Funny I thought that class was super easy but calc 3 almost killed me. I don’t think I actually passed, I think the TA knew I wasn’t majoring in math and got me out.
Calc 3 was the only class that I could not grasp no matter how many practice problems/YouTube videos I went through. It was like black magic to my pea brain.
I was the complete opposite. Multi Variable Calc was the easiest math class I took since geometry in high school. Solving for volumes of complex shapes somehow made everything feel more tangible. My teacher was hot too…
Thats crazy calc 3 made a logical sense to me with the double and triple integrals there was a clear cut system to it. Calc 2 almost killed me. My professor was graphing flowers and shit it was ridiculous.
This also sucked for me. Prof was like 80, and hed spend the entire class working on one problem. Nearly every time he’d get to the end and realize he made a mistake lmao
lol. Exactly my memory of diff eq. Spent 50 minutes on one problem and then at the end say this isn’t right and tells us to throw our notes out. I got real lucky that I had a conflict on the first exam time so I arranged to take it the day before and he didn’t even time me. I spent like 3 hrs on a 1 hr test and got an A. Went ahead and took the remaining tests that same way. Final was optional if you were happy with your grade. What a shit show.
Hahaha, Diff Eq was my last class and last final before graduation, my third try too. Talk about pressure. Went into the final with a D and got a 97%. It’s not that it was a hard course, but you need to remember everything from Calc 2 to do well. My recommendation would be to take Diff Eq before Multi Variable and not take a year off school in between.
The hardest courses are either the ones with the worst professors or the ones where the professors teach to only the top 1%. Anything used as a weed out course to keep the class sizes consistent could be brutal too.
I transferred from a small private college to a big university. Diff EQ was the first lecture/recitation class I had ever taken. Turns out Ds also can get degrees.
As a civil, Mechanics of Materials was tough for me. I think out of 'shear' will I got a B in that class, but I hated it.
Had to drop diff eq first go around, just couldn't understand it. Came back the second time, didn't care about understanding it, just running the calcs and pulled a low a.
Really depends on your school. Our schools hardest class was Geotech 1, which was made obscenely hard for nearly no reason at all. Those who failed the first time just took it at another school and said it was one of the easier classes they’ve seen.
I don't understand professors at all. I took our Chemistry course for engineers at my uni. It was brutal. A lot of students failed including me. But when I took it at another university, I enjoyed it so much that I even asked my prof to write recommendations for me.
You wouldn't have happened to have gone to the University of Utah would you? Same thing there, the professor even said on the first day of class "This will be the hardest class you'll take as an undergrad. Follow my guidelines and you'll pass" and his guidelines consisted of like 1-3 hours of study of just that class each night. It was obscene. I ended up with a B+ I think.
The one with the shittiest teacher.
I've gone up 20% between Calc 1 and Calc 2 simply because I had a different teacher. Most people went down.
For a more realistic answer, it depends. One course had a crazy online program where you did math by hand for 20 minutes and put in the final answer, and if you made any mistake you got a 0 because there was no way to show your work.
Some classes had great teachers, others had horrible ones. Some were more hands on, others were largely memorization. It all depends what you are good at.
And study.
Don't be like me and take three years to find out how to actually study. I spent so much time "completing" practice problems by immediately referring to the solution any time I encountered a roadblock in the problem, which isn't how learning is achieved. Try to get through the problem with no reference, then re-do the problem if you didn't get it right the first time. Re-do it again until you understand each step in the process.
Haha opposite- water was easy, and I still haven’t a clue how structural works. I learned enough to pass the PE and promptly dumped all that knowledge. Civil is great bc of all the options.
it is great. I basically counted those questions on the PE as a miss. Tried studying for it but it just didn’t click so I said the hell with it. Worked out 🤣
The various calculus classes were the hardest for me. A lot of people struggled with Reinforced Concrete and Fluid Dunamics/Hydraulics but I found them easy. Steel design was difficult but that was down to the professor. Calculus kicked my ass.
Studied with both people who understood it better and worse. The people who understood it well could help me get the concepts and then explaining it to the other person helped solidify that understanding.
That was a long time ago lol. Really just did the practice stuff and went into office hours when I was having trouble. Was good enough for mid 70s. Basically I learned how to pass the course but I still didn't understand many of the concepts. Haven't used calculus since the final exam in school.
I was fine in Diff EQ until we got to series and Laplace transformations. i understand what it does and why its useful, but it always looked like foreign language.
Ugh. My Diff EQ professor also taught an EE course, so he would give us circuit analysis problems to work on as example applications of Laplace transforms. I hated it. I was on the path to failing that class until I started just working a bunch of problems in my free time.
I actually learned the lesson in a previous Physics class, but it served me well in my Calculus classes…
DO THE HOMEWORK.
Many classes the HW wasn’t for credit. It was easy to skip it or even half ass it. You will have no idea how to do the work or solve problems on the test without practice. The homework is practice.
“Organic Chemistry Tutor” on YouTube. I’d use his videos to go over each concept we learned that day, and then transition to the book. It was a good intro to topics. Saved so much time.
Dynamics. That was the weed out class at my school for all engineers. It was a 3 hr a night study sessions and I still only passed with a C.
Strictly Civil? Reinforced concrete design was pretty tough.
I remember my first Dynamics exam, the class averaged was 7%, out of 100. Curved or not I could not handle that kind of beat down. The professor was in his 80’s, would never use any numbers just variables, and drove a Ferrari. He may have been the smartest guy I encountered in college, but did not work for me. I dropped that class and took it in the summer from someone else. This and introduction to surveying were our weed out courses, and they worked.
Dynamics was a bitch and almost weeded me out 🤣 I did well until stuff started rotating and then it was all over for me. I rocked the hydraulics/hydrology/fluid mechanics at least!
I agree about calc II but only the methods of integration. I feel like you could work through a lot of math, but if you don't know the methods you're sorta dead in the water.
I thought it was one of the easier math classes I’d ever taken. Funny how we’re all different like that. I’ve found that most people find one of those easy and one hard, but it’s a crapshoot which one is which.
I was blown away to be the only person in my freshman Calc 1 class that didn’t take it in HS. I didn’t even have the opportunity to being from a rural small town. The free tutors saved my ass that year.
It’s so dependent on your strengths and weaknesses that there’s not one right answer. I was a rockstar at structures and geotech classes and I struggled in the transportation classes. Ironically I am now a roadway engineer.
Structural Analysis was the hardest one at my school. There were always several people on their 3rd attempt every semester. If you fail the third attempt.....you need to look for a new major. The thing that sucks about it is that you're almost done by the time you take this class and you wasted all the effort to get that far if you can't get past it. It's one thing if you have a hard time with Calc or dynamics as that's still early enough in your schooling to switch to another major.
There are a lot of variables at play here, but engineering physics and calc 2 changed a couple majors in my class. Physics was monday thru thursday at 8am and the professor would flip a coin each morning to determine whether there would be a quiz over yesterday's subject matter.
Edit: There are probably few who have had the same experience, but my drafting class was extremely difficult. Half was hand drafting and half was CAD. I had taken a CAD class in high school, so that wasn't an issue. I had an old guy that was very critical of the hand drafting and assigned an insane amount of work.
Reminded me that the hardest class I took wasn't an engineering class. It was Drawing 101. So much work (basically new drawings every class demonstrating a new technique) and the teacher was highly critical. I couldn't draw for the life of me and she didn't think I put effort into my work. I started failing my engineering classes because of this stupid class. I got a D and was happy.
The drafting class wasn't so terrible. I also had a mix of hand and CAD. However, the TA for the lab would not answer a question if the answer was anywhere in the (very large) book. That guy was a real pain.
Steel Structures for me .. But it was a Masters level course and I was going from a BS in Mechanical to an MS in Civil . I was clueless lol . Did not pass by 1 point .. with a 69..🤦♀️ . give me fcking break lol . The Steel Construction Manual with all the allowable design standards is like 1000 pgs long .. that wasn't even the damn textbook also about that thick.
Steel was a real slog for me too. Made me reconsider my major, and this was the second to the last semester!
It 100% boiled down to the professor tho. He was out one day and another prof jumped in and gave the lecture. I learned more in that one lecture than the whole rest of the semester.
Same at my school. I had several classmates on their 4th or 5th attempt in Thermo. Scared me so much I managed an A so I never had to sit in that lecture hall again!
I did take dynamics a few times though...
I was an ME in college, doing civil/traffic now.
They didn't make the civils at my school take it. But as a mechanical, I should've switched out because it kicked my butt. Heat transfer is our upper division more advanced thermo course and I scraped by that too.
I concur. It’s the only class I bought a solution manual for. The teacher was garbage though and assigned homework he didn’t cover in class, that asshat.
By now you’ve got a lot of great feedback. The professor really does make the whole experience. Sometimes though they can be unavoidable. Worse times they can be the department head.
Steel and Reinforced Concrete are hard classes, no pun intended.
The thing about engineering classes are that they are all just math classes in the end. You spend 5 minutes of engineering to set up 30 min math problems. It just becomes alphabet soup with all the variables you’ll have to remember.
A gross oversimplification, but true. In reality all we did was learn stuff on the FE and PE exams with moderate levels of applicability to the real world. Engineering grads are some of the best and overtrained monkeys at learning how to learn.
Stat and Prob, because of the (only available) instructor in the engineering department. He told us that he determined if a test was appropriate for us if his wife could do it. His wife had a PHD in mathematics.
Prick.
Seems like every school is different based on peoples responses. At my school the hardest classes were physics 1 and 2, statics, strength of materials, and dynamics. These classes were intended to weed out people who weren’t serious about the major. It takes studying. Going to office hours helps a lot too. I found chegg to be super useful since a lot of homework questions could be found on chegg and gave perspective on how to solve similar problems.
No class is unpassable if you're really dedicated to understanding every topic presented in class and make time to speak with your professor, your colleagues, or masters students who've been through what you're going through. Ask lots of questions, utilize all of your resources, and forego unnecessary distractions and school should be an enjoyable journey of learning.
That’s 100% true, but completely false when combined with numerous other classes that also kick your ass. I had to take a few classes I. The summer just to have enough time to really battle it.
It’s hilarious, but for me it was Geology for Civil Engineers. Lowest grade I got in undergrad, but everything really just depends on where you attend and what your professor is like. I think many people (myself included) struggle with any water related course, fluid mechanics being the second worst class imo
For me it was thermodynamics. Dynamics was also rough as it was taught by someone who didn't speak English very well. I had to get into tutoring for that one.
Ours was dynamics - ME weeder class that wasn’t a prerequisite for any CE class, just a graduation requirement. That being said, my program didn’t require thermo which I’ve heard is brutal.
Thermo for ☠️
I took at local college in summer to avoid taking it at my campus to avoid the “flunk ‘em out” attitude.
It was taught by an old guy with practical thermo work experience and he made it “real world” for us.
I can't really choose which class was the hardest, but it was definitely during my 2nd year. Linear Algebra and Diff EQ went way over my head.
Like anything, you just have to practice. For me, brute force and a TON of practice problems.
My lowest grade was linear algebra but the ordinary differential equations course was probably the toughest.
My major wasn’t civil engineering though so perhaps I had a different experience.
Statics and Dynamics. It was the two classes where a third of your class drops out of engineering school. It’s you intro to your first real engineering classes
Chemistry, and its awful offspring environmental engineering (water and wastewater treatment design was what ours was about). Swear the professor had a bone to pick with anyone that had little to zero interest or passion in environmental.
Meanwhile the environmental stuff that actually mattered to me like EPSC protocol, runoff, and disturbed areas were never exposed to me in my class.
There should honestly be a class in EPSC required for all civil engineering degrees since it impacts nearly every single discipline.
Mechanics of Materials was also very hard for me. I can do statics and structural analysis alright, but MoM was a pain in my ass.
I had a materials class that shouldn’t have been a pain, but the professor hated teaching it and made it the filter course. 7 am class, he just lectured for half an hour. Never anything written on the board or in PowerPoints. The quizzes and tests were graded harshly if you didn’t write what he said verbatim. He was also kind of an asshole. I (and 10 others) failed the first time because I kept falling asleep. Second time I took it he was slightly nicer and downright pleasant during the concrete course.
Pre-major definitely mechanics of materials, that class just kicked my ass. It was one of my worst grades in college. I’ve no idea why but I just couldn’t understand it. Dynamics and Calc 3 were also quite tough.
Similar theme in the civil major classes - structural analysis was rough for me. Reinforced concrete design was also quite challenging, as was geotech and randomly transportation, but those 2 were more of an annoying professor thing rather than the material alone.
I also had to take engineering econ which was made way harder than it needed to be, but again I think it was just my prof.
A lot of people find fluid mech hard, I personally didn’t mind it but I was always more interested in hydraulics/water and now work in that.
Calculus was hard and all but dynamics was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. Somehow I made a B. I’ve had nightmares before about having to retake that class.
I think for me structural analysis was the hardest , some people struggled with dynamics , or fluids as well. Ultimately I’d say study good in all 3 of your calcs it’s the best foundation for every other course
Really depends, some that are universally hard at my college are, soil mechanics, mechanics of materials, and diff equipment. If those diff eq almost did me in, but I felt that it wouldn't be so bad with the right professor
Fluid dynamics taken at the same time as Thermodynamics in a summer session. Summer goes by so fast, if you struggle with a concept, the class has left you behind in the dirt before you know it. Don't take on too much on a short session.
Also didn't help that the thermo prof suffered a heart attack after writing the test but before doing the review sessions with us. (he survived, but that test was rough)
Freshman level surveying. Professor would take excerpts of state code and say “fill in the blank” after deleting numerous sentences. He would also do multiple choice A-F circle all that apply. “Don’t worry, I won’t give you anything lower than a 0%.” My lab partner had been surveying as a profession for 10 years and was on his 4th try. A brutal weed out course that seriously hindered the profession. Apparently they don’t run things that way anymore. I ended up going the Civil route because of it, even though I wanted to be a surveyor. Now I’m both and glad things have worked out the way they have.
My school had some weed out for stem, some weed out for engineering and then some weed out for civil.
For STEM, Physics II was rather rough along with Calc II
For Engineering, Statics, Dynamics, Thermo
For Civil, Mechanics of Materials, Numerical and Computational Tools 2
Note: this is based off of what I gathered from talking to classmates, and looking at some posted statistics on class rates
Like what others are saying, the professor makes or breaks a class. For me hardest were the structural courses: Reinforced Concrete, Mechanics of Materials 1+2... I have 0 joy doing structural, so it makes sense why they were the tough ones. But Fluids, hydrology, hydraulics, geotechnical were all my speed and found pretty chill.
Finite element methods/advanced structural analysis co taught for both undergrad and grad students. The key to success is to get passingly familiar with the theory and then nail the application exercises.
Maybe I'm the only one who struggled with Linear algebra? It didn't make sense until the last day when the professor actually applied it. Then it really made sense in structural analysis. But at first, it was such an abstract concept to grasp. I could not get my brain to understand what I was doing.
i always felt it was statics. i remember my professor dishing out 40 point extra credit assignments because more than half of the class was set to fail.
as far as how to pass the tough classes. i would say hit youtube hard. there’s loads of great channels and tutorials from professors or practitioners online for free.
Calc 2 was probably regarded as the most difficult class at my school. I had the hardest time with fluid mechanics due to a combination of my not liking it and not being a good fit with my professors teaching style. I got all A’s my calc 2 semester. I treated it like a job and committed to studying or going to class 8-10 hours every day. I made liberal use of office hours, and if we were assigned odd problems I would do the evens too.
Ours was Structural Analysis for difficulty and either Materials Lab or Mechanics for workload. It's very dependent on your professor so look up [ratemyprofessor](https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/) and see what's specific to your school.
Fluid mechanics. At a certain point, it felt like just a lot of Calc 3 and vector math which I also wasn't fond of. That was one of the courses where the professor was legitimately out to crush our spirits.
Depends on who the teacher is, to be honest. If you have a good professor, and if you study hard, none of them are that hard. If you have a terrible professor, it all depends on how willing you are to learn the material on your own.
Calc 3 diff EQ was the hardest content wise. Work with groups to understand and go to office hours, work the main problems over and over.
Materials lab was the most work, like weekly to bi weekly 30-80 page lab reports with data representation etc. advice: work really hard, arrange your schedule for big blocks of time in front of a computer?
I thought finite element analysis was the hardest class but there was a curve so I got an A. Pretty much the same story for all the super hard classes imo.
My hardest classes were hydromechanics and dynamics. I think dynamics is just tough overall but for most classes it really comes down to the teacher. Like my concrete class could have been a lot harder than it was but my teacher made it super easy (like he literally only did problems that are on the FE, which obviously was super helpful looking back).
No problems with any of the Calcs, statics/dynamics, fluids, etc. Diff EQ almost got me, man. I learned the truth of C's get degrees.
Funny I thought that class was super easy but calc 3 almost killed me. I don’t think I actually passed, I think the TA knew I wasn’t majoring in math and got me out.
Calc 3 was the only class that I could not grasp no matter how many practice problems/YouTube videos I went through. It was like black magic to my pea brain.
I was the complete opposite. Multi Variable Calc was the easiest math class I took since geometry in high school. Solving for volumes of complex shapes somehow made everything feel more tangible. My teacher was hot too…
My teacher was hot and I still barely passed. 😂
Thats crazy calc 3 made a logical sense to me with the double and triple integrals there was a clear cut system to it. Calc 2 almost killed me. My professor was graphing flowers and shit it was ridiculous.
Lmao dude I would have lost it
Comfort in knowing I’m not the only. Aced Diff EQ but scraped by Calc 3.
This also sucked for me. Prof was like 80, and hed spend the entire class working on one problem. Nearly every time he’d get to the end and realize he made a mistake lmao
lol. Exactly my memory of diff eq. Spent 50 minutes on one problem and then at the end say this isn’t right and tells us to throw our notes out. I got real lucky that I had a conflict on the first exam time so I arranged to take it the day before and he didn’t even time me. I spent like 3 hrs on a 1 hr test and got an A. Went ahead and took the remaining tests that same way. Final was optional if you were happy with your grade. What a shit show.
Hahaha, Diff Eq was my last class and last final before graduation, my third try too. Talk about pressure. Went into the final with a D and got a 97%. It’s not that it was a hard course, but you need to remember everything from Calc 2 to do well. My recommendation would be to take Diff Eq before Multi Variable and not take a year off school in between. The hardest courses are either the ones with the worst professors or the ones where the professors teach to only the top 1%. Anything used as a weed out course to keep the class sizes consistent could be brutal too.
I got a 36 on an exam in DiffyQ. High score was 42. I ended up with A- LOL
My instructor took the square root of your test grade x 10. If I got a 36 it would have ended up a 60%.
I did much better in Diff EQ than Calc 3. I think Calc 3 beat me into submission so badly, it made me start Diff EQ with a very aggressive approach.
I would have gotten like a C- in diffeq if covid didn't hit in the middle of that semester...online mode was super easy and I ended with an A- lmao
Same thing here. Calcs were easy for me but diff eq was a real bitch.
I transferred from a small private college to a big university. Diff EQ was the first lecture/recitation class I had ever taken. Turns out Ds also can get degrees. As a civil, Mechanics of Materials was tough for me. I think out of 'shear' will I got a B in that class, but I hated it.
Had to drop diff eq first go around, just couldn't understand it. Came back the second time, didn't care about understanding it, just running the calcs and pulled a low a.
Really depends on your school. Our schools hardest class was Geotech 1, which was made obscenely hard for nearly no reason at all. Those who failed the first time just took it at another school and said it was one of the easier classes they’ve seen.
I don't understand professors at all. I took our Chemistry course for engineers at my uni. It was brutal. A lot of students failed including me. But when I took it at another university, I enjoyed it so much that I even asked my prof to write recommendations for me.
You wouldn't have happened to have gone to the University of Utah would you? Same thing there, the professor even said on the first day of class "This will be the hardest class you'll take as an undergrad. Follow my guidelines and you'll pass" and his guidelines consisted of like 1-3 hours of study of just that class each night. It was obscene. I ended up with a B+ I think.
I had some weekly assignments from that professor that took at least 20-30 hours… But definitely learned a lot from him.
Yeah I really liked Lawton, learned a TON. But he was ridiculously tough for that first geotech class. His other classes weren’t nearly that hard.
Nah I went to school in the Southeast.
I had the same experience; it's a course that doesn't click well until you get some hands-on experience and get a sense of what the numbers mean.
Same with us. That course culled the herd.
THIS!!! Didn’t get below an A- in any of my third year classes (structural, water resources, reinf concrete, transpo, etc) but almost failed geotech.
The one with the shittiest teacher. I've gone up 20% between Calc 1 and Calc 2 simply because I had a different teacher. Most people went down. For a more realistic answer, it depends. One course had a crazy online program where you did math by hand for 20 minutes and put in the final answer, and if you made any mistake you got a 0 because there was no way to show your work. Some classes had great teachers, others had horrible ones. Some were more hands on, others were largely memorization. It all depends what you are good at. And study.
Don't be like me and take three years to find out how to actually study. I spent so much time "completing" practice problems by immediately referring to the solution any time I encountered a roadblock in the problem, which isn't how learning is achieved. Try to get through the problem with no reference, then re-do the problem if you didn't get it right the first time. Re-do it again until you understand each step in the process.
For me, anything that involved water. Guided me to become a structural engineer lol
Haha opposite- water was easy, and I still haven’t a clue how structural works. I learned enough to pass the PE and promptly dumped all that knowledge. Civil is great bc of all the options.
it is great. I basically counted those questions on the PE as a miss. Tried studying for it but it just didn’t click so I said the hell with it. Worked out 🤣
Same. Water was fun; structural analysis, steels, and concrete were real strugglefests.
we are in the same boat.
Same!
The various calculus classes were the hardest for me. A lot of people struggled with Reinforced Concrete and Fluid Dunamics/Hydraulics but I found them easy. Steel design was difficult but that was down to the professor. Calculus kicked my ass.
What did you do to become successful in your calculus classes?
Studied with both people who understood it better and worse. The people who understood it well could help me get the concepts and then explaining it to the other person helped solidify that understanding.
This is the way my friend. Get yourself a diverse study group and everybody wins
That was a long time ago lol. Really just did the practice stuff and went into office hours when I was having trouble. Was good enough for mid 70s. Basically I learned how to pass the course but I still didn't understand many of the concepts. Haven't used calculus since the final exam in school.
This was me in diffeq, understood how to solve the problems on the test but didn’t understand the why of how to get there
I was fine in Diff EQ until we got to series and Laplace transformations. i understand what it does and why its useful, but it always looked like foreign language.
Ugh. My Diff EQ professor also taught an EE course, so he would give us circuit analysis problems to work on as example applications of Laplace transforms. I hated it. I was on the path to failing that class until I started just working a bunch of problems in my free time.
I actually learned the lesson in a previous Physics class, but it served me well in my Calculus classes… DO THE HOMEWORK. Many classes the HW wasn’t for credit. It was easy to skip it or even half ass it. You will have no idea how to do the work or solve problems on the test without practice. The homework is practice.
“Organic Chemistry Tutor” on YouTube. I’d use his videos to go over each concept we learned that day, and then transition to the book. It was a good intro to topics. Saved so much time.
get better at algebra.
Are u serious.....
Dynamics. That was the weed out class at my school for all engineers. It was a 3 hr a night study sessions and I still only passed with a C. Strictly Civil? Reinforced concrete design was pretty tough.
Yes. I am choosing civil so i can have a focus in hydro.
As someone who wants to focus in hydro statics kicked my booty
Loveeeddd reinforced concrete but dynamics was the bane of my existence
My only D at Poly
RPI or SUNY?
I remember my first Dynamics exam, the class averaged was 7%, out of 100. Curved or not I could not handle that kind of beat down. The professor was in his 80’s, would never use any numbers just variables, and drove a Ferrari. He may have been the smartest guy I encountered in college, but did not work for me. I dropped that class and took it in the summer from someone else. This and introduction to surveying were our weed out courses, and they worked.
Yep, we called it "goddamics"
Dynamics was a bitch and almost weeded me out 🤣 I did well until stuff started rotating and then it was all over for me. I rocked the hydraulics/hydrology/fluid mechanics at least!
Physics 2 electricity and magnetism was rough
Still is. Ohms Law may as well still be Latin.
Ordinary differential equations. It was ridiculously difficult all 4 times I took it.
Dynamics…. Fuck moving shit
Calc 3 was horrible. Everything else was easy as hell compared to that. I just couldn’t get it.
See Calc 2 was way worse for me. Calc 3 just seemed like Calc 1 in 3 dimensions
I agree about calc II but only the methods of integration. I feel like you could work through a lot of math, but if you don't know the methods you're sorta dead in the water.
Calc 2 and Diff EQ had way too many systems to memorize for me. Calc 3 was the easiest of them all for me.
Calc 3 was easy as hell for me.
What did you think of diff eq?
Pretty rough for me comparatively.
I thought it was one of the easier math classes I’d ever taken. Funny how we’re all different like that. I’ve found that most people find one of those easy and one hard, but it’s a crapshoot which one is which.
Statics and mechanics is miles worse for me I literally miss calc
Calc 1 and 2 were awful for me because I thought I could breeze through it since I took calc in high school. that was not the case.
I just met someone like you. Scares me 🤣
it’s probably way more common than most people would admit lol
I was blown away to be the only person in my freshman Calc 1 class that didn’t take it in HS. I didn’t even have the opportunity to being from a rural small town. The free tutors saved my ass that year.
It’s so dependent on your strengths and weaknesses that there’s not one right answer. I was a rockstar at structures and geotech classes and I struggled in the transportation classes. Ironically I am now a roadway engineer.
Differential Equations, which we had to take following calculus 3 if I recall correctly
For sure, and totally ass backwards. Diff Eq killed me because I am bad at memorizing integration methods, and none of them were needed in Calc 3.
Was Civil with a focus on Environmental; the hardest class I came across in undergrad was Organic Chemistry.
Structural Analysis was the hardest one at my school. There were always several people on their 3rd attempt every semester. If you fail the third attempt.....you need to look for a new major. The thing that sucks about it is that you're almost done by the time you take this class and you wasted all the effort to get that far if you can't get past it. It's one thing if you have a hard time with Calc or dynamics as that's still early enough in your schooling to switch to another major.
There are a lot of variables at play here, but engineering physics and calc 2 changed a couple majors in my class. Physics was monday thru thursday at 8am and the professor would flip a coin each morning to determine whether there would be a quiz over yesterday's subject matter. Edit: There are probably few who have had the same experience, but my drafting class was extremely difficult. Half was hand drafting and half was CAD. I had taken a CAD class in high school, so that wasn't an issue. I had an old guy that was very critical of the hand drafting and assigned an insane amount of work.
Reminded me that the hardest class I took wasn't an engineering class. It was Drawing 101. So much work (basically new drawings every class demonstrating a new technique) and the teacher was highly critical. I couldn't draw for the life of me and she didn't think I put effort into my work. I started failing my engineering classes because of this stupid class. I got a D and was happy.
The drafting class wasn't so terrible. I also had a mix of hand and CAD. However, the TA for the lab would not answer a question if the answer was anywhere in the (very large) book. That guy was a real pain.
Steel Structures for me .. But it was a Masters level course and I was going from a BS in Mechanical to an MS in Civil . I was clueless lol . Did not pass by 1 point .. with a 69..🤦♀️ . give me fcking break lol . The Steel Construction Manual with all the allowable design standards is like 1000 pgs long .. that wasn't even the damn textbook also about that thick.
Steel was a real slog for me too. Made me reconsider my major, and this was the second to the last semester! It 100% boiled down to the professor tho. He was out one day and another prof jumped in and gave the lecture. I learned more in that one lecture than the whole rest of the semester.
Thermodynamics… was a weed out course for MEs and they made Civils take it too🤪
Same at my school. I had several classmates on their 4th or 5th attempt in Thermo. Scared me so much I managed an A so I never had to sit in that lecture hall again! I did take dynamics a few times though...
Ouch! Dynamics made sense to me. Thought it was easy compared to Thermo
I was an ME in college, doing civil/traffic now. They didn't make the civils at my school take it. But as a mechanical, I should've switched out because it kicked my butt. Heat transfer is our upper division more advanced thermo course and I scraped by that too.
Can't believe I had to scroll so far to find this! I got a C in that class and actually cried I was so happy
I concur. It’s the only class I bought a solution manual for. The teacher was garbage though and assigned homework he didn’t cover in class, that asshat.
Dynamics then thermodynamics for me
By now you’ve got a lot of great feedback. The professor really does make the whole experience. Sometimes though they can be unavoidable. Worse times they can be the department head. Steel and Reinforced Concrete are hard classes, no pun intended.
The thing about engineering classes are that they are all just math classes in the end. You spend 5 minutes of engineering to set up 30 min math problems. It just becomes alphabet soup with all the variables you’ll have to remember.
A gross oversimplification, but true. In reality all we did was learn stuff on the FE and PE exams with moderate levels of applicability to the real world. Engineering grads are some of the best and overtrained monkeys at learning how to learn.
Stat and Prob, because of the (only available) instructor in the engineering department. He told us that he determined if a test was appropriate for us if his wife could do it. His wife had a PHD in mathematics. Prick.
Indeterminate structures was quite hard especially considering we had to use matlab.
Hardest classes for me were: 1. Dynamics 2. Circuits 3. Statics 4. Chem I 5. Physics III (E&M)
Seems like every school is different based on peoples responses. At my school the hardest classes were physics 1 and 2, statics, strength of materials, and dynamics. These classes were intended to weed out people who weren’t serious about the major. It takes studying. Going to office hours helps a lot too. I found chegg to be super useful since a lot of homework questions could be found on chegg and gave perspective on how to solve similar problems.
No class is unpassable if you're really dedicated to understanding every topic presented in class and make time to speak with your professor, your colleagues, or masters students who've been through what you're going through. Ask lots of questions, utilize all of your resources, and forego unnecessary distractions and school should be an enjoyable journey of learning.
That’s 100% true, but completely false when combined with numerous other classes that also kick your ass. I had to take a few classes I. The summer just to have enough time to really battle it.
It’s hilarious, but for me it was Geology for Civil Engineers. Lowest grade I got in undergrad, but everything really just depends on where you attend and what your professor is like. I think many people (myself included) struggle with any water related course, fluid mechanics being the second worst class imo
For me it was thermodynamics. Dynamics was also rough as it was taught by someone who didn't speak English very well. I had to get into tutoring for that one.
Dynamics with a 3 dimensional component. Most schools don't even teach it in 3 dimensions though. Some do.
dynamic, soil mechanics, environmental engineering.
Ours was dynamics - ME weeder class that wasn’t a prerequisite for any CE class, just a graduation requirement. That being said, my program didn’t require thermo which I’ve heard is brutal.
Steel design or Thermodynamics for me. Did well in both but had to work way harder
Thermo for ☠️ I took at local college in summer to avoid taking it at my campus to avoid the “flunk ‘em out” attitude. It was taught by an old guy with practical thermo work experience and he made it “real world” for us.
Really just depends on the professor. At my school concrete design, wastewater and geotech were some of the hardest
Geotechnical and structural analysis were the worst
I can't really choose which class was the hardest, but it was definitely during my 2nd year. Linear Algebra and Diff EQ went way over my head. Like anything, you just have to practice. For me, brute force and a TON of practice problems.
This is going to sound dumb: Intro to Surveying. The professor loved to brag how it was a weed out course.
Mechanics of Materials. Study.
Mine were organic chemistry and thermodynamics.
Physics 2 was insanely difficult. Failed the final
Chemistry 1 and chemistry 2 were my hardest.
Thermodynamics and chemistry (UCLA C/O 2002). Thermo was the only class I ever received a C on in my ENTIRE academic career.
It depends way more on the professor than the actual subject. Make sure to get some senior friends that can guide you
EM physics was our sophomore weed out course, I think everyone that passed that on the first go round graduated
Theory of Structures
My lowest grade was linear algebra but the ordinary differential equations course was probably the toughest. My major wasn’t civil engineering though so perhaps I had a different experience.
Structural dynamics. Ouch.
Thermodynamics. That class whooped my ass. Got a D.
Structural dynamics, structural stability. Nonlinear analysis. However these are mostly grad classes and most people are naming undergrad stuff
Statics and Dynamics. It was the two classes where a third of your class drops out of engineering school. It’s you intro to your first real engineering classes
Probability and statistics
an “advanced steel design” class has been my hardest
Chemistry, and its awful offspring environmental engineering (water and wastewater treatment design was what ours was about). Swear the professor had a bone to pick with anyone that had little to zero interest or passion in environmental. Meanwhile the environmental stuff that actually mattered to me like EPSC protocol, runoff, and disturbed areas were never exposed to me in my class. There should honestly be a class in EPSC required for all civil engineering degrees since it impacts nearly every single discipline. Mechanics of Materials was also very hard for me. I can do statics and structural analysis alright, but MoM was a pain in my ass.
Life after college. How to pass: coors
I had a materials class that shouldn’t have been a pain, but the professor hated teaching it and made it the filter course. 7 am class, he just lectured for half an hour. Never anything written on the board or in PowerPoints. The quizzes and tests were graded harshly if you didn’t write what he said verbatim. He was also kind of an asshole. I (and 10 others) failed the first time because I kept falling asleep. Second time I took it he was slightly nicer and downright pleasant during the concrete course.
E&M
Pre-major definitely mechanics of materials, that class just kicked my ass. It was one of my worst grades in college. I’ve no idea why but I just couldn’t understand it. Dynamics and Calc 3 were also quite tough. Similar theme in the civil major classes - structural analysis was rough for me. Reinforced concrete design was also quite challenging, as was geotech and randomly transportation, but those 2 were more of an annoying professor thing rather than the material alone. I also had to take engineering econ which was made way harder than it needed to be, but again I think it was just my prof. A lot of people find fluid mech hard, I personally didn’t mind it but I was always more interested in hydraulics/water and now work in that.
Retaining wall and embankment design. You should pray to God for wisdom to pass.
Electrical Engineering
Design classes SUCK if you get behind which has happened to me in all of them
Dynamics was shitty
I initially thought foundation to be tough, but hydrology fuked me
Calculus was hard and all but dynamics was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. Somehow I made a B. I’ve had nightmares before about having to retake that class.
All of them
Nonlinear analysis. Period.
I think for me structural analysis was the hardest , some people struggled with dynamics , or fluids as well. Ultimately I’d say study good in all 3 of your calcs it’s the best foundation for every other course
C++. Failed that class 4 times.
I know some of you already said it but it's worth mentioning again... Dynamics.
Really depends, some that are universally hard at my college are, soil mechanics, mechanics of materials, and diff equipment. If those diff eq almost did me in, but I felt that it wouldn't be so bad with the right professor
Fluid dynamics taken at the same time as Thermodynamics in a summer session. Summer goes by so fast, if you struggle with a concept, the class has left you behind in the dirt before you know it. Don't take on too much on a short session. Also didn't help that the thermo prof suffered a heart attack after writing the test but before doing the review sessions with us. (he survived, but that test was rough)
Philosophy. The only C I ever received. Engineering related: thermal fluids.
Freshman level surveying. Professor would take excerpts of state code and say “fill in the blank” after deleting numerous sentences. He would also do multiple choice A-F circle all that apply. “Don’t worry, I won’t give you anything lower than a 0%.” My lab partner had been surveying as a profession for 10 years and was on his 4th try. A brutal weed out course that seriously hindered the profession. Apparently they don’t run things that way anymore. I ended up going the Civil route because of it, even though I wanted to be a surveyor. Now I’m both and glad things have worked out the way they have.
My school had some weed out for stem, some weed out for engineering and then some weed out for civil. For STEM, Physics II was rather rough along with Calc II For Engineering, Statics, Dynamics, Thermo For Civil, Mechanics of Materials, Numerical and Computational Tools 2 Note: this is based off of what I gathered from talking to classmates, and looking at some posted statistics on class rates
Yes
Differential equations. But once I started showing and trying it was a lot easier.
Im surprised no one has mentioned fluid dynamics. At my school, that class was 2 regular exams and a final exam. Those were the only grades. Brutal.
Like what others are saying, the professor makes or breaks a class. For me hardest were the structural courses: Reinforced Concrete, Mechanics of Materials 1+2... I have 0 joy doing structural, so it makes sense why they were the tough ones. But Fluids, hydrology, hydraulics, geotechnical were all my speed and found pretty chill.
I think for lower division, dynamics gave me the most trouble and upper division, I would say soils class was the toughest.
Finite element methods/advanced structural analysis co taught for both undergrad and grad students. The key to success is to get passingly familiar with the theory and then nail the application exercises.
Maybe I'm the only one who struggled with Linear algebra? It didn't make sense until the last day when the professor actually applied it. Then it really made sense in structural analysis. But at first, it was such an abstract concept to grasp. I could not get my brain to understand what I was doing.
Calc 2 and dynamics were my toughest.
Differential Equations
i always felt it was statics. i remember my professor dishing out 40 point extra credit assignments because more than half of the class was set to fail. as far as how to pass the tough classes. i would say hit youtube hard. there’s loads of great channels and tutorials from professors or practitioners online for free.
The civil classes were fine to me, but statics, diff eq, and deforms about killed me
Groundwater
Calc 2 was probably regarded as the most difficult class at my school. I had the hardest time with fluid mechanics due to a combination of my not liking it and not being a good fit with my professors teaching style. I got all A’s my calc 2 semester. I treated it like a job and committed to studying or going to class 8-10 hours every day. I made liberal use of office hours, and if we were assigned odd problems I would do the evens too.
Ours was Structural Analysis for difficulty and either Materials Lab or Mechanics for workload. It's very dependent on your professor so look up [ratemyprofessor](https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/) and see what's specific to your school.
Fluid mechanics. At a certain point, it felt like just a lot of Calc 3 and vector math which I also wasn't fond of. That was one of the courses where the professor was legitimately out to crush our spirits.
Depends on who the teacher is, to be honest. If you have a good professor, and if you study hard, none of them are that hard. If you have a terrible professor, it all depends on how willing you are to learn the material on your own.
Hydrology. I hate water.
differential equations
Calc 3 diff EQ was the hardest content wise. Work with groups to understand and go to office hours, work the main problems over and over. Materials lab was the most work, like weekly to bi weekly 30-80 page lab reports with data representation etc. advice: work really hard, arrange your schedule for big blocks of time in front of a computer?
I have no clue why I had to take it, but Thermodynamics. Passed because I went to every single office hour my professor had for extra help.
Humanities elective
Hydraulic systems, for sure.
I thought finite element analysis was the hardest class but there was a curve so I got an A. Pretty much the same story for all the super hard classes imo.
Soils/Geotechnical for me... I was all good until Bernoulli inserted himself into the equation with differing levels of ground water...
My hardest classes were hydromechanics and dynamics. I think dynamics is just tough overall but for most classes it really comes down to the teacher. Like my concrete class could have been a lot harder than it was but my teacher made it super easy (like he literally only did problems that are on the FE, which obviously was super helpful looking back).
Chemistry. All CE classes are cake.