Engineering Degrees Ranked By Difficulty (Tier List)

why didn't you put this video 6 months before 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

My younger brother graduated with Honors in Mechanical engineering. He's spent nearly his entire career working in South east Asia in the downstream oil and gas and petrochemical sector. I did bachelor's degree in Science but I would recommend engineering to anyone with academic ability.

Electrical engineering has partial diff eqns lol whats going on with america??

Several variables are not mentioned such as average years of working in industry.
Aa someone with both Math and EE degrees, the math in Math was easier.
EE math was higher level, but more specific. DE included partial DE at my school.
I also took advanced DE for fun (and credit).
In the engineering school I graduated,
Chem E was tops, EE next, then mechanical, civil and industrial.

If you are thinking about engineering, pay attention to the human side of your studies: Communication, presentation, effective letter writing, team building, etc.
While it may sound stupid, a class in dining etiquette is helpful. I don't know how many times I've seen international customers wince at the table manners of our engineers.
Mouth closed while eating, elbows off table, how to use a napkin, fork on the right, which one is the bread plate, how to eat a dinner roll. I know it is stupid but these faux pas can kill a sale and make the engineer look like a clod.

'96 EE & Physics, for a disclaimer. First, I don't think Software Engineers should be treated the same as other engineers, in my experience a Software Engineering program is often structured differently at many schools than other engineering disciplines which 'require' cross discipline courses; whereas Software Engineers only learn software development & theory. (note: I have worked professionally as a software engineer, and managed large teams of software engineers.) Second, I disagree with the criteria you've used to 'rank' the disciplines. For instance, if you have a lower quality of candidate in a less in demand field, then you can have a lower rate of completion & longer duration even if the discipline isn't the hardest. Conversely, if you've a popular discipline with a high barrier to entry (ensuring more talented students), then you're going to have a faster completion at a higher success rate. In addition, saying all EE's for instance are the same, is not true (either of the program or the graduate). For example: a power systems focused EE or a digital circuits design EE both have an easier life than an EMag EE (who has to fight through some incredibly difficult math & physics)... so we'd need to aggregate the sub-specialty with the associated difficulty by the percentage of students. (I'm sure the other Engr disciplines have similar easy vs hard sub-specialties/routes.)
So while the video was a nice intro to various Engr options, I'd hardly consider the ranking definitive.

Someone without a clue telling us what he doesn't know. Idiot.

Isn‘t robotics also an engineering degree?

For me as a physicist who lives in the Hilbert Raum, I can only laugh at those trivial degrees (;

what do you mean about "Even with the advent of AI software engineering is still in demand", if AI can replace programmers then it's over for everyone else too.

Hi, Jake. I’ve worked in Silicon Valley, as a mechanical engineer for 40 years. I’m 66 and have been retired now, for 2 years. I like your rating list of engineering disciplines. I also like your insight in mechanical engineering, describing it as a bit of a jack of all trades, adopting and working in many different spheres of the engineering trade. All I can add to what was covered, is that electrical engineers in every company I worked for are the most secure positions, with higher demand, in general, and better compensation than mechanical engineers. I can attribute it to only one thing, there are fewer of electrical engineers available, for two reasons: it is far more dangerous job, requiring at most focus and clarity of mind, while on the job, and much more stressful, because of those factors. In addition, the required level of understanding physics and math is greater, and also demand for continuous education, due to very fast changes in sophistication of hardware and safety standards. One more thing, a computer science degree is also considered an engineering degree in Silicon Valley. Computer science degree, at least in my book, is the highest degree, just by sophistication and complexity of disciplines, and amount of information required to be consumed. Thank you, again.

3d grade automotive here
Setting an alarms for 8 am during the weekend to be to physically be able to submit most of my homework in time
Pay attention
Not all of my hw
But MOST

I'm a teacher in South Africa with 4 years of graduate studies and another 3 yours of postgraduate studies in the disciplines of the Humanities and Languages and with 2 years in IT networking training (with 18 years of experience in all said fields). Of course I don't expect to make the same as an engineer .... my brother does that. ... But as a teacher in South Africa I make $1 000 (USA) a month net .

This analysis is clearly biased and only considering the education system, pay, and growth in the USA and at this current point in time. I suspect that a European version of this same survey would result in a different ranking

EE is a bastard because of the mathematics and I speak from doing it in the 80s. RF is a form of black magic all on its own.

Naturally if you use only the four metrics to determine ranking, the your list makes sense. I argue Biomed Eng is much tougher since it is by far the most integrated major requiring all disciplines of science. Also, PDE is required for BME.

Engineering squard assemble.

Not accurate. I received an Industrial engineering degree from Northwestern Univ. over 50 years ago, and we were required to take math classes way beyond ordinary differential equations.

Can't believe you left out waste disposal engineer and sales engineer. Those sales engineers need to be able add and subtract plus occasionally need to multiply and divide as well.

you might be surprised to know that in India almost 95% students graduate with engineering degree within 4 years. This estimate is based on my personal experience. I would agree with the data if it says otherwise.

I disagree with this list, the top 2 are Electrical and Chemical, your list is biased coz you hate us haha.

First year eng student at UofT. Ngl but indy (industrial) is one of the programs that's growing pretty quickly. The mean salary of indys for our co-op year jumped up to first ahead of electrical and computer. Everyone here says that indy is basically a glorified business program but they get into data science and the program is no joke.

Times may have changed, but for my EE degree, I also had to take Partial Differential Equations and Numerical Analysis…

Architectural engineering was an advertised 5 yr slog at my university. That's 250 to 160 credits.....

I disagree. I think you are missing one degree - Applied Physics.

My son is an Aerospace (BA) Electrical (MA) and works as an Antenna Engineer

I am a retired Ph. D. chemist. My thesis involved the design of electrical and optical systems to gather data. I found EE to be easy. I have a friend who is a EE with over 57 U.S. patents. He agrees with me. My experience is that Ch. E. is the toughest engineering.

I thought the joke went ME are ECEs who couldn’t make it and CE are ME who couldn’t make it lmao

Those salary numbers seem very low. Basic sales in the hi-tech and medical sector gets you double the salary of all of these disciplines and goes as high as 4x-6x.

When I was getting my engineering (mechanical) degree at UCLA back in 1965, the degree course that my clique considered to be the most difficult was Engineering Physics. That was a course broader than nuclear (power-related) engineering and was considered to be a brain buster. I'll bet things haven't changed in that regard.

I’ve been a registered professional (Masters degreed in electrical and mechanical) for 50 years and I disagree with your ranking.

Retired EE here. EE has gotten a lot easier over the years as we have invented devices and software to deal with the truly hard problems, Maxwells Equations, Circuits. The problem with Metallurgical and Materials Engineering is no jobs in areas where people want to live. I have had a few of these working for me as Quality Engineers, sad but true. Also Chemical Engineers rarely get to live near where they work as that stuff is dangerous.

As a mechatronics engineer... I'm offended! (but consider myself in B tier)

Only thing I might swap around is current rank of Mechanical into current rank for Computer, and current rank of Computer with current ranking of Electrical.

What about Engineering Mathematics or Engineering Physics? In Engineering Maths we had measure theory, functional analysis, pde's and advanced probability.

Nuke and aero should’ve been where they were, but EE got dissed. What did you watch this video on?

Mining #6? More difficult than ME #7 or EE #8 ??? Bwahhaahaa… that’s ludicrisp! Dude, we all know digging a hole in the ground can wear your a$$ out, so I went into engineering to avoid the heavy lifting.

Would tribology be considered material engineering?

You definitely need PDEs for ChE. ChE's will know Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot as the classic Transport text. Full of PDEs.

I found structural engineering to be quite challenging. Of course, like several other of the disciplines you listed separately, it is a subset of Civil Engineering.

Porque ingeniería civil está tan abajo?

I had a chance to get into the Naval Nuclear Program but a history of seizures kept that from happening; however, I took that newly found knowledge by attending college instead and earning a 4-year degree in EE where I finished off with 3.94 GPA. The program was quite challenging and I don't know how I managed, but I won't trade the time spent studying for nothing in the world because I learned a lot and it made me a stronger person as a result.

When I studied Chem. Eng., back in the early 90´s, the disciplines I found most challenging had to deal with transfer phenomena (a combination of mass transfer, heat transfer and fluid dynamics, with a wide range of fluids and behaviors, newtonian, non newtonian, laminar, turbulent flows, etc.) and reactor desing (basically take the former and add chemical reactions). Of the courses given by other faculties (service courses) the most difficult (abstract) was Physical Chemistry. Chem. Eng. so called Equilibrium Thermodynamics was also tough. Mostly having to study the design of engineering equipment and chemical plants based on quite abstract models is rather complex. We took an specific course on Mathematical Modelling for Chem. Eng. on top on 3 courses of calculus, differential equations and linear algebra. Where I studied almost all engineering degrees had to take the same basic math courses (3 courses on calculus, one on differential equations and one on linear algebra). At work the most challenging thing was learning to work ¨with people¨ after studying basically to work with abstract models.

dude you look like Maes Hughes

What about Geophysical Engineering. The math is just as hard as Nuclear Engineering and you need to also know Physics plus Geology. My G.E. degree was 10 times harder than my Computer or Electrical Engineering degrees.

shouldnt marine engineering be listed as well? or is it part of mechanical engineering?

Forgot to mention Network Engineer XD. that requires 0 math

software is not engineering.

Hello sir,I am a nuclear physicist and one aspect of these degree programs that I believe you left out is what percentage of students that start out studying these programs drop out in the first 2 years. At The university I attended 50% of the freshman class was not there the next year. Only 2 of the starting class I was in went on to earned our PhD's at some point in our lives. I am the only nuclear physicist another classmate became an astronomical physicist.

you mentioned electrical engineering but not electronic engineering