How hard is it to get an engineering degree?

It's not really about hours you spend or smarts you already have. It's about drive. Accomplishing anything is hard if you don't have the drive/desire to do it. Indicators are very subjective, of course. My indicators had more to do with what I was interested in than how smart I was: I spent more time watching my friends play videogames than actually playing them. I was trying to figure out how the game worked. What its logic was. I enjoyed watching some cabinets boot up more than watching the game itself. I spent more time trying to figure out how to make my own games than playing games. I attempted to emulate popular games. Today those emulations would be considered High Level Emulations (HLEs) since I was emulating the look/feel of the game, not its precise instructions. Today, I am involved in the emulation scene, emulating at a much lower but still "high" level. Emulating at a register model level is much easier than emulating at a transistor level, but various people are working on such emulations. http://www.qmtpro.com/~nes/chipimages/visual2a03/ [beautiful!]. Some people are archiving old media down to the quantum level. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dsladic/vice/doc/html/vice_11.html#SEC157 "just what a read head would see when a diskette is rotating past it..." [amazing!] I would deep dive into topics intensely. I still do. I like to know a little about a lot and a lot about as much as possible. I'm an engineer, but I'm interested in biology, genetics, viruses, evolution, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, math, writing, ...

The question is a bit too generic.   To get the degree - not that hard.  To get an Engineering degree with a decent GPA and a solid understanding of the field so you can pass the PE test etc. That is harder.

Getting my degree has (so far) been a full time job, and I don't expect that will change. There are constant assignments, labs, quizzes, tests, midterms... I often find myself working on problems or projects late on Friday nights and throughout the weekend. Having worked as a software developer for a year as well, I might actually label school as more-than-full time job. I am regularly at school until 6 every night. However, its an awesome challenge and very rewarding. I'm not talking rewarding on a grades level (though, grades are nice too), but more along the lines of those personal "OHHH!" moments while doing an assignment or when you're fully capable of explaining how something works when you're asked.

Pretty hard. I'd say that if you give it your best shot it's all I'd ask from you. Try it and forget about odds, signals or indicators. They are mostly useless unless you want reasons to give up right now.

Most of the people think that engineering it’s all about calculating numbers in a hard way, let me tell you that from my prespective (I’m informatic engineer) that’s it not.I only see the hard part of calculating number in my classes of physics and math wich are the basics of an engineering but after that it was all basic math stuff.Yes, engineering it does have alot of number, but most of them are easy to caculate with some basic algebra and calculus. The hard part it’s to understand what does numbers mean and what to do after that.During my classes I did more questions about “What to do if…” or “This min if I get X I need to do Y? or what were other options?” and that also it’s what I speend more studing and even so I still feel that I have alot more to learn.Doing it, get your degree it’s hard, but staisfying, to know that you earn it, and put in to practice is even better.

The true honest answer, if your looking at college as a way to party and have a great time, unless your just academically gifted then engineering isn't for you. I know plenty of highly intelligent individuals that had to work there tails off to get through classes. Some will tell you college was hell more than likely they re a engineer . It requires a lot of studying and cramming formulas in your head, understanding high level problems in ways that most just go why. But, it is all rewarding in the end. Whenever you can look back and go wow I did it, or my personal favorite helping kids with homework, and they look up to you like your some immortal because you had to cal 3 , diff eq, linear algebra.