United States of America Service Academy Forums

Hard vs. Easy can be a personal thing so you have to take that with a grain of salt. I had a classmate who was on the verge of failing out as a deck major but changed to engine and had no trouble graduating. With that in mind, I think Deck definitely has some hard classes, but across the board, engineering is overall harder.

This is based on the old quarter systems so it may not be exact any more but it generally follows ... Plebe year is basically the same for everyone, 3/C and 2/C year are where it gets hard for engineers because you have all your classes that are more like mechanical engineering. Circuits Materials Science, Strength of Materials, Statics, Dynamics, Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer ... a lot of calculus based classes.

1/C year engineers get more Marine stuff, internal combustion engines, Marine Engineering I, II and III, etc. A lot of deck struggles with rules of the road because it can require very precise answers, cellestial navigation can be hard because its long problems and a small error in the beginning can lead to you completely down the wrong path. I have also heard of struggles with cargo projects.

In the end, you have to like what you study. My advice to anyone is to pick a major based on what you want to do after graduation and don't get scared off by how other people talk about it. For me, I had been to sea before KP and had stood a watch both in the E/R and on the bridge. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

Do you want to be inside working on equipment on basically a 9-5 schedule or do you want to be outside working cargo and standing watches.