Rank these academic disiplines

Texxers

This is my order:
Medicine
Computer Science
Engineering
Mathematics
Physics/Chemistry

More nurses, please.

Not only is the pay good, it can't be automated.

Reply 3

Texxers

Original post by SWCoffee

More nurses, please.

Not only is the pay good, it can't be automated.

Umm what? The thread asks you to order those disciplines...

Reply 4

moonkatt

Rank according to what?

Grad salary?

Academic difficulty?

Male: female ratio

Hours of contact time, the list could go on......

Or is this just another TSR academic **** measuring thread so that insecure teenage uni applicants can argue about whose uni course is going to be the "best"?

Reply 5

SWCoffee

1. Medicine
2. Computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics/chemistry

Reply 6

Texxers

Original post by moonkatt

Okay since you're going to be like that, rank it in terms of academic difficulty. I was hoping I wouldn't get a person like you who had to state that, I was also hoping you'd just rank them based on an overall score. But whatever.

Reply 7

moonkatt

Original post by Texxers

You've asked people to "rank" a number of courses that rely on a relatively high level of accuracy in their work without any sort of details as to how you want them ranked. Surely a mighty STEMlord such as yourself could show a bit more accuracy than that.

I'll rank them on the level of trolling performed on TSR by academic discipline, from most trolling to least

Maths
Compsci
Engineering
Medicine
Physics/chem.

Reply 8

Rabbit2

I agree with your ordering. I hold a master's in electrical engineering BTW. I considered those [with the exception of computer science - which didn't really exist in 1955 when i was in high school]. I decided against medicine for two reasons. I decided that having an occasional patient die would bother me, and i'm more comfortable with hardware than i am with people. We engineers can't 'bury' our mistakes, we have to live with them, and cure them - regardless of how bad the therapy is. I have told this to a number of my GPs, and it usually draws a laugh. When we have a difficult patient, we can 'park' it in a corner of the lab, and think about what the problems are. They don't 'die', they just keep staring at us until we fix them. Often, technology catches up with what we were trying to do, so it makes 'fixing' them easier. Cheers.

Reply 9

Texxers

Original post by moonkatt

You got the mighty STEMlord damn right. And I never see maths students trolling on here...

Reply 10

moonkatt

Original post by Texxers

You got the mighty STEMlord damn right. And I never see maths students trolling on here...

Oh but I have quite a few years of inside experience.

Either way, a lot of it is subjective. Someone's impression of difficulty of a course will vary depending on a number of factors. Just as my opinion of how much trollingband the source of it will differ to yours.

Reply 11

Texxers

Original post by moonkatt

I'm forever repping for the engineering students, since I'm applying for chem eng 2018 entry. But we all know medicine >>> everything and everyone.

Reply 12

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

This is nonsense. Physics and Chemistry are wholly separate and very different subjects, and medicine is completely unrelated to the others. Beyond that, engineering covers a vast array of subjects, some of which overlap with other areas (Materials and CS, which you have decided to list separately, but not the former). You've indicated no metrics by which to rank them, and so this is just completely arbitrary.

In terms of your later comment about "academic difficulty", Mathematics is by far and away the subject with the greatest potential for intellectual challenge. Medicine isn't "difficult" in this sense, it just has high barriers to entry due to limited spaces imposed by the government, and a large quantity of information to cover. While some is more or less difficult, most medics wouldn't be able to pursue a Mathematics degree, whereas most Mathematicians, if so inclined and had taken the relevant subjects, would be able to cope with the intellectual demands of a Medicine degree (although perhaps not the emotional demands and amount of time required to devote to it).

For reference, my Physics and Maths friends referred to Engineering (my former subject) as "Arts and Crafts", which is somewhat indicative of where it lies in terms of absolute intellectual difficulty in your "list". Like Medicine, the challenge is primarily due to it's popularity (as it more directly leads to well paid positions afterwards) creating barriers to entry, and a broader workload involved - although this varies a fair bit between the disciplines anyway.

However this is irrelevant as there is no "absolute intellectual difficulty", since there will always be exceptions to any given case and knowledge can't be fundamentally quantified as such. One might argue Fine Art is the hardest degree, as it's almost entirely self driven, almost impossible to quantify (and yet you do get quantified and given a degree classification) and since it's so interpretive it is necessarily harder to achieve e.g. a first class result as there isn't simply a "right or wrong" answer - this also applies to say, Philosophy. It's well documented that "arts" subjects at Oxbridge tend to have lower average results than STEM subjects as a result of this higher difficulty to get the top marks, as there is much greater leeway in how the examiners assign marks. Does this make the subjects "harder"? More "intellectually/academically difficult"? Not necessarily, obviously.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 13

lehos

I'm going to rank them on basis on level of intellectual difficulties needed

- Mathematics
-Physics
-Engineering /Chemistry/Computer Science
- Medicine

On the otherhand, if you talk about salary it'd be almost reverse .
If you talk about respect in society , then also it'd be reverse/