Biggest majors on selected campuses

Parents Forum
1

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ has counts of majors of a recent graduating class.

Biggest majors:

Harvard: 219 economics, 160 social sciences general, 131 computer science

Yale: 143 economics, 122 political science, 105 cell / molecular biology

Princeton: 129 economics, 129 computer engineering, 107 public policy analysis

Stanford: 273 computer science, 126 human biology, 112 engineering other

Chicago: 315 econometrics and quantitative economics, 148 biology general, 132 mathematics

Berkeley: 561 economics, 501 computer science, 494 cell and molecular biology, 391 “electrical engineering” (most EECS students emphasize computer science) (numbers differ from career survey probably because of how double majors are counted)

Michigan: 490 business administration, 473 computer science, 377 experimental psychology

Amherst: 66 economics, 35 English, 33 mathematics

Williams: 89 econometrics and quantitative economics, 57 biology general, 48 English

Pomona: 45 economics, 37 computer science, 28 mathematics

Any surprises at these and other schools?

Seems like even the colleges supposedly focused more on academic idealist notions of liberal arts education have students choosing majors heavily for preprofessional reasons.

2

Yep. Sure, some colleges devote more space in their viewbooks to gushing about the life of the mind and how ~quirky~ they are, but at the end of the day, students at virtually all of the top colleges are studying the same subjects and aiming for the same careers.

I commented on this last August.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20813183/#Comment_20813183

3

Reed may be more atypical: 29 English, 25 multi/interdisciplinary studies, 24 biology general, 22 art general, 20 mathematics, 19 psychology, 16 economics, 16 political science

4

There are plenty of colleges with different paths than the usual liberal arts colleges with economics or tech colleges with CS. Some examples are below. However, students as a whole at highly selective colleges favor majors associated with good career prospects, so you rarely find large numbers of art history or … studies type majors.

Emory

  1. Business
  2. Nursing
  3. Biology
  4. Psychology
  5. Neurology

Johns Hopkins

  1. Public Health
  2. Nursing
  3. Bioengineering
  4. International Relations
  5. Neuroscience

Bryn Mawr

  1. Psychology
  2. Biology
  3. Mathematics
  4. English
  5. Economics .
5

I don’t think it’s as uniform as some previous posts suggest. Raw numbers of majors can be misleading because class sizes differ. More helpfully, the CDS gives us percentages of undergrad degrees granted by discipline. It’s anything but uniform. Here are a few for 2017 grads:

Engineering: Princeton 25%, Stanford 20%, Michigan 16%, UC Berkeley 12%, Yale 7%, Harvard 4%
Computer and information sciences: Stanford 14%, Michigan 7%, Harvard 6%, UC Berkeley 5%, Yale 5%, Princeton 0%
Biological/life sciences: Harvard 14%, UC Berkeley 11%, Yale 10%, Princeton 9%, Michigan 8%, Stanford 6%
Math & Statistics: Harvard 11%, UC Berkeley 5%, Yale 5%, Stanford 4%, Michigan 3%, Princeton 2%
Physical Sciences: Harvard 7%, Princeton 6%, UC Berkeley 4%, Yale 4%, Stanford 3%, Michigan 2%
Social Sciences: Harvard 30%, Yale 28%, Princeton 19%, UC Berkeley 19%, Stanford 13%, Michigan 12%
History: Harvard 8%, Yale 7%, Princeton 7%, Stanford 2%, UC Berkeley 2%, Michigan 2%
Psychology: Michigan 10%, Yale 6%, Harvard 6%, Princeton 5%, UC Berkeley 4%, Stanford 3%
Philosophy & religious studies: Princeton 3%, Yale 1%, Harvard 1%, Stanford 1%, UC Berkeley 1%, Michigan 1%
Visual and performing arts: Michigan 6%, Yale 4%, Harvard 3%, UC Berkeley 3%, Princeton 2%, Stanford 2%
Area, ethnic, and gender studies: Yale 5%, Stanford 3%, UC Berkeley 3%, Harvard 2%, Michigan 2%, Princeton 2%
Business: Michigan 7%, UC Berkeley 5%, all others 0%

No doubt there’s been a general trend toward more vocationally oriented studies, but each of these schools nonetheless retains a distinct flavor—Stanford (not surprisingly) heavy in engineering and computer science, Harvard in math and natural sciences, H and Y in social sciences (including econ), HYP in history, Michigan in psychology, Princeton in philosophy, Michigan and Yale in visual and performing arts, etc.