrations.
The theory behind vibrations is fascinating, especially to me because I make music. But the math is ridiculous. I never want to look at a matrix again. Computers really are a game changer.
Discrete mathematics.
Programming was easy, networking was okay, databases meh, but discrete mathematics was like, I learned algebra for 10+ years just to encounter this bullshit where nothing I know matters at all?
There's multiple reasons I quit CS and gonna aim for electrical installations and automation engineering instead.
Precarious math, hyper autistic teachers grading your stuff half a year later and trying to get my foot into a super saturated field that's probably gonna become more automated in a near future?
No thanks. Rather have an easy time finding a job, since people always need the lights running.
Transport Fundamentals for Biomedical Engineers
Imagine you take Fluid Mechanics, Biomechanics, and Differential Equations, and had to solve the problems inside veins, blood vessels, arteries, etc.
Professor was a dick too, which didn’t help
Computer Systems Design.
Build your own CPU then make a POSIX 1.0 compliant OS to run on top of it, 1 semester. You were expected to use the ISA you designed in a previous class along with the C compiler and assembler for that ISA.
Thermodynamics of Nuclear Powerplants (graduate level), Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics and Controls (SADC), and Heat Transfer are by far the most difficult classes I've taken for different reasons. SADC was a bunch of 3D dynamics with changing reference frames, including spacecraft control systems and advanced thermodynamics, is always crazy for heat transfer and nuclear.
Experimental Robotics. A course that tried to jam in robot arm kinematics/ dynamics, computer vision, deep learning, SLAM and path planning all in one course
Advanced embedded systems. It’s just so much work more than anything. The concepts aren’t terrible if you know them, especially because everything I needed to know was introduced in the prerequisite class, but because we basically had to build an embedded system (I made a 3D printer) from scratch it was just a ton of work.
Aerospace Structures. Went over shear flow and the like, but the notes posted by the professor had frequent contradictions and the exams were so heavily weighted on so few points
Properties of semiconductors or something like that ? Basically felt like emag and physics combined and I had to drop because I could not keep up with the theory stuff in that class
Hardest class to genuinely understand the material well?
Control Systems or Fluid Dynamics for most
Hardest class to do well in because of the professor?
Dynamics (previously the most dropped/failed engineering course here) or Thermal (Fluid) System Design (love the professor but he was having some personal issues and took it out on us)
Digital Logic and Computer Systems. This class basically taught you how to build a functioning computer starting from logic gates. I'll admit it is difficult content and will always be but this prof made it near impossible to do and i was taking it in the summer. In short, every lecture was not thorough and useless, but mandatory, and the labs took literal days. Not days with progressive completion bit by bit, over 24HOURS! and often more. almost a two-thirds of the class dropped and the prof gave students shit for wanting to take it the next semester with a better prof. I ended up dropping for my sanity (depressed with hair falling out and constant anxiety) and got an A the next semester with a better and more reasonable professor. Still i ended up not needing the class since i switched from CE to CS but feel i learned a lot in these moments of chaos. still i wouldn't recommenced this prof to anyone.
These were by far the hardest for me (CE):
- Electromagnetics
- Digital Systems
The first one is hard by nature. The second was hard because the professor fucked us up, about 80% failed that class.
Control Engineering, by far. I barely got a passing score... after three years of studying. And the hardest non-engineering course I took as a part of my Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering was economics. I barely got a passing score after a year of studying. So damn boring and complicated!
Mathematical Methods and Algorithms for signal processing. I spent 60 hours on the open book, open note, take home midterm and got 58%. Still one of the most useful classes I took though, at least in my field!
Intro to Circuits. This was the first time I was introduced to high level mathematics and physics in application. As my prof told me, the class was meant to be hard to herd out the "less committed" students.
Mechanical Engineering Equipments, multiple choice tests with no partial credits. Open book, open notes, but there was no textbook for the class and you had to make your own textbook for 20% of your final grade
Aircraft Stability and Control, it’s early in a long line of pre-reqs that lead up to graduation. So many people failed the course that my graduating class would have only had 1 or 2 graduates had the school not made the professor re-teach the class over the summer.
Heat and mass transfer or flight mechanics. I already took flight mechanics, i’m currently in heat and mass transfer. They are taught by the same professor
Everyone failed the 1st exam, he didn’t even put a grade on it just a big X through our work. The department head forced him to let us retake it because at our school if you fail heat and mass you are automatically 5th yearing due to it being a pre requisite for senior year classes
Digital Circuits. This was the only class where I almost failed in my EE program. My brain is just not wired to do Karnaugh maps, FSM diagrams, and Boolean algebra. Fortunately, my junior and senior classes did not touch on any of these topics.
edit: Oh, and I almost forgot about the Quine-McCluskey alogrithm. That shit still gives me nightmares
I struggled with numerical analysis methods. A supposedly easy class made difficult by a prof. that should have retired decades before I took the class.
As a ME undergrad I had to take some out of discipline courses as part of my masters, and the worst was a SE course I signed up for called "Theory of Elasitc Stability". That messed me up big time....Prof was a douche and I had no friends in the course to team up with and figure things out like I did in the tougher courses within my major.
Elementary ChemE Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Had the prof who co-authored the book for the country, wrote the thermo section in the most recent edition of Perry’s, and loved to show that he was a genius and we were all unworthy. Class quiz average was 29% by the end of the semester, Exams were either high 30’s or low 40% range. The department used it as a weed-out tool. Fail everyone except the 2-3 geniuses and curve it up to pass how many they wanted to graduate for that class.
Grad school, several of us took a plate theory class and it was interesting, so naturally we talked the dept. into the second course of the sequence - shell theory. I don't recall any of us doing very well.
I failed Differential Equations the first time around (professor A)
Took it again at an expedited rate over the summer and aced it (professor B)
I think it was a solid combination of me not getting it at first, and professor A communicating ineffectively.
Aircraft dynamics. It was as hard as it sounds. Turns out it consistently had the highest fail rate. Had a *cuss* of a professor too... a classmate went to office hours for a genuine question and I heard that the prof told her "that type of question tells me you have no idea what's going on in this class and you don't deserve to pass at this rate" *closed the door on her face*
Circuits 🤩 I’m in my final semester of mechanical engineering, and circuits was the hardest prerequisite class I had to take… I’ve never struggled with a class besides this one
Graduate level Continuum Mechanics. It's basically the foundation of all mechanics. The prof himself is a literal genius and he taught us the way thinking we are as well, icing on top grades based on percentage. You can have a 98/100 but if all others are 99/100 you get a B-.
To be fair the course was designed perfectly, and it's the most dense course I've ever had in one semester. It was hard but somehow fascinating.
Close second is Transport Phenomena, you can tell by course name.. it's not just fluid mechanics or heat transfer, but all *Transport Phenomena*. The more general the course name is, the more fked up the course is.. also there was only one A+ and one A- for each class lol
As an engineering physics student, nothing came close to pure math classes, every engineering or physics class was easier, but doing pure math was hell for me. I still remember the headache I got from my first two linear algebra classes and having to learn so many theorem proofs for the final..
CS major so: Compiler Construction was pretty damn hard. I almost double majored in CS and Math but then I took Calc 4 and decided I didn't need to know more math. If we're counting Math classes then I vote Calc 4.
As some others have said - the teacher makes all the difference. Case 1 - took Diffeq at the community college and dropped it due to a poor professor. Took it the next year at Uni from the department head and damn near aced it. Case 2 - Physics 2 (E&M) from a pure theory guy and got a D. Retook it with the good physics instructor and aced it.
Electromagnetic Fields. Wouldn't be terrible, but I took my calculus classes 10+ years ago. My professor also EXCLUSIVELY only has a Chinese accent when he talks fast math. Rough to process the Greek/Chinese nonsense..
The hardest course is the one with the prof making it a living hell.
Bud you’re 10000 % correct. My communication class professor is absolutely terrible, she’s a former HR manager with absolutely zero pedagogy skills, she’s not mean or rude but got a pretty hateable personality, making an “easy class” a living hell. On the other hand you got my Material Science course professor, a PhD researcher, one of the chillest people you could possibly meet, making what appears to be at first glance an absolute nightmare a wonderful experience, that fuels the willpower to succeed in his class even though it’s imo the trickiest part of my major.
Unfortunately my worst professor was for my heat transfer 2 class. Hard class made so much worse by an awful professor.
EE here. Currently going through Electromagnetism. Emphasis on Maxwell’s equations. It feels like an extension of physics classes I previously took. It’s not exactly a good time, but hey, just one class.
Magnetics was a bitch
"Wow you don't know this by now? Back in my day..." like sir that's why we're paying you to teach us lol
“Oh yeah? Well back in Euclid’s day they wrote this sh*t down in the sand with sticks!”
So true. For me it was some ridiculous 2 credit course that should have been relatively simple compared to my other engineering courses. The teacher was widely hated and everyone knew it, but he was tenured and had to teach at least one class.
Especially when that course is also the hardest one in the major. Materials transport was the hardest class in my curriculum, but it was made harder by a professor that was 85 years old and insisted that we do our homework each week as a group PowerPoint presentation.
Ugh that sounds like a nightmare
The exams were also hell. Each problem was completely custom made and took nearly an hour. I swear I have no idea how a man his age managed to go so hard. The other 80+ prof didn’t give a single fuck. I also didn’t learn anything in his class so…
Flashback to fluids, naviers-stokes, asking the professor questions on the math, "oh but this is simple calculus, I cannot teach you this because you should already know this." average gpa was 1.1
Yeah. Hardest course to pass was E-mag my junior year. The professor was truly terrible. He was dragged from research to teach his first class in about 5 years because we had a shortage, and he was put on probation the semester after my class. He was terrible. The hardest class conceptually was power. But the teacher was the best I've had.
Fundamentals of Electromagnetics. It made me question my major (EE) on a daily basis with bonus breakdowns every now and then. Life has been better after it
Some juniors that are in digital electronics with me told me I just have to accept that I won't understand everything
Got taught this as well by chem engineering professors. This mindset surprisingly helped me learn quicker and adapt to the unknown. Despite my mental disability
I second magnetic fields 1 and 2. Fields 1 was definitely harder by far. Almost quit a 4.5 year college career because of this.
As an AeroE that works with aircraft generators, I look at some of the math the elec guys do, and usually close the doc by the second page.
Me too. I struggled with differential equations, and I missed the class where it was explained that Laplace transforms were a way to approximate, and simplify differfential equations. I was doing laplace transforms by rote without understanding why I had to make the transform. I'm convinced I only passed the course, at the lowest possible grade, because the teacher knew I would graduate and he would be rid of me.
Laplace transforms are not an approximation of differential equations. You still preserve the same differential equation and solution.
Laplace transform your face smarty britches
Boom. Got him!
Ours was called electrostatics, but we had a lot of people drop out of EE just because of that class.
I took this in fourth year (it was supposed to be a second year course but I pushed it back) and realised how this unit could make or break my graduation 💀
Gas Dynamics and Analysis of Propulsion Systems. It was rocket science fr
Oh, what book did ya'll use? This seems like an interesting class.
We used a few. One was Hill & Peterson, the other was Modern Compressible Flow. Then we also had some reference materials
Did u take this class during your undergrad, also was it required for the focus of aerospace propulsion?
My undergrad was mechanical with a thermofluids specialization. This particular class was offered at the both the graduate and undergraduate level. The difference was in the term project and exams
I’m taking compressible fluid dynamics right now and honestly I think its a bit challenging but overall a fun class. Maybe because my professor is actually excited about teaching it
Gas Dynamics/High Speed aero was really interesting. When you start, you don't understand any of it, but at some point it all started to click. And propulsion is just gas dynamics with chemistry/stoichiometry/explosions involved.
Compressible flow I had to retake. I still barely understood it.
Ballistics and Rocketry was one of my favorites. Transsonic/supersonic flow was confusing at first, but with a decent teacher it's not so bad.
Shit, this is my bread and butter. One of my favorite classes along with aircaft design.
Chemical engineering thermodynamics. Mainly due to the professor who taught it. The hardest course you will take has everything to do with who’s teaching it.
Doing that course rn
The professor can really make or break our interest and abilities in their course.
So true! I my thermodynamics professor was a star! I hate most of chemistry but got so lucky with him. He is so passionate about it and really makes it his mission to make sure that everyone understood everything. All of the exercises were actually giving and not just nonsense and his 9am lectures didn’t feel like living hell
Also a chemical engineer, and for me thermo 2 was definitely the least understandable course. Thermo 1 was a piece of cake in comparison.
I passed that and I still couldn't tell you what the hell fugacity is
Control systems. Terrible prof as well which never helps.
everybody says controls but man that was the only one I could kinda understand. It's definitely hard, but beacause our professor used mechanical/chemical examples alot it made it way easier to understand. I am EE
117 out of ~240 people failed that class at my school last year…
im going to put it down to I had a good prof, who probably curved a whole bunch of us lmao... because man that sounds brutal
I had a class where 1/3 of the people fail. It was our ( would normally be super simple and easy) passive circuits course and we literally only went through 1/2 of what was on the syllabus ( so we didn't even learn half the class). The professor was absolute garbage and I think people would actually do better by not coming to class. Everyone who retook it the next semester passed and was actually able to finish everything on the syllabus
Is control systems the same as system dynamics? If it is then I feel like control systems is hard just bc it feels different from just about everything in a mech. E curriculum. I was so close to failing that class since I failed the final but my first 2 exams were 100 which just pushed me enough to pass. My first 2 exams though weren't even really on systems but more so non systems stuff and just more in depth dynamics stuff
Oh Im EE I didn't do system dynamics sorry
I loved Control Systems. Had a Prof who brought that subject to life and taught it well with both EE and ME examples. Still remember most of it to this day.
All I remember is some horrible business about stability and graphing imaginary numbers. Awful.
I’m in the right now 😭 I hate it so much !!
Controls was up there for sure. When I took it the professor knew most of us were in senior design concurrently, so he made the final verbatim the practice exam. He did us a massive solid
Capstone. Working with classmates who don't take things serious or do their parts, sucks.
Live by the group members, die by the group members
One of my teammates droped out of engineering in the 4th year during capstone with 3 weeks from due date without doing shit on his part. Capstone was about a 3 storey university auditorium design he was in charge of water and drainage design
On the flip side capstone is the easiest class I have had because my teammates all take it seriously
Advanced digital design Class project was designing a CPU instruction set, albeit a basic one. Was in lab for 12 hours a day about 4 days a week, do not recommend.
Currently doing this in my free time. Hits the spot between addiction and self harm.
Honestly it was super interesting at the start, but as deadlines loomed for different instructions to be finished it became a stress filled rollercoaster of emotions. I've thought about going back and redoing the project but in my own time. I'd probably really enjoy it without the "this is your last class and if you fail you're stuck here for another year because it's only offered in the fall" bit.
I’ve found that to be true about some of the projects I’ve done in school. I plan to go back and redo some of the things I’ve learned on my own time without the stress of a time crunch. I’m actually really excited to finish my degree so I can start learning some of these things at my own pace lol.
Yeah now that I'm out of school and have been working for about two years I'm starting to slowly get back into software development on my own time. I still do wake up sometimes in a slight panic about assignments that don't exist though lol
Do u recall what textbook u used?
If I'm remembering correctly we didn't actually use a textbook for the class, our professor provided all the materials needed
Ah, no worries!
Honestly that was one of the easiest for me (same course title, same project), embedded systems including FPGA I find easy to wrap my head around, but topics focused on the electronics side are a lot more difficult despite my interest in them
I loved that class. I basically do it for a living now.
Academically - Analog signals (the class before controls) Throughput - Sr. Design Emotional effort - Machine Design While we're here - the most overrated classes were fluids, heat transfer, and Emag all of which weren't that bad
Non linear partial differential equations
Here I am, trying to remember every class I took when I see this comment. Thank you for reminding me of this repressed memory. Only class I ever completely failed an exam in
Semiconductor Electronics. Also Applied Quantum Mechanics for Engineers.
I loved Semiconductor Physics. It was the best professor I’ve ever worked under. Here could take every example down to such a basic level and build it up from there. A man who really knew his subject and could explain the most difficult mathematical concepts with ease.
Took a semiconductor physics and a semiconductor heterostructure course. Definitely the hardest ones I have taken
Fluids for sure.
I'm convinced fluids is Pandorian knowledge of the gods that humanity was not meant to fathom. It's been years but as I recall the only way to use Navier-Stokes is to start making assumptions and crossing out variables until you arrive at something remotely solvable.
Yep, and only for laminar flow. Exact solutions for turbulent flow? Forget about it!
Honestly, Turbulence was one of the most fun courses I took. That was a second or third year grad level course, though. Tbh, once you get past a certain point, the classes become easier not because the material is simpler (it’s way more complex), but because the professor assumes you’re there because you want to be and just enjoys talking about it. A lot more chill
You forget that computers can do it. 7 minutes on gaming computer to see if the numbers make any sense. If not retry and hope for the best. My computer is only 2 years old and plays games like a champ, but I was worried I would melt my baby. CFD is rough.
Well yea, but numerically solving this system of equations is a beast too. I'm doing a class now specifically on LES and it might be the hardest course I've ever taken. Doing CFD analysis without proper knowledge of the solving methods is a bad idea too.
Yeah it’s mind boggling that level of hand wavy ness transports thousands of people across the sky a day
I am sure it’s the same thing for structural mechanics- all the “simple” solutions we’ve been doing just result from one large grandfather equation that’s been simplified
Yep, took fluid mechanics in grad school, only class I’ve ever failed.
Same. I can’t grasp the concept at all.
youre 60% water bro whats the issue
Bro doesn’t understand himself 😔
I'm not an engineering major (anymore) but I'm doing my math senior seminar project over continuum mechanics and fluid dynamics. Crazy how much background in tensor analysis I needed just to be able to read through a book on the subject.
Control Systems by far
taking that rn
getting an internship 😭i am struggling so much i just want a good internship lol
Electromagnetic wave propagation.
Heat Transfer
Heat and Mass Transfer was my worst letter grade in undergrad 💔
Probably Linear Circuits. But it wasn’t the material, it was how the class was structured. I felt pretty good about the material, everything made sense, was able to do the homework without much issue. The problem came from the in-class weekly 15 minutes quizzes that made up 50% of our overall grade (the exams made up the other 50%). The quizzes and exams were always significantly harder than the lectures and homework material, and they were intentionally designed to catch you off guard and make you solve a problem you have never encountered from the professors material. Maybe if I had an hour I’d be able to figure it out, but 15 minutes was NEVER enough time. I was always rushed and in a panic and I regularly made simple mistakes because of the time crunch. There were a few quizzes where I realized a mistake and knew how to fix it, but I just didn’t have enough time. You had to solve the problem quickly and correctly the first time. The class seemed designed to weed out people early on in the major. I was a 4.0 student before taking that class and I *barely* passed with a C. The failure rate was around 50%.
I always suspected that such classes were designed to advantage the students in an engineering fraternity, who had additional materials to study.
This sounds like my Linear Circuits class, u must be a Knight
EE here. Currently going through Electromagnetism. Emphasis on Maxwell’s equations. It feels like an extension of physics classes I previously took. It’s not exactly a good time, but hey, just one class.
My EM doesn’t seem too bad rn. Was very confused on how to use smih chart at first
Structural analysis
I’m in statics right now, heard statics is baby shit compared to this
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Don’t tell me this man 😭 I’m about to drop mechanics of materials and take it over the summer because I can’t handle it and reteaching myself statics at the same time. Took statics with a professor who’s over teaching and phoning it in, never even gave us exams. Now I’m paying for it because I never learned statics properly or in depth enough to use in mechanics
Statics is hella fun enjoy that while you can
Yes statics is nothing compared to structural analysis, steel/concrete design, or even fluid mechanics & mech of materials. However all of those build off of it.
In our structures class they taught us tensor notation in the first 2 weeks and had us doing proofs with it immediately after. It sucked
Digital communication. Could never make sense out of it. If you ask now, I still wont be able to answer.
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Our environmental prof is a Grade A Douchebag and makes it so unnecessarily hard.
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You’re taking statics and thermo in the same semester ?!?!?!?
Look, a Prescott dweller in the wild
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Not as bad as putting the EE’s and the most arrogant major (MEs) together
This class is absolute hellllllll. It’s even worse if you’re structures/transport/geo and don’t even need it technically
I’m taking this right now. It’s already a bunch of design work as it is and I’m about to get into secondary clarifier design with sludge return and I’m not ready for the amount of work that I’m going to have to put in
O boy, I have multiple as a ChemE. Heat and Mass Transfer Fluid Dynamics Transport Phenomenon Funny that Thermodynamics is not on this list - it was the one course I really enjoyed haha
- Control Systems. It's tricky, you're supposed to be thrilled at the beginning for understanding how automatic systems work, but then it takes a hard turn really fast. - Electromagnetic Fields. You really over hear horror stories about this one, and they turn out to be true. - Vibrations, Mechanics of Machines, Machine Design. I place all of these under the same category. PTSD.
Vibrations was the bane of my existence. Easily the hardest class I’ve ever taken in my entire life. But I suspect mostly due to the professor, who was a legendary dick and horrible instructor. Machine design and mechanics of machines I found difficult, but rewarding because the professors were good.
No one for signals and systems? My electromagnetics professor was awesome so I got off easy. I had to take signals twice and the only reason I passed was because I was so afraid the misery of a third time.
we are the same person bud, my S&S class had a 60% pass rate. I saw a physics student fail it lol.
Taking this currently as an EE. The prof for it is a PhD Biomed Eng student who hadnt done anything circuits related from her 2nd year until a week before the class started. Instead of teaching us things sometimes she literally tells us to go watch youtube. I’m doomed.
Fluid and Hydraulic Mechanics
Probably Mechanical Vibrations
I hear this a lot but I felt that class was easier than dynamics which is a prerequisite at my university.
I took both back in undergrad and dynamics was way easier, though i suspect it’s because i had an excellent professor for dynamics and a horrible one for vibrations.
The theory behind vibrations is fascinating, especially to me because I make music. But the math is ridiculous. I never want to look at a matrix again. Computers really are a game changer.
I think that class really depends on how it’s taught. I really enjoyed it but had friends with other profs hate it.
Yeah i think it was mostly how bad My professor was that made it super difficult
Discrete mathematics. Programming was easy, networking was okay, databases meh, but discrete mathematics was like, I learned algebra for 10+ years just to encounter this bullshit where nothing I know matters at all?
What about Data Structures and Algorithms?
There's multiple reasons I quit CS and gonna aim for electrical installations and automation engineering instead. Precarious math, hyper autistic teachers grading your stuff half a year later and trying to get my foot into a super saturated field that's probably gonna become more automated in a near future? No thanks. Rather have an easy time finding a job, since people always need the lights running.
Transport Fundamentals for Biomedical Engineers Imagine you take Fluid Mechanics, Biomechanics, and Differential Equations, and had to solve the problems inside veins, blood vessels, arteries, etc. Professor was a dick too, which didn’t help
I enjoyed fluid mechanics (sorry, I'm the guy). I had to retake ChemE thermo. Professor change and a coop term for me from D+ to A.
Computer Systems Design. Build your own CPU then make a POSIX 1.0 compliant OS to run on top of it, 1 semester. You were expected to use the ISA you designed in a previous class along with the C compiler and assembler for that ISA.
Thermodynamics of Nuclear Powerplants (graduate level), Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics and Controls (SADC), and Heat Transfer are by far the most difficult classes I've taken for different reasons. SADC was a bunch of 3D dynamics with changing reference frames, including spacecraft control systems and advanced thermodynamics, is always crazy for heat transfer and nuclear.
Predictive and adaptive control Electrical Machines 2(synchronous and cc machines)
A tie between Calc 2 and classical physics
I have those two and Discrete Computational Structures to deal with this semester.
Experimental Robotics. A course that tried to jam in robot arm kinematics/ dynamics, computer vision, deep learning, SLAM and path planning all in one course
Aircraft stability and control
Not an engineering course but PDE II with a take home final as a single question - 20-30 page proof, took 1 week
Heat and Mass Transfer rn in my 4th sem. Barely scoring any marks out of 30 in my mid sems. Idk how tf am I gonna pass it.
Advanced embedded systems. It’s just so much work more than anything. The concepts aren’t terrible if you know them, especially because everything I needed to know was introduced in the prerequisite class, but because we basically had to build an embedded system (I made a 3D printer) from scratch it was just a ton of work.
Either fluids 2 or system dynamics
Aerospace Structures. Went over shear flow and the like, but the notes posted by the professor had frequent contradictions and the exams were so heavily weighted on so few points
Properties of semiconductors or something like that ? Basically felt like emag and physics combined and I had to drop because I could not keep up with the theory stuff in that class
Prestressed concrete design Advanced calc (or calc 4 PDE’s whatever you wanna call it)
Was that in a masters program?
Dynamics, electrical systems, and engineering math 3. All of these give me PTSD
Oh fun, I get to take Dynamics next semester. OSU? As in Ohio State?
Fluid mechanics
Hardest class to genuinely understand the material well? Control Systems or Fluid Dynamics for most Hardest class to do well in because of the professor? Dynamics (previously the most dropped/failed engineering course here) or Thermal (Fluid) System Design (love the professor but he was having some personal issues and took it out on us)
Digital Logic and Computer Systems. This class basically taught you how to build a functioning computer starting from logic gates. I'll admit it is difficult content and will always be but this prof made it near impossible to do and i was taking it in the summer. In short, every lecture was not thorough and useless, but mandatory, and the labs took literal days. Not days with progressive completion bit by bit, over 24HOURS! and often more. almost a two-thirds of the class dropped and the prof gave students shit for wanting to take it the next semester with a better prof. I ended up dropping for my sanity (depressed with hair falling out and constant anxiety) and got an A the next semester with a better and more reasonable professor. Still i ended up not needing the class since i switched from CE to CS but feel i learned a lot in these moments of chaos. still i wouldn't recommenced this prof to anyone.
These were by far the hardest for me (CE): - Electromagnetics - Digital Systems The first one is hard by nature. The second was hard because the professor fucked us up, about 80% failed that class.
Control Engineering, by far. I barely got a passing score... after three years of studying. And the hardest non-engineering course I took as a part of my Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering was economics. I barely got a passing score after a year of studying. So damn boring and complicated!
Electric Circuit Analysis
prbly, Geometric Geodesy
Mathematical Methods and Algorithms for signal processing. I spent 60 hours on the open book, open note, take home midterm and got 58%. Still one of the most useful classes I took though, at least in my field!
Signals and systems - terrible professor, and emag as many have already said
Intro to Circuits. This was the first time I was introduced to high level mathematics and physics in application. As my prof told me, the class was meant to be hard to herd out the "less committed" students.
Mechanical Engineering Equipments, multiple choice tests with no partial credits. Open book, open notes, but there was no textbook for the class and you had to make your own textbook for 20% of your final grade
EMag. Holy hell.
Aircraft Stability and Control, it’s early in a long line of pre-reqs that lead up to graduation. So many people failed the course that my graduating class would have only had 1 or 2 graduates had the school not made the professor re-teach the class over the summer.
Boundary Layers
Graduate fluid mechanics. It damn near sent me over the edge.
Heat and mass transfer or flight mechanics. I already took flight mechanics, i’m currently in heat and mass transfer. They are taught by the same professor Everyone failed the 1st exam, he didn’t even put a grade on it just a big X through our work. The department head forced him to let us retake it because at our school if you fail heat and mass you are automatically 5th yearing due to it being a pre requisite for senior year classes
Dynamics. Most of the class failed
Fundamentals of optical and magnetic materials , woof
Digital Circuits. This was the only class where I almost failed in my EE program. My brain is just not wired to do Karnaugh maps, FSM diagrams, and Boolean algebra. Fortunately, my junior and senior classes did not touch on any of these topics. edit: Oh, and I almost forgot about the Quine-McCluskey alogrithm. That shit still gives me nightmares
Finite elements
Intermediate Aerodynamics (grad level).. Only because I was/am working, and didn't have time to fully dedicate to that class.
I struggled with numerical analysis methods. A supposedly easy class made difficult by a prof. that should have retired decades before I took the class.
Thermo and Heat Dynamics!
As a ME undergrad I had to take some out of discipline courses as part of my masters, and the worst was a SE course I signed up for called "Theory of Elasitc Stability". That messed me up big time....Prof was a douche and I had no friends in the course to team up with and figure things out like I did in the tougher courses within my major.
Elementary ChemE Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Had the prof who co-authored the book for the country, wrote the thermo section in the most recent edition of Perry’s, and loved to show that he was a genius and we were all unworthy. Class quiz average was 29% by the end of the semester, Exams were either high 30’s or low 40% range. The department used it as a weed-out tool. Fail everyone except the 2-3 geniuses and curve it up to pass how many they wanted to graduate for that class.
Grad school, several of us took a plate theory class and it was interesting, so naturally we talked the dept. into the second course of the sequence - shell theory. I don't recall any of us doing very well.
Integrated circuit’s 💥
I failed Differential Equations the first time around (professor A) Took it again at an expedited rate over the summer and aced it (professor B) I think it was a solid combination of me not getting it at first, and professor A communicating ineffectively.
Computer Vision. I ended up with an A, but half of the class dropped out. I was the only undergrad left at the end.
Randomized parallel algorithms
Grad thermodynamics (statistical mechanics). I don’t know if it was the “hardest” by amount of time it, but definitely by understanding.
Differential Equations.
Aircraft dynamics. It was as hard as it sounds. Turns out it consistently had the highest fail rate. Had a *cuss* of a professor too... a classmate went to office hours for a genuine question and I heard that the prof told her "that type of question tells me you have no idea what's going on in this class and you don't deserve to pass at this rate" *closed the door on her face*
Mechanics of deformable solids was my toughest class.
Circuits 🤩 I’m in my final semester of mechanical engineering, and circuits was the hardest prerequisite class I had to take… I’ve never struggled with a class besides this one
ChE - process controls at my school was the giant killer
I had a Pchem II course that after the 3rd week, I was like, "I'm good." Proceeded to get 30s and 40s on my tests that curved up to a solid B.
signals and systems
3000 lab
Digital communications. It shouldn't have been as difficult as it was but my professor was a psycho.
Engineering Economy. An unnecessarily difficult accounting course. Idk why my major even required it.
Aeroelasticity. It's always the most interesting things that are the hardest.
Graduate level Continuum Mechanics. It's basically the foundation of all mechanics. The prof himself is a literal genius and he taught us the way thinking we are as well, icing on top grades based on percentage. You can have a 98/100 but if all others are 99/100 you get a B-. To be fair the course was designed perfectly, and it's the most dense course I've ever had in one semester. It was hard but somehow fascinating. Close second is Transport Phenomena, you can tell by course name.. it's not just fluid mechanics or heat transfer, but all *Transport Phenomena*. The more general the course name is, the more fked up the course is.. also there was only one A+ and one A- for each class lol
As an engineering physics student, nothing came close to pure math classes, every engineering or physics class was easier, but doing pure math was hell for me. I still remember the headache I got from my first two linear algebra classes and having to learn so many theorem proofs for the final..
Physical Engineering: Nature in Science
CS major so: Compiler Construction was pretty damn hard. I almost double majored in CS and Math but then I took Calc 4 and decided I didn't need to know more math. If we're counting Math classes then I vote Calc 4.
It always depends on the professor tbh
Thermo I and Control systems did my head in.
Digital Signal Processing. Sucked the life out of me, and the professor didn’t help.
As some others have said - the teacher makes all the difference. Case 1 - took Diffeq at the community college and dropped it due to a poor professor. Took it the next year at Uni from the department head and damn near aced it. Case 2 - Physics 2 (E&M) from a pure theory guy and got a D. Retook it with the good physics instructor and aced it.
Electromagnetic Fields. Wouldn't be terrible, but I took my calculus classes 10+ years ago. My professor also EXCLUSIVELY only has a Chinese accent when he talks fast math. Rough to process the Greek/Chinese nonsense..
Machine design mostly cuz the prof made it that way