
Unified Engineering I, II, III, & IV (MIT OpenCourseWare) - olalonde
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-01-unified-engineering-i-ii-iii-iv-fall-2005-spring-2006/
======
kwantam
Unified is one of the few classes known around MIT by name rather than number.
Such a distinction is reserved only for classes with a reputation for being
especially difficult and time consuming.

The three that come to mind immediately are

\- Unified (occasionally, "unifried")

\- Junior Lab (8.13/8.14), a physics course in which, among other things, you
essentially replicate the most famous physics experiments (Millikan's oil drop
experiment, for example). This course is such a bitch that the Physics
department offers a version of the major that is mostly the same save that you
don't have to take Junior Lab (8B, aka weaksauce, aka I double majored in
physics and something else). This is a good candidate for hardest undergrad
class at the Institute.

\- Integrated Chemical Engineering, aka "Ice". While it's spoken about in
hushed terms by those few who take it, my suspicion is that it's not actually
as difficult as junior lab.

To give you some context regarding how much work something has to be to
qualify, there are classes in EE/CS that take up, by student reports in the
"underground guide" course evals, >40 hours a week of lab time, and those are
generally _not_ known by their name. In other words, full time job type time
consumption (from one of your probably four or five classes) doesn't qualify
for call-by-name status. Yowza.

~~~
loboman
How does that work? How many hours a week do you need to spend for 4 courses?
Or is one supposed to focus in 1 or 2 courses if studying one of these?

Are there any known people who go to these hard courses without spending as
much time as supposedly required?

~~~
kwantam
_How many hours a week do you need to spend for 4 courses?_

As you'd expect, it varies substantially person to person. Nominally, each
course should take up 12 hours per week, including time spent in class ( _n_
units means _n_ hours per week spent on the class). In practice, it can be
anywhere from 50% to 300% of that or more. Most people at the extreme top end
of the range end up dropping the class, so the top side is pretty well
bounded.

 _Are there any known people who go to these hard courses without spending as
much time as supposedly required?_

Sure. When I was a TA (for an advanced control theory class), there was a huge
range of time spent. Some people never showed up for class and did great;
others came to every class, recitation, and all of my office hours (that alone
constitutes ~10 hours per week) and reported spending another 6 to 10 hours on
each problem set, and probably double or triple that on each lab.

Most of my undergrad career I took 5 classes a term, and I did my absolute
best never to study from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. As long as I
stuck to my schedule, it was completely doable. Of course, I skipped classes
and recitations that I found unhelpful in order to reduce wasted time.

------
ardilla
Having taken Unified more recently than when the OCW material was posted (I
took it fall 09 to spring 10), hopefully I can clarify more how it actually
works. Unified I and II are taken concurrently sophomore fall as a student
enters the aero-astro department, and III and IV are taken the following
spring. You learn the material equivalent to the four intro MechE (thermo,
structures, fluids, and controls), but it is taught concurrently and totally
integrated. There are weekly problem sets and labs which combine 2 or 3
disciplines, and then a weekly exam which focuses on a single discipline
(imagine having a 2 hour midterm exam every week). And each semester also has
a culminating project which combines all of the disciplines as well.

That said, we call it unified because its actual course numbers are unwieldy
(16.001-16.004); while the material is challenging, the real difficulty lies
in having four classes thrown at you at once. I can't say whether its any more
challenging than J-Lab or 100B, having not taken them, but I do know I am so
glad to be done with it.

------
euroclydon
Wow! Sounds terrible. I enjoyed my math and computer science courses ten time
more than engineering ones. I know unified or interdisciplinary courses are
supposed to model the real world, or prepare students for it, but if I wanted
the real world, I wouldn't be in college. I much prefer courses based on
individual pure disciplines.

~~~
kanak
I think there's a misunderstanding about how the class actually works.

First off, this is for students in Aero-Astro program. It's not something that
all engineers take; it's simply the starting courses for the aero astro
people.

Second, even though the name suggests that it's some course that tries to
teach you the intersection of all the topics, it's actually teaching you the
union of the topics. From the course overview:

"Over the course of each semester, students engage in seven disciplines of
study, listed below. Each discipline is taught for a fraction of the semester,
through a series of lectures. When one discipline concludes, students are
quizzed and begin a new discipline."

Similarly, if you look at the calendar (
[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-
astronautics/16-0...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-
astronautics/16-01-unified-engineering-i-ii-iii-iv-
fall-2005-spring-2006/calendar/) ). You see that the students are essentially
taking each sub-course separately.

It's more for scheduling convenience and to have the students up and running
with all fields in Aero-Astro than to do some grand unification of these
topics.

