I also disagree with the notion that the top students always gravitate toward STEM. That’s as much of a stereotype as saying all engineers are one dimensional.
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If that was the case, there would be little point this discussion about degree selection . Your major doesn’t matter because “big employers are just looking for raw iq.” However, the stats posted in this thread suggest the opposite. There are huge differences in average/median salary across different majors, and the majors with the highest salaries tend to be more vocationally focused, as if employers pay a high premium for the graduate having desired vocational skills to be successful on the job.
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I am speaking from my experience at our school – I understand that this need not be the case. Just happens to be the case for many years at our school. The val, sal, the third person in class etc – maybe 6-7 kids out of the top 10 will end up in STEM. These kids also end up being very strong in the non-STEM courses. Definitionally you will be the top kid only if you are strong in multiple areas.
In Ontario, this seems to be the case speaking to my friends there. Either that or commerce programs and the one pre-med program with high success rate and some medical fields.
This is not the case here in NYC.
This is part of the reason why if you went to Harvard, in many cases, you can do what you want for a degree, and get what you want for a job. Within reason.
Well we can all only speak from our own experiences. 
And I do agree the very top students are and have to be strong in all subjects. That said, they don’t necessarily have to love and give equal attention to all subjects.
Harvard shows huge variation in salary by major, just like every other college that has been discussed here. I’ll use Yale as an example since Yale has better public stat reporting thatn Harvard. The following stats are from Yale’s outcome survey for class of 2016-21:
Yale Outcomes
CS Major – Median Salary = $110k, Most common function = software developer
Mechanical Eng – Median Salary = $70k, Most common function = engineer
Classics – Median Salary = $48k, Most common function = teaching (middle/high school)
Anthropology – Median Salary = $45k, Most common function = office admin
Art – Median Salary = $43k, Most common function = art
Biology / Neuroscience – Median Salary = $40k, Most common function = research / lab
Religious Studies – Median Salary = $40k, Most common function = healthcare/teaching
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Natty, You are right that the underemployed humanities major waiting tables or bartending has become a trope. I jokingly use “14th Century Persian Philosophy” as a proxy for majors that would result in salaries lower than a service job like bartending or waitering. That said, my sister waited tables at a high end restaurant while in college and pulled down $300/dinner shift, and that was in the late 1970s.
We have been managing expectations with both of our boys since they were in grade school. They both know that when they are 18 they have four choices: 1. get a job, 2. go to trade school, 3. go to a reputable college and study a subject that results in a good paying job (attending Northern Southwest Monroe County Teacher’s College to study Russian Poetry does not qualify), or 4. I drop them off at the Marine recruiter (Parris Island is lovely in the summer). They both know that moving home and playing video games in the basement is not on the menu.
On a related note, my older son and I attended info sessions on our county’s vocation school program where in five years students graduate HS with a two year certification in a manufacturing skill like mechtronics, CNC machine operator, programming, or machining. They emphasized case studies where graduates were earning over $100K/year as a machinist two years after graduating.
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Just because the employer is willing to take most of those kids it doesn’t mean the kid is willing to take all jobs offered. Kids may choose to go into non well- paying professions such as public service, non profits etc.
In addition, these employers, while willing to take kids from many majors, also would like kids with strong GPAs. So in practice the pool of kids that are employable at high salaries is smaller than the size of the full undergrad class.
FWIW, it’s not unusual for a student or parent to come to CC, for example with a “chance me?” or “what schools should I apply to?” thread, and write that their S or D has “lopsided” (for lack of a better word at the moment) SAT scores or a student who excels in either the humanities or math/science, but not both.
Those are not the kids applying to some of these programs in Ontario.
Harvard, Yale and similar show an extremely similar pattern as every discussed college; so I wouldn’t assume that it’s totally different at Harvard/Yale/… and any grad could start at similar salaries as CS majors if they wanted because employers only care about IQ and not skillset to be successful on the job. Perhaps you are assuming any Harvard/Yale grad can take an “elite” finance job, if they want one. It doesn’t work that way.
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I have seen english or philosophy majors or comparative lit majors (etc) go into banking, management consulting etc. at Princeton. GPA is the major bottle neck.
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I have also heard of such majors working as software engineers. However, while the number is non-zero that does not mean that any grad can work in “elite” finance/consulting. These are highly selective fields that only hire a small portion of applicants, even from highly selective colleges And major can be important for hiring decision in the face of such selection. For example, finance employers often favor applicants who pursued math or business heavy fields .
For example, you mentioned English. Among the entire classes of 2016-2021, only 2 Yale English majors entered worked for a finance company (unclear what position they had). That’s not good odds.
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It isn’t just in your high school. My observation is that the very top STEM-leaning students are almost always strong in non-STEM subjects as well, even though they may be less interested in those other subjects. But the same can’t be said about the very top humanity-leaning students in general. I’m not sure why that’s the case but it could be due to their lack of interest in math when they were younger and math is much more hierarchical and harder to catch up once they found themselves behind the top STEM-leaning students in STEM subjects.
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These are all relationship skills, personableness, soft skills and work ethic driven professions. The finance skills required are fairly light. Any bank can train you for an IB job with all the finance you need, if you are trainable, within 3 months. The work ethic is measured by GPA.
I have no idea what happens in Canada. My point was there’s a theory out there that there are right side brain dominant vs left side brain dominant humans out there roaming the Earth.
That might make sense to you as a possible way to hire. Nevertheless, banks still favor grads with math/business heavy majors. And the bulk of grads in majors associated with lower salaries have lower salaries regardless of whether they attend Harvard/Yale or others. As an example, a comparison of earnings from CollegeScorecard traditionally lower salary majors at higher ranked colleges vs elsewhere is below, from an old post. The numbers are several years old and outdated, but the general point still remains.
------------------ MEDIAN FIRST YEAR EARNINGS BY MAJOR -----------
Major Ivies T20 T50 Pri T50 Pub All
English $36k $34k $34k $28k $27k
Biology $36k $34k $32k $29k $28k
Education $32k $37k $37k $35k $33k
Chemistry $31k $38k $36k $34k
Drama/Theater $23k $22k $21k $21k
Music $21k $24k $24k $26k
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The kids may not want to go to a bank. There are a large set of kids at many of these schools that see banks as evil. They wouldn’t take a job if offered, or even apply. This data cannot tell us whether there is lack of demand for these english major kids, or there is lack of supply of the english major kids to an IB program.
Kids already self-select their major based on priors as to where they want to work four years hence.
Recently my son looked through data on where the managing editor of the Harvard Crimson went for the past 6-7 years (because a friend’s kid at Harvard wanted to join the Crimson). He found out that they all went into banking or consulting as a second choice. The jobs are there if you want them.
These firms don’t generally hire traditional engineering students as “quants”. They used to hire math and physics students, and now they include CS students. The “engineers” they hire tend to be financial “engineers” (those Op Research majors from places like Princeton or Columbia).