This is false because it has been consistently reported that English majors do better on the MCAT than science majors.
^^Where is the data? I would love to see it.
@RAHforHEE and @CanuckGuy Here is what the Association of American Medical Colleges says (U.S. News and World Report) "The Association of American Medical Colleges has data to suggest that your major simply does not matter when it comes to getting accepted to medical school. According to their data, only 51 percent of students who enrolled in medical school in 2012 majored in biological sciences. That means the remaining medical school matriculants majored in humanities, math or statistics, physical sciences, social sciences or specialized health sciences.
When they broke down the MCAT and GPAs of these matriculants by major, all the categories have essentially the same GPA, science GPA and MCAT score. Matriculants who majored in biological sciences had a mean MCAT of 31 and GPA of 3.69. Humanities majors had a mean MCAT of 31.8 and GPA of 3.66. The numbers for math and statistics, physical sciences, social sciences and specialized health sciences majors were similar.
In a sense, medical schools do not really care what major you choose, as long as you finish your prerequisites and do well in school overall.
No matter what major you studied in college, everyone will learn the same material in medical school, and the majority of the material will be new for everyone. In looking at your GPA and MCAT, admissions committees simply want to know that you can handle the intellectual rigors of medical school."
Double-major in English and biology, and you’ll be fine.
Major does not equal IQ. E.g. me & my brother were straight students in high school & we majored in math. If I had to do it over we would not major in math. Math is left-brained at the higher level. We could both do the kinetic stuff but the abstract stuff is genetic. I later went back to school for a masters in earth science. I got As & Bs in that & breezed thru chem & phys as well. What I learned is not to judge myself as stupid in my original major. It’s not readily apparent to high school kids but some majors are just not for one. Kids today who go into engineering should really see what it entails.
Correlation v. causation. I think the question is stupid. I continually see this featured on “college majors”, and it turns me off. Can you put something else on? The question is poorly framed.
It would be silly to mistake this for causation. I can’t imagine someone saying “You’re dumb because you majored in XYZ.” It seems obvious that there would be some correlation without an article telling me. I have to question how strong the correlation is, which I would guess is not particularly strong. And the information gleaned from knowing that there is some correlation is mostly useless. I don’t see any practical use to having this information.
colleges have two different systems running on their campuses (yes all schools do not offer all majors…this is a generalization) they have the STEMs and the other stuff like sociology, ethnic studies etc… if you going to major in engineering, biochemistry you need to be really smart , if you just want to go to college and do not want to work hard or are not smart enough to do STEMs …the other majors are available. some people do not like to acknowledge it but that is how the cookie crumbles.
There is a little thing called following one’s passions and interests. No one that I know has picked a major or a career because he or she did “not want to work hard” or was “not smart enough” to be in STEMS. Really, that’s insulting, ridiculous, and not at all the way I’ve seen people operate their lives. (And, no, I do not live in a bubble or know just a few people in all professions.) For example, I’d put some of my theatre and education friends up against some of my doctor and engineering friends any day. Fortunately, my friends wouldn’t need to be pitted against each other, as they respect the fact that there are many types of ways to measure “smartness,” and they also know that there are people of varying IQs in all walks of life.
Anecdotes do not trump reality. are their exceptions to the rule? sure but, exceptions are…the exception.
Sorry, but I see nothing factual/non-anecdotal in your previous comment (26), and I also disagree that what I spoke about in my post was only the exception.
Nothing worse than another thread for STEM nerds to circlejerk and generalize every school and student, and I say this as a CS major.
Guess I’m dumb.
Do you understand that the authors of this study essentially did the comparison that you talked about in #27, above, with the difference that they did it with thousands of people in order to come up with some conclusions about people as groups?
There’s no point in being personally offended by a generalization. Trying to extrapolate to a specific case only shows ignorance on the part of the generalizer.
The question is stupid. The “measurements” of IQ are biased towards quant measures from the start. Is there any way to get this off the headline? It irritates me every time I see it.
^^Among the purest tests of intelligence would be the Miller Analogies Test. There is no math in it but it is still highly correlated with the SAT, ACT, GRE etc. Why then did they do away with analogies in the SAT?
I suspect they are trying to hide something. It is easy to change a test than reality, no?
i think it measures how hard a worker you are.
BTW, they clumped all of the physical sciences majors together - as an engineering major, I’m going to guess that the physics majors probably have the highest average SAT and GRE scores.
The whole IQ concept is flawed. It assumes there are standards human intellect can be measured to when really we don’t understand the psyche well enough to make the assumptions that the IQ tests are based on. All they do is analyze one’s ability to find patterns. This is only so much of human intelligence. I’m using a tired argument and others have done it better but the point is the same.
@RMIBstudent It is physics. (See post 16 and click on the first link). My criticism of the Wei study is that he lumps all STEM together. Not all STEM are equally demanding, and not all social sciences and humanities are necessarily easy.
In my opinion, majors is a far better filter for ability than elite college admission. (Standardized testing, however, is still the best). It seems that elite employers such as BCG, Google Goldman Sachs and the like think so too. Good for them.