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Engineering is hard, or at least that is its reputation. How hard life is as an engineering student was a concern for me, especially as an incoming freshman. When I asked exactly how difficult engineering is, I never got a good answer. Until now, that is.
For me, the difficulty of engineering is how time-consuming it is. I wanted to quantify engineering’s challenge by calculating the study time needed to do well. Thus, I kept weekly logs for an entire semester of my study hours and analyzed the data to understand, quantitatively, how difficult engineering is. My course load was 17 credit hours: 6 hours of liberal arts electives, 2 hours of engineering research, and 9 hours of engineering courses. I got a 4.0 semester GPA, showing that the following time commitment can let you do well in engineering.
As you can see, the data is not perfect. In weeks 7 and 15, I did not have data because I was too preoccupied with assignments (how ironic), suggesting my calculations would will be an underestimate. Similarly, I excluded week 1 (Howdy Week) and week 14 (Thanksgiving break) from the calculation since they are not representative of a typical week as a student. As shown by the figure, I dedicated an average of 23.8 hours each week to study. This represents all the time attributed to learning outside designated class times, including homework, outside class help, research time, etc. Designated class time itself averaged 16.5 hours weekly. Therefore, an average week had 40.3 hours of pure academic work, slightly exceeding a typical professional work week. Remember that this time does not include eating, getting to and from class, club/ organization activities, hanging out with friends, or personal hobbies. Add wanting to get at least 7 hours of sleep each night, and it’s easy to see the demands of an engineering student.
The academic rigor of engineering is intense, amounting to almost 40 hours a week of pure academic work. I was able to get a 4.0 during the above 17 credit hour semester using my study strategies: making note summary pages and taking practice tests repeatedly. As the data proves, engineering is a lot of hard work. However, I hope this blog can serve as a somewhat unbiased way to quantify just how demanding engineering at Texas A&M can be. Instead of being frightened, I hope this blog can serve as an honest way to self-evaluate and clarify to prospective students that an engineering degree can be done–but it does take some grit!
Industrial Engineering, Class of 2023
If you found this blog post interesting, you may consider reading “The Co-op Connection” and “You Graduated Without a Job Offer.. Now What?.”