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what is the difficulty of each top stem-related majors ?
tips for a high school junior
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Patrick’s Answer
I will try and identify what I think might be the most difficult part of STEM majors. This list might not be 100% complete, but I will try with those that I know of.
* Physics - I think the hardest thing here is that you must accept that your intuition about reality is wrong. For example, Quantum mechanics forces you to abandon everything you think you know about how the universe works. Other examples are that particles exist in multiple states at once, observation changes reality, and your brain fights this every step of the way because nothing in your daily life prepares you for these concepts.
* Mathematics - In this particular major you are forced to shift from calculating answers to proving why answers exist. In high school, math teaches you formulas and solutions. In college math demands rigorous proof for every statement you make. You learn to build arguments from axioms using pure logic. To me most students struggle with this transition because it requires a completely different type of thinking.
* Computer Science - Within this major you will debug problems where the solution is invisible. Your code will fail and you will have no physical evidence of what went wrong. I think you will hunt through thousands of lines looking for a single character error. The computer does exactly what you told it to do, not what you meant for it to do. With that said, the difficulty is that this gap between intention and instruction frustrates even experienced programmers.
* Chemistry - Within chemistry you memorize an overwhelming volume of exceptions to every rule. You might learn a principle about how molecules behave only to then you discover twenty cases where that principle fails. For example, organic chemistry alone requires you to memorize hundreds of reaction mechanisms with each mechanism having specific conditions where it works and specific conditions where it fails.
* Biology - Within biology you will connect microscopic processes to whole organism outcomes. This major requires you to study molecular interactions inside a single cell, then explain how those interactions create complex behaviors in an entire organism. Only to understand that the gap between these scales is massive. For example, a protein folding incorrectly can cause a disease that affects your entire body, and you must understand both levels simultaneously.
* Mechanical Engineering - I love this major because you design systems where small errors cause catastrophic failures. You will have to also calculate stress on a bridge support. Just think that if your math is off by even a small percentage, the bridge collapses and people die. This pressure to be perfect never goes away. You will find yourself having to check and recheck every calculation knowing that mistakes have real consequences.
* Electrical Engineering - This might be the most common STEM major of all. However, you will work with phenomena you cannot see or touch. Everyone knows that electricity flows through circuits but you cannot observe it directly. You will have to rely entirely on instruments and mathematics to understand what is happening. When something goes wrong, you cannot visually inspect the problem. You must deduce the issue from indirect measurements.
* Chemical Engineering - Similarly with Chemistry, you will scale laboratory results to industrial production. You will find that a reaction works perfectly in a test tube. However, you then must make it work in a tank that holds thousands of gallons where the temperature distribution changes. You might also find that mixing patterns change. This will cause safety concerns to multiply. What worked small often fails large, and you must predict these failures before they happen.
* Aerospace Engineering - This is an area that has often fascinated me. It forces you to integrate multiple complex systems that must all work perfectly. You combine aerodynamics, propulsion, materials science, and control systems. Knowing that each field is difficult on its own, you still must master all of them and understand how they interact. A failure in any single system can destroy the entire aircraft.
* Civil Engineering - My son majored in this. He said that you design structures that must last decades longer than you can test them. For example, you build a bridge that must stand for 100 years. However, you can only test it for a few months before it opens. You rely on models and simulations to predict long-term behavior. Environmental factors you did not account for will stress your design in ways you cannot foresee.
* Biomedical Engineering - In this major you will create devices that interface with unpredictable biological systems. For example, you design an implant that must work inside a human body. The body treats your device as a foreign object and tries to reject it. Tissues grow in unexpected ways, immune responses vary between patients, and your device must work reliably despite this biological chaos.
* Environmental Science - This was my son’s second major. He said that you make predictions about systems with infinite variables. One such thing he worked on was climate models, which required him to account for ocean currents, atmospheric composition, solar radiation, and human activity. Each variable affects every other variable. He said that you can never include all the factors and that your predictions must be accurate enough to guide policy despite this incompleteness.
* Statistics - I loved this major when I was in school. It forces you to draw conclusions from incomplete information while quantifying your uncertainty. For example, you analyze a sample and make claims about an entire population. Given that you must calculate exactly how confident you can be in your claims. Politicians and businesses want definitive answers. You must explain that certainty does not exist, only probability.
* Data Science - This is something I had to go back to school and learn. It was difficult because you extract meaningful patterns from noisy, messy, real-world data. You will find that academic datasets are clean and organized. Real data has missing values, inconsistent formats, and errors. I spent 80% of my time cleaning data before I could analyze it. The insights you find must be clear enough to justify all this preparation work.
* Astronomy - I think that the difficulty here is that you study objects you can never physically reach or manipulate. You observe distant galaxies through telescopes. I don’t think anyone can run experiments on stars or adjust variables and see what happens. You must deduce everything from the light that reaches Earth, knowing that light left its source millions of years ago.
* Geology - I find this STEM major interesting, but could never pursue it. I think the difficulty is that you reconstruct events that happened millions of years ago from fragmentary evidence. For example, you find rock layers and must determine what created them. The forces that shaped those rocks are gone. The environment was completely different. You build theories from incomplete data about processes you can never witness.
* Neuroscience - Finally, there might be a reason why there are few people who major in this. I think the difficulty might be that you investigate a system that changes as you study it. Keep in mind that the brain learns and adapts constantly. Your measurements alter brain activity and that each brain is unique. You cannot easily separate cause from effect because the brain is both the cause and the effect of its own activity.
* Physics - I think the hardest thing here is that you must accept that your intuition about reality is wrong. For example, Quantum mechanics forces you to abandon everything you think you know about how the universe works. Other examples are that particles exist in multiple states at once, observation changes reality, and your brain fights this every step of the way because nothing in your daily life prepares you for these concepts.
* Mathematics - In this particular major you are forced to shift from calculating answers to proving why answers exist. In high school, math teaches you formulas and solutions. In college math demands rigorous proof for every statement you make. You learn to build arguments from axioms using pure logic. To me most students struggle with this transition because it requires a completely different type of thinking.
* Computer Science - Within this major you will debug problems where the solution is invisible. Your code will fail and you will have no physical evidence of what went wrong. I think you will hunt through thousands of lines looking for a single character error. The computer does exactly what you told it to do, not what you meant for it to do. With that said, the difficulty is that this gap between intention and instruction frustrates even experienced programmers.
* Chemistry - Within chemistry you memorize an overwhelming volume of exceptions to every rule. You might learn a principle about how molecules behave only to then you discover twenty cases where that principle fails. For example, organic chemistry alone requires you to memorize hundreds of reaction mechanisms with each mechanism having specific conditions where it works and specific conditions where it fails.
* Biology - Within biology you will connect microscopic processes to whole organism outcomes. This major requires you to study molecular interactions inside a single cell, then explain how those interactions create complex behaviors in an entire organism. Only to understand that the gap between these scales is massive. For example, a protein folding incorrectly can cause a disease that affects your entire body, and you must understand both levels simultaneously.
* Mechanical Engineering - I love this major because you design systems where small errors cause catastrophic failures. You will have to also calculate stress on a bridge support. Just think that if your math is off by even a small percentage, the bridge collapses and people die. This pressure to be perfect never goes away. You will find yourself having to check and recheck every calculation knowing that mistakes have real consequences.
* Electrical Engineering - This might be the most common STEM major of all. However, you will work with phenomena you cannot see or touch. Everyone knows that electricity flows through circuits but you cannot observe it directly. You will have to rely entirely on instruments and mathematics to understand what is happening. When something goes wrong, you cannot visually inspect the problem. You must deduce the issue from indirect measurements.
* Chemical Engineering - Similarly with Chemistry, you will scale laboratory results to industrial production. You will find that a reaction works perfectly in a test tube. However, you then must make it work in a tank that holds thousands of gallons where the temperature distribution changes. You might also find that mixing patterns change. This will cause safety concerns to multiply. What worked small often fails large, and you must predict these failures before they happen.
* Aerospace Engineering - This is an area that has often fascinated me. It forces you to integrate multiple complex systems that must all work perfectly. You combine aerodynamics, propulsion, materials science, and control systems. Knowing that each field is difficult on its own, you still must master all of them and understand how they interact. A failure in any single system can destroy the entire aircraft.
* Civil Engineering - My son majored in this. He said that you design structures that must last decades longer than you can test them. For example, you build a bridge that must stand for 100 years. However, you can only test it for a few months before it opens. You rely on models and simulations to predict long-term behavior. Environmental factors you did not account for will stress your design in ways you cannot foresee.
* Biomedical Engineering - In this major you will create devices that interface with unpredictable biological systems. For example, you design an implant that must work inside a human body. The body treats your device as a foreign object and tries to reject it. Tissues grow in unexpected ways, immune responses vary between patients, and your device must work reliably despite this biological chaos.
* Environmental Science - This was my son’s second major. He said that you make predictions about systems with infinite variables. One such thing he worked on was climate models, which required him to account for ocean currents, atmospheric composition, solar radiation, and human activity. Each variable affects every other variable. He said that you can never include all the factors and that your predictions must be accurate enough to guide policy despite this incompleteness.
* Statistics - I loved this major when I was in school. It forces you to draw conclusions from incomplete information while quantifying your uncertainty. For example, you analyze a sample and make claims about an entire population. Given that you must calculate exactly how confident you can be in your claims. Politicians and businesses want definitive answers. You must explain that certainty does not exist, only probability.
* Data Science - This is something I had to go back to school and learn. It was difficult because you extract meaningful patterns from noisy, messy, real-world data. You will find that academic datasets are clean and organized. Real data has missing values, inconsistent formats, and errors. I spent 80% of my time cleaning data before I could analyze it. The insights you find must be clear enough to justify all this preparation work.
* Astronomy - I think that the difficulty here is that you study objects you can never physically reach or manipulate. You observe distant galaxies through telescopes. I don’t think anyone can run experiments on stars or adjust variables and see what happens. You must deduce everything from the light that reaches Earth, knowing that light left its source millions of years ago.
* Geology - I find this STEM major interesting, but could never pursue it. I think the difficulty is that you reconstruct events that happened millions of years ago from fragmentary evidence. For example, you find rock layers and must determine what created them. The forces that shaped those rocks are gone. The environment was completely different. You build theories from incomplete data about processes you can never witness.
* Neuroscience - Finally, there might be a reason why there are few people who major in this. I think the difficulty might be that you investigate a system that changes as you study it. Keep in mind that the brain learns and adapts constantly. Your measurements alter brain activity and that each brain is unique. You cannot easily separate cause from effect because the brain is both the cause and the effect of its own activity.
Updated
Karin’s Answer
Hi Alyan,
There are dozens to hundreds of different degree options in the STEM field. Different people will have different talents and interests. Nobody can tell you what YOU will find difficult, or what YOU might be interested in and motivated for.
I would recommend that you peruse websites of different universities for options. Consider your interests and your talents, i.e. subjects that you are good at. Your guidance counselor can also help you with aptitude tests. Consider science, engineering and healthcare majors. Don't forget about interdisciplinary majors like e.g. geology, environmental science or materials science.
You have a wide range of great universities in California. They would have information about the degrees they offer, what courses you would take in each program and what career paths that degree would open up. Here are some options in your area:
https://www.berkeley.edu/academics/schools-colleges/
https://www.usfca.edu/academics/schools-colleges
https://www.sfsu.edu/academics
I hope this helps! All the best to you!
KP
There are dozens to hundreds of different degree options in the STEM field. Different people will have different talents and interests. Nobody can tell you what YOU will find difficult, or what YOU might be interested in and motivated for.
I would recommend that you peruse websites of different universities for options. Consider your interests and your talents, i.e. subjects that you are good at. Your guidance counselor can also help you with aptitude tests. Consider science, engineering and healthcare majors. Don't forget about interdisciplinary majors like e.g. geology, environmental science or materials science.
You have a wide range of great universities in California. They would have information about the degrees they offer, what courses you would take in each program and what career paths that degree would open up. Here are some options in your area:
https://www.berkeley.edu/academics/schools-colleges/
https://www.usfca.edu/academics/schools-colleges
https://www.sfsu.edu/academics
I hope this helps! All the best to you!
KP