"Harder" and "easier" majors

Parents Forum
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<p>I wrote this in reply to a different thread, but didn't want to derail that topic. On UAlabama, in the context of "buying stats":</p>

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...Whenever I see this sentiment--which is quite often--I always think of the same question. So I ask it now: What about the "easier" majors? Don't the English majors and sociology majors at Bama deserve a top-notch, challenging education with "equal" peers as much as the science and engineering majors do? I will never take Spectroscopic Techniques in Organic Chemistry, but I want the same level of rigor in Genderqueer Victorian Literature.</p>

<p>Of course, at publics like UVA or UNC, the high-stat kids aren't concentrated in science/engineering majors. But Bama is a state flagship talked up a lot on CC for its merit aid; I'm troubled by mom2collegekids's reassurance that the "harder majors" will be more challenging. If the limited supply of "purchased" high-stat students are predominantly interested in science and engineering, it logically follows that fewer will be English et al majors. How do those students fare? Where do they find high-level discussion, if most of their peers are at a different level of theoretical understanding?</p>

<p>For example, I think the anecdotal experiences of English or psych majors (large, often impersonal departments) wrt honors programs might shed some insight. Honors is great... but the majority of every honors student's courses will still be non-honors.</p>

<p>I ask from the biased POV of someone who will be attending an elite LAC in the fall--and thus from a theoretical POV as well, since the need-based aid system is kind to me. I've thrown around enough opinionated blather in this OP and hope to spark a discussion lively enough where I can just listen and absorb.</p>

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<p>I think part of what mom2collegekids meant was that technical majors tend to be more difficult. My husband was an Engineering major and my bachelor’s was in Criminal Justice. He certainly had to spend more time on school work than me and I regularly took 18 to 21 hour semester loads and in the two non-technical classes we took together, he made the better grades, even though he slept through most of the classes! He still says I never opened a book in college, I did - he just never saw me. :)</p>

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<p>^True, but she also says outright that most of the high-stat honors kids at Bama tend to congregate in said technical, difficult majors. At the elites, the humanities can be equally as rigorous, IMO due to the high level of peer discussion; how does one mitigate this disadvantage, if it does indeed exist?</p>

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<p>No one is saying that students in those other majors don’t deserve a great education. Bama isn’t saying that they’ll only give the big money scholarships to those in engineering, math, sciences, business, pre-law, or pre-med. It will give the big money to all that have the stats…whether they choose Dance, Communications, or Engineering. </p>

<p>Bama can’t help that a greater % of kids who grab the money <em>tend</em> to gravitate to the so-called harder majors. Bama doesn’t require students to choose certain majors to get the big university dollars. </p>

<p>If more kids with high stats began choosing those “other” majors, then those kids will have more high-stats peers. Bama’s only alternative is to perhaps offer some kind of extra stacked scholarships to those who choose other majors…or force kids into them…which isn’t an idea that anyone would support… :slight_smile: Just kiddin’ …I’m not suggesting any kind of forced major choosing.</p>

<p>I’m troubled by mom2collegekids’s reassurance that the “harder majors” will be more challenging.</p>

<p>I was reassuring that those in harder majors will have other high stats classmates. Which is true.</p>

<p>My point wasn’t really that the harder majors will be more challenging. My point was that the merit scholarship kids within those majors will not be a “rare animal” in their courses, because many kids in their majors will have also qualified for merit money. Those who grab those big scholarships tend to choose about 10 or so majors. My point was that high stats, big merit recipient kids are not evenly distributed amongst all majors (by choice of the students, not the school). </p>

<p>I’m not saying that the other majors won’t be challenging. They most certainly can/will be. And, “challenging” is not something that can easily be compared across disciplines . It can be very challenging for an art, music, or dance student to excel at what they do. It is a different kind of challenge…maybe some would argue more “right brain” then “left brain.” The students in some of those majors can reach incredible heights, but may not have needed a very high SAT/ACT to have what it takes to master their fields. Their incredible talents aren’t measured by an ACT or SAT exam. That’s probably why Bama offers them generous performance/portfolio scholarships.</p>

<p>Bama could be criticized if it only offered the big money to kids who chose Engineering, math, or the sciences…but it doesn’t. There are kids with big academic (non performance) scholarships in many majors, but they tend to cluster in a smaller number of majors. Whose fault is that?</p>

<p>I don’t think this scenario is unusual (except for maybe at the elites). I think on many flagship campuses, you could look up the average SAT/ACTs by major and see that kids with higher stats can be found in the hard sciences, engineering, math, business, and the various pre-professional programs.</p>

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<p>mom2 - I wasn’t trying to imply that Bama was responsible for the gravitation toward “harder” majors by their honors kids. But as you know, it IS what happens… and that may pose a problem for high-stat students who have no interest in those fields but nevertheless seek high-level peers. </p>

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<p>While I haven’t looked at the numbers personally, that sounds reasonable to me. Therefore, would you recommend that high-stat humanities majors look elsewhere than schools like Bama, where the top-level “pool” is limited and tends to gravitate toward technical majors?</p>

<p>Fine arts are also very different from humanities… I personally think that the SAT CR section is relevant for the latter.</p>

<p>I’m not criticizing Bama for a bias caused by its students, but rather questioning whether schools like it (e.g. mid-tier state flagships) should be recommended equally to high-stat humanities majors as to high-stat science majors. That is a very simplistic dichotomy, but worth discussing, IMO.</p>

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<p>At the elites, the humanities can be equally as rigorous, IMO due to the high level of peer discussion;</p>

<p>Public flagships can’t really behave like the elites. The elites, simply because they reject a huge majority of their applicants, end up with a dense concentration of high stats kids in nearly all majors.</p>

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<p>^So what would you (or anyone on CC, please chime in!) recommend as mitigating courses of action for high-stat humanities majors who can’t afford or are not admitted to the elites?</p>

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<p>I don’t see any reason to believe that if a school is “purchasing high stat kids,” that what they “buy” would be concentrated in science and engineering. I also think that the concept of certain disciplines being inherently “harder” or “easier” is bogus. It depends how hard you choose to work, and what classes you choose to take, and how the department is structured. I’m going to bet that there are plenty of “low stat” kids in 'Bama’s non-honors math major track and plenty of “high stat” kids in 'Bama’s honors English major track. </p>

<p>I agree with mom2collegekids, that one’s peer group of students is important to your educational experience. However, I don’t think she meant to imply that the 'Bama college experience for non-quant smart kids would be inferior to the quant smart kids.</p>

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<p>Keilexandra, by and large, the top humanities students who have a choice are not going to gravitate towards schools like the University of Alabama. When classes are discussion-oriented–which good humanities classes generally are–it makes an enormous difference whether there is a critical mass of highly intelligent, accomplished students in the class. It’s not like you can just grind through the textbook and labs on your own and get a decent grasp of the material. That’s not what it’s about.</p>

<p>And by the way, I object to the idea that “technical” majors are necessarily “harder” than humanities majors. Most people have no idea what level of talent is required to truly excel in academic disciplines such as philosphy, history, languages, and literature.</p>

<p>And “pre-law”–what is that? Business is a “hard” major? Please. Maybe at Wharton.</p>

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<p>“Harder” and “easier” are in quotes for a reason. I, personally, haven’t done enough research to definitely say either way; I’m reliant on hearsay. That said, it’s fascinating how the previous two posts contradict each other:</p>

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<p>Please leave try to leave me out of this–I made my own decision a long time ago, but it was aided by very generous need-based aid. What can those who are not as lucky, do to find a challenging humanities education at a school like UAlabama? Or is that an unnecessary question to ask because the distribution of “honors kids” really is equal?</p>

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<p>Sorry, but that is plainly not true. An engineering program at a so-called 3rd or 4th tier college is many times more rigorous than the most demanding humanities program offered at any Ivy or so-called tier 1 school. It seems it’s a shock to some people that certain majors are indeed many times more difficult than others. Imagine that? Arguing else-wise is nothing more than thinly disguised rooting.</p>

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<p>I think she’s asking what can be done when the student has no choice due to finances, or rejections elsewhere? And I’m guessing that she doesn’t mean to truly imply they’re easier, just using generalizations. </p>

<p>However, let’s be honest. There are plenty of kids, having never been in a challenging Literature or History course who look around campus sophmore year and probably go: “Oh, well that doesn’t look too hard.” In a middle-low range college. </p>

<p>Personally, I feel that’s why regular HS and big state universities have honors programs- to filter out the kids who are able and ready to go above the average.</p>

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<p>Please Toblin; read this for me:</p>

<p>Hw</p>

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Exactly.</p>

<p>And I will be a humanities major at Swarthmore, so it doesn’t make much sense for me to try to avoid rigor by picking an “easy” major. I could have done that more simply by picking a different school altogether. :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>“You see that’s english, and if you can’t do it without modernized text, you’re wrong about things always being easier for an humanities major.”</p>

<p>He should just reply with physics problems.</p>

<p>I’d like to say, that at least at Michigan, while average GPAs in Engineering about .5 lower than most of the humanities and social sciences, the average ACT score is 2 points higher. When one says harder it’s not to imply that there can’t be hard humanities classes, or that people in humanities are dumber, but that a 3.0 in Engineering is harder to achieve than a 3.0 in Psychology. The grading standards are lower in humanities than engineering.</p>

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<p>I’m another of those who’ll go out on a limb here and state that many of the engineering/CS and some science and math programs are simply more difficult for most people than the humanities. The material is simply more difficult and can’t be be achieved with memorization skills as in some science (bio), language, history, poliSci, and other majors. In addition, I think that at many colleges the amount of effort it takes a student to achieve some of the engineering/CS degrees is simply quite a bit more than for many of the humanities. I think they tend to put in a lot more hours of effort because it’s required in order to learn the material. At some colleges the unit requirements are higher for some of these majors than others as well. It’s just the way it is.</p>

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<p>We’re all entitled to our own opinons as to the difficulty of any particular major. But, on average, some majors find students putting in more hours of studying than others. </p>

<p>That’s not to say that one person in one major will always put more time than another person in a different major. It’s just saying that the average number of hours of studying per week is higher for some than others.</p>

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<p>I agree, consolation. I think it doesn’t speak very well to the science / engineering types who repeatedly have to beat their chests and proclaim How Very Hard Their Major Is. I think it speaks to a certain insecurity.</p>

<p>Besides, how many of them could be art majors? Dance majors? Theater majors?</p>

<p>It’s not a contest. Everyone can do his or her own thing and do it well and it’s all good.</p>

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<p>Talent isn’t the point. An arts major could be incredibly skilled at their craft, but they aren’t spending 18 hours a day going to class and doing projects and homework, as a computer science major might. I say this as a parent whose kid goes to a school that is one of the top universities for both computer science and the arts. I am most certain that the arts major has a far more pleasurable and relaxed time in school than the computer science major. Though it’s probably much tougher getting a job.</p>

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<p>Why should it matter which major is easier or harder? The art student probably wouldn’t do electrical engineering, the electrical engineer probably wouldn’t do art. Each person has to follow their passion and do what they enjoy.</p>

<p>When I see a student say that he/she wants to do engineering because it’s hard, I cringe. That’s the wrong reason to pick a major. A person should do engineering because they have passion in technical subjects, not because it’s hard.</p>

<p>I’m sure that humanities majors cringe just as much if they hear someone say they are going to do humanities because it’s easy.</p>