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Re:Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engi... by guelo on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @03:21PM (#9186284)
I think this is because an engineering undergrad degree is way harder than most other degrees except maybe pre-med types. That means there's a substantial weeding out effect plus all the extra studying helps shore up the general knowledge that the LSAT tests. In general, poli-sci or history majors have spent the previous four years idling.

After I got my EE degree I took the GRE and GMAT and aced them, getting 95th+ percentile, without studying at all. I then enrolled in a MBA program and was shocked at how easy, and unrigorous, the courses were compared to EE classes.

Re:Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engi... by theVirginian on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @03:26PM (#9186348)
I wouldn't be so quick to write those majors off, they involve massive amounts of reading and writing; both skills that I heard many engineering students say they felt they were lacking in. Furthermore both of those majors score highly as well and the marginal difference is not large. I don't think that its the difficulty of engineering that lends itself to the LSAT I think it is the emphasis on problem solving and logical thinking, which is essentially what the LSAT tests.
Re:Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engi... by bigger_cheese on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @06:32PM (#9187885)
When I was at uni we used to talk about "contact hours", which was basically how many hours you spent per week in lectures, labs and tutorials. In my first year (studying Engineering) I had about 20-25 contact hours a week, that didn't include time spent studying working on assignments etc. From what I remember that was at the upper end of most undergraduate courses.

In later years during weeks with a large portion of lab work it wasn't uncommon to have 40+ hour weeks.

While I was an undergrad I rented a flat with a good friend of mine who was doing a B.A. (majoring in creative writing). He would complian if he had more than 7 hours a week.

There was a certain element among engineering students who reveled in the percieved difficulty of the degree there was a lot of 'machoness' about how hard the course was etc and there was a tendency to disparage other faculties particularly the Arts faculty. Which of course is nonsense.

Re:Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engi... by ghaff on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @07:19PM (#9188126)
I wouldn't have called most of the classes in my MBA program easy or unrigorous. I didn't find just about any extremely challenging as I found some of my undergraduate engineering courses. It probably didn't hurt that I had worked for a few years and probably had significantly better work habits when I got my MBA.

It's also true that the non-quantitatively inclined do find some of a good MBA core curriculum pretty hard. I did some tutoring and in economics, among other things, and I had students who couldn't a simple equation. One once asked me to "explain how graphs work," i.e. basic x-y axis price elasticity, etc. Every few years there seems to be a book written by someone who really struggled with basic math in business school.

Re:Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engi... by seanmcdirmid on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @08:45PM (#9188513)
> except maybe pre-med types

As pre-med isn't an undergrad degree in the states, we'd probably find pre-meds with engineering undergrad degrees outscore other majors on the MCAT. The engineering grad is also a bonus for admission (given way too many chem/biology applicants). Not that this happens very often, however.

Re:Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engi... by throwaway344 on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @05:35PM (#9187523)
Where did you go to business school?