I want to know what people think Chicago is best know for, since, well, it’s well-known for most things. Besides economics and maybe biology, what majors do people find to lead to the most opportunities at U of C? I’ve never really heard anyone cite one great major/discipline, as all of them are highly-regarded in the first place.
The math department is pretty darn good, and the physics/chemistry courses are highly regarded (that long slate of Nobel Prize winners can’t hurt).
The most popular majors, as of right now, are Economics (by far – almost a quarter of students with a major have economics as a primary or secondary major), Biology and Math (each with 10-12% of students, depending on whether you aggregate closely related but formally separate majors offered by the same department), Political Science, Public Policy (which is often thought of as “Econ Lite,” so this underscores how dominant economics is at Chicago), Computer Science, and Physics. Those are the majors chosen by more than 5% of the students. Just under that level are English and Psychology, and there are also substantial numbers of History, Statistics, Philosophy, and Chemistry majors.
Of course, popularity is not exactly the same thing as quality, but it’s likely that students think each of those majors, especially the first seven, offers both a quality educational experience and good career prospects. There are other areas where the university is traditionally strong, and you may see more majors than you might expect, although not the crowds the most popular majors attract: core social sciences like Anthropology and Sociology, Classical Studies, Near Eastern Civilization (it’s not an accident that Indiana Jones and his mentor were both supposedly Chicago professors), Linguistics, Music (especially music history). There are also some unique programs like Fundamentals. which lets students study “big problems” of their choosing from a multi-disciplinary but classically oriented perspective.
One of the best but not obvious disciplines of Chicago is paleontology.
People affiliated with Chicago have found “Lucy”, “Tiktaalik”, various dinosaurs, and other interest things.
@JHS thanks!
@eddi137 thanks!
@NotVerySmart thanks!