I’m a female asian american with an interest in the humanities, psychology, and environmental sciences, and I’m really torn about what I want to major in. I know that the humanities are getting really STEM oriented and some are desperate to expand the humanities departments. Would it be wise to express an interest in humanities?
You are better off being your own person. Follow your own feet. DO NOT make these kinds of decisions based on what you think other people expect.
If you were male, yes. Supposedly for OMRs the advice is play against type, eg choose poetry, drama, NOT the violin or piano. Not sure if this is just rumour. However there is also a female STEM bump in general. You need to look at the data for the colleges you are interested in, how many males v females etc.
However, as ^^ said, at the end of the day you have to go with what you enjoy and are interested in. If you go into STEM and hate it you will not do well
If you like humanities, go with it! Don’t flow with the crowd or what you think is expected of you.
If you are an Asian male… then yes.
I’m an Asian female…
And I’m very interested in the humanities, and I’m intending to express interest in them unless it would be a severely negative drawback on my application.
Seriously, it doesn’t matter for most colleges what major you end up selecting under “indicated major.” They know these interests are likely to change as you enter college. I’d wholeheartedly agree with @JustOneDad 's advice and major in what you are truly passionate/interested in. For those colleges where it does matter where they have separate schools for each major such as NYU or Cornell you are better off majoring in what you truly want to do because internal transfer can be difficult and you don’t want to be stuck somewhere you can’t study what you want
Colleges, especially the top ones, will know instantly if you’re trying to game the system by attempting to gain an edge (via being a humanities major).
I think sometimes it would help because many humanities departments are in need of students. Let’s say if 1000 people applied to X University and 900 of them chose Computer Science, then the school would basically have to reject most of them because their computer science department cannot fit so many students.
It would give you a little edge based on that, but then you have to show genuine interest in the subject and opportunities for the humanities are rarer than STEM EC’s in my opinion.
For example: Summer programs are usually geared at the sciences and research opportunities there. You rarely see a summer program offered solely for historians and poets, you usually see them for prospective biochemists, neurologist etc.
@rdeng2614 What about summer acadamies specifically for humanities? I’m interested in a few STEM fields, but I still have a few humanity options open for me to try for. I’m seeing if there is any summer internships in a certain field of science I’m interestd in, but I’m trying to do both… Which likely isn’t advisable.
Does being asian, but female still give me an edge?
Do what you like. If you really like the humanities then go for it. I think applying for the humanities will give you a slight edge.
These advantages are extremely slight, so just do whatever you like the most.
There is no general answer to your question. It depends on your stats, courses/grades, your aptitudes/interests (and whether you can convey those interests in your essays), ECs, the schools you want to apply to and your admission chances (in general).
Most of the prior posters are correct. This is one of those weird splits. Girls in STEM have a slight advantage, Boys n humanities are better off but OMRs are better off avoiding STEM. So go with what you want. However, do research. There are certain schools that are looking for people to fill certain departments and not others. MIT wants language majors for example. To what extent and whether you want to go there is another question. This is something you need to research. There was a thread about likely letters that said Penn wanted Chemistry majors (no idea if it true) and were sending some likely letters. So if you planned to apply as a Chemical Engineer, and Penn (rather than engineering) was your goal, you would have been better off applying for Chemistry (but would have to have a good reason why). There are plenty of humanities ECs and summer programs. Volunteer at a museum, archeological dig, summer writing programs, summer school at various colleges, take a humanities course (not sure impressive that looks), show interest. Or just talk about why you are interested, what have you read that made you interested.
How does one go about finding out which schools are desperately seeking philosophy or anthropology majors, for example?I I have never seen anything like published. Do you just assume that a school like MIT and the like would need Eng majors?
I am no longer applying so it is not a factor for me. I was told about MIT recently after the fact by someone who is a professional guidance consultant in a chat
Also just and fyi just because a school is “desperately searching” for a certain type of major does not mean that school is the best place to go for that major. For instance, hypothetically speaking let’s say MIT was searching for humanities majors, but the department is small or very weak. You might be better off going to a school that is well known to be strong in those subjects to begin with. The name of the school doesn’t mean anything if you don’t learn anything from your college experience
Very true, for example people may think it is strange that you studied French at MIT, they may assume you wanted Chemistry or something and could not cut it. Of course they may just be impressed that you studied at MIT. Again would depend on whether you were going for a general ed degree or wanted a humanities degree in a particular subject that you planned to attend grad school or make into a profession eg you wanted to be an archeologist. Then I would go to the best program available.