• Life Advice & Visual Arts Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    🌌 Share Your Dreams! 🌌
    📸 15 Years of Photo Contests 📸
  • LAVA Moderator: Shinji Ikari

Most Difficult Degree to Achieve?

D's said:
I'd have to say a PhD in Virology. Just think.. They havn't found the cure for AIDS, Herpes, HIV, the Common Cold, even Cancer(chemo doesn't count).

Just think those people go to school to learn how to find cures for shit, and they havn't found anything.
It's gotta be a hard program, or something..

I dunno.
Click to expand...

I agree with this too. Most medical scientists will NOT discover a breakthough in their career.
 
I may get flamed for this, however I would think the first degree is usually the hardest for most people. The change from being taught something to having to find things out for themselves is pretty difficult.

I have a 1st degree, masters and PhD and found the 1st degree the most challenging, the masters and PhD were time consuming but not inherently difficult if you had the dicipline to treat it as a profession.

With regards to medical sciences, although people do not make a breakthough of the size you talk about it is all about advancement of theories and current practical thinking rather than creating a cure for cancer.

In your first degree, or at least in mine, you were expected to learn and retain a great deal of information to then dump part of that into an exam, with master and PhD the retention of the information is less of a requirement than your actual analysis of the information at hand.
 
I may get flamed for this, however I would think the first degree is usually the hardest for most people. The change from being taught something to having to find things out for themselves is pretty difficult.

I have a 1st degree, masters and PhD and found the 1st degree the most challenging, the masters and PhD were time consuming but not inherently difficult if you had the dicipline to treat it as a profession.
Click to expand...

I have had the opposite experience. . .likely because I lack discipline. Procrastinating like mad worked in undergrad, but not here.

In your first degree, or at least in mine, you were expected to learn and retain a great deal of information to then dump part of that into an exam, with master and PhD the retention of the information is less of a requirement than your actual analysis of the information at hand.
Click to expand...

I would append this: undergrad was more about adopting theoretical frameworks and demonstrating that you can explain them and apply to exemplars. Facts were secondary. Grad school is about creatively designing and analyzing empirical data to creatively reauthor theory. I find the former way easier.

What's your discipline? that could explain the difference...

Is this a flame? ;)

ebola
 
satricion said:
None of that is inconsistent with what I said about the influence that status and competition (as opposed to mere difficulty) have on the entrance requirements that universities set for their courses.
Click to expand...

It was to the person that was saying the vet has to learn way more than a doctor because the doctor has to know everything, but also gets to obtain vital information about the patients they can perceive.

Someone said vet would be harder than a doctor because you have to learn all different types of animals and there treatments, 'and they cant talk back to you.'

So I was trying to point out that a peds physician goes through exactly the same but his is harder to deal with. i would go more in depth but im tired..
 
rant*N*rave said:
I think a lot of it depends where you go to school. For instance, the biochem program can vary wildly from university to university - at some schools it's kind of a joke major, but at my school, it's fuckin hardcore. I know that with the honors degree program I'm in combined with the additional separate honors curriculums I'm taking that I'm in one of the hardest degree programs at my school. Out of 30,000 students, only 200 or so a year even graduate in my major, let alone at the honors level.
Click to expand...

I don't think Biochem is considered a joke at any serious University where I live. Ditto that for any of the science programs. Even pure life sciences usually require a chemistry, an organic chem, and a biochem component, not to mention a physics and math if you plan on making it your major. I don't know of any school where you just get to study leaf formations and cell diagrams for 4 years.

But maybe that's Canada. We have a bit more of a homogenized system here, and very strict guidelines on what a "bachelors degree" means. It's my understanding that, in the US, fully private Universities can give out any degree they want, and call it whatever they want.
 
jordan.west15 said:
I think nothing is difficult. It depends upon your interests. PhD is no doubt difficult but with proper guidance and dedication it could be completed easily. You could earn degree from the comfort of your home with http://www.thedegreeexperts.com
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say it would be easy; even with hardcore dedication and determination. I mean think about it, you're becomming a doctor of philosophy for a specific subject. That means that they are hoping you do research to hypothesize(sp?)(is that even a word? lol) new theories and make new discoveries based on research. No PhD is easy no matter how intelligent or dedicated you are.

And as for that site you posted; I'm going to give a quote one of my 8th grade teachers told me. If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
 
Cyc said:
I don't think Biochem is considered a joke at any serious University where I live. Ditto that for any of the science programs. Even pure life sciences usually require a chemistry, an organic chem, and a biochem component, not to mention a physics and math if you plan on making it your major. I don't know of any school where you just get to study leaf formations and cell diagrams for 4 years.

But maybe that's Canada. We have a bit more of a homogenized system here, and very strict guidelines on what a "bachelors degree" means. It's my understanding that, in the US, fully private Universities can give out any degree they want, and call it whatever they want.
Click to expand...


I agree with you. Hell I went to a community college my freshman year and my Anatomy and Physiology class was hard as hell. I agree with Cyc, I don't think any university Biochem degree is a walk in the park.
 
Basically any university level science or mathematics course is going to be balls-out hard, thats just their nature; there's a lot of shit that you're supposed to learn, not a lot of time to learn it in, and there's also plenty of alcohol, pot, and fine-ass females around to distract you. =D
 
Brain surgeon. Youve got to put in minimum 10-15 years to become one, and alot of that is not even hands on. If dedicating that huge of an amount of your life to your career, all of which could be ended instantly by a small accident like chopping up onions and slicing your finger, isnt the hardest thing, i dont know what is.
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
Does anyone know how an adolescent math education degree compares with other mathematics based degrees in terms of difficulty?
Click to expand...

Do you mean a degree so that one is certified to teach math? At what level would this person be teaching math (grade school, high school, college, etc.)? If you can answer this, then I can give you a good answer.
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
A degree so that one can be a high school math teacher.
Click to expand...

I don't know this seems fairly obvious to me. High school Math teachers don't need to learn not nearly as much as someone who is in graduate school for math. If that's what your question is asking?
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
A degree so that one can be a high school math teacher.
Click to expand...

It's my understanding that "Teacher's College" is more interested in making good teachers who can teach from a text book and relate well with students.

This is why often in high school your Math teacher 1st year is your Science teacher 2nd year. That teacher is likely an expert in neither of these fields, but is adequately able to teach at the grade level he's assigned.
 
Cyc said:
It's my understanding that "Teacher's College" is more interested in making good teachers who can teach from a text book and relate well with students.

This is why often in high school your Math teacher 1st year is your Science teacher 2nd year. That teacher is likely an expert in neither of these fields, but is adequately able to teach at the grade level he's assigned.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. Sorry, CoffeeDrinker, about not getting back to you sooner. But Cyc hit the nail on the head.

If you're good at teaching, it's not hard to learn enough math to be able to teach it at the high school level. If you're not good at teaching, the teaching aspect present a bigger challenge.

Actually getting a higher degree in pure or applied math to either go into the industry or teach at the University level rquires ones to take math that is a lot more advanced conceptually. It's really like night and day when you're comparing just the difficutly of the math you have to learn.
 
I come from a family full of teachers, tried and failed at being one, and have married one. I second the opinion that the challenge of a career in compulsory education has more to do with navigating a treacherous interpersonal landscape than an intellectual one. Higher education is a whole other ballgame.
 
I have completed my Bachelor of Civil Engineering, prior to which I completed 4 years of a medicine degree before deciding it wasn't what I was interested in. Medicine is probably the most difficult field to gain entry into. The reason for this is due to its popularity combined with the requirement of intellectual ability. Engineering is easier to gain entry into (less popular) but the content of what you are learning is far more difficult. The problems engineers deal with combine aspects of maths and physical sciences to find optimised solutions. These problems are often unforeseen, requiring a great deal of critical analysis. Medicine on the other hand is almost entirely wrote learned material and very rarely do you have to solve unforeseen problems, but rather be good at memorising. As a result, the students I met in medicine are a lot more hard working than engineers. I believe this is because engineers develop the skills to solve unfamiliar problems not requiring memorisation but rather logic. Medicine on the other hand requires the mundane task of memorisation rather than logic. This is just a comparison between engineering and medicine. I believe pure mathematics would be the most difficult degree as this requires understanding pure logic. Personally, I would find a degree in English the most difficult (as you've probably guessed by the length of this paragraph)!!

Medicine is not as hard as people think. It just requires more dedication.

A degree in arts will qualify you to flip burgers at a fast food chain of your choice for the rest of your life.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top