<p>I have a graduate degree in architecture and an undergraduate degree in English with an Art major. Which was “harder”? Hmm. That’s “hard” to say. I actually found it more difficult to compare Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow to Joyce’s Ulysses and stay up nights to write a paper about it than to design a casino for Atlantic City and stay up night srendering it (this was pre-computer!). On the other hand, I fall asleep reading building codes when my husband–also an architect–finds them fascinating. I find my older son’s advanced music theory textbooks completely impossible to understand. My younger son is interested in philosophy. Hard? Yep.</p>
<p>Hard? It depends on your brain. Time-consuming? That’s another matter. So what if it takes more hours to do an architecture major than an English major? Some of it is purely practical–how do you draw a line from A to B? Will level A line up with Level B? What tread depth works with what tread height? I do agree that architecture covers a wide range of brain use. That’s not to say it’s harder.</p>
<p>Quite a bit of work these days is interdisciplinary anyway.</p>
<p>Sometimes students choose schools (including honors colleges) that encourage double majors and dual degrees encompassing both technical and humanities or social sciences majors. At some of the honors colleges I know of, it is not uncommon to run across students majoring in electrical engineering and philosophy, doing high-level engineering research and participating in upper-level honors seminars in a humanities area.</p>
<p>I think it is probably difficult to say which major is harder “per se.” Different things are harder for different people. However I believe that statistically fewer people recieve high grades (GPAs are generally lower) in science, math and engineering majors. I don’t believe these technical students are less capable than students in the arts, social sciences, or humanities. They generally do as well or better on the GRE, which is at least one way of measuring scholastic aptitude (although not comprehensive and certainly not my favorite). </p>
<p>So I would at least say that in general grading is slightly harder in the technical fields. To generalize beyond that is a leap.</p>
<p>^ Frazzled, that to my mind is a fantastic development and raises the exciting potential for this generation of students to leave most of us in the dust! Quite a lot to ask of these students to be multi-talented across disciplines though …</p>
<p>I think it boils down to the person taking the courses. Take two individuals of equal IQ and I think the difference in one’s perception of whether a subject is easy or hard will primarily depend on two traits: personal interest in the subject, and “right or left” brained tendencies.</p>
<p>Let me add one theory of mine, for the sake of argument. It is actually based on myself, and my experience in college. First, I can’t say for sure it’s true, but I believe even among top students different people have different aptitudes in different areas. However, because there is so much emphasis on majoring in a field with an “employable future”, many students with an aptiitude, passion, or at least a major interest, in the social sciences, arts or humanities, will be encouraged to major in technical areas where they don’t have a natural ability or passion. I don’t think it happens the other way around very often, although I knw at least a few cases.</p>
<p>I earned technical degrees which I found extremely difficult and in some cases boring - I squeaked by. I’m not saying I would have been some master in composition or literature, but writing always seemed to interest me, I always scored better on the verbal section of standardized tests, etc. I am glad I earned the tech degrees because they allowed me to find interesting employment that usually was not very technical at all. In fact, I now work for a public agency where writing skills are far more useful than the technical skills. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I had a fellow Physics major many moons ago who was brilliant in math and physics. He had to drag me through many an exam or homework session. But the guy couldn’t string two words together to save his life. I think spell and grammar check were invented specifically for this guy. And the irony is that he wanted to be a lawyer - I’m not sure where he ended up.</p>
<p>Keil, one of the things that mitigates the problem you identify is the vast dispersion of high-quality humanities PhDs throughout the US college system. One of the most intellectual people I know is a cousin of mine. He was a magna cum laude English major at Harvard, an English PhD at Princeton, then junior faculty at Princeton for six years. Three years into that, he (and every one of his peers) was told that none of them would ever be considered for tenure – the department was shrinking radically. It took him three years to find a job, but he did – and wound up spending most of the rest of his career at a third-tier, non-flagship state university in a rural area.</p>
<p>That university had very few students who wanted to read Beowulf – although that was his main area of expertise. He got a lot of NEH grants to run summer programs on Beowulf and other Old English texts for high school teachers, which was very rewarding. He basically retooled himself to focus on other areas, though, that were more attractive to the students there. But if a student came along who was interested in Old English, he might lack for peers, but not for instruction.</p>
<p>That gets repeated all over the place. I know fabulously smart, really well-trained humanities faculty at all kinds of backwater places – even LACs like Swarthmore! – because there just haven’t been enough great university jobs to go around.</p>
<p>I also think there is a class issue here, more than anything. People from economically prosperous, Establishment backgrounds know that English majors can be Masters of the Universe. But those aren’t the kids who are accepting full-ride scholarships to Alabama, or going to East Directional State U. because that’s their financial safety.</p>
<p>One clear (at least to me) FINANCIAL advantage of choosing an honors college over an elite LAC, for a student interested in interdisciplinary work, is that an extra year is entirely feasible if necessary to fit in upper-level classes in multiple subject areas or to complete dual degrees. A consequence of this is that in upper-level humanities classes, it is not at all unusual to see students who have also completed a full load of coursework for a technical degree, perhaps in areas not even found at most LAC’s. I am sure that such students have quite a bit to offer to a high level of discussion among others who are pure humanities majors, or even among math and physics majors.</p>
<p>On the flip side, it is possible to complete a degree at most elite LAC’s without ever getting the perspective of someone also trained as an engineer, who might have entered with high verbal scores (not unheard of for entering engineering students to score an 800 on CR) and a strong interest in also pursuing humanities. </p>
<p>Increasingly, also, the demographic of students whose families do not qualify for need-based aid but who cannot feel comfortable paying full sticker price at an elite school (and would otherwise qualify) is MIA in these schools should they not offer merit-base aid. I think it is entirely fair to also question the effect this missing demographic has on the level of discussions in seminars in humanities and social science.</p>
The point is that hacking an engineering, CS, math, or hard science major requires that one have at least some work ethic and/or intelligence, while it may be possible to slide by in the humanities without either.
I’d say that there are a few options. First, there are OOS LACs with affordable tuition - UMN-Morris and SUNY Geneseo both come to mind.</p>
<p>Second, a big campus will have a diverse variety of people. Being part of the honors college, joining more academic clubs, and generally just seeking out people who are similar can be helpful.</p>
<p>Third, get involved with independent research. Many honors programs require a thesis. Put yourself into it.</p>
<p>Fourth, broadening your mind may involve getting to know people who don’t fit your preconceived notion of “intellectual”. Their bark is usually worse than their bite. You might even find yourself hanging out with some engineers - perish the thought!</p>
<p>Fifth, don’t limit yourself to what is available in class. Go beyond the required. Check out a book from the library.</p>
<p>Sixth, do something different. Study abroad, take graduate courses, or explore a field you haven’t really thought about in the past.</p>
<p>Compiled from various advice given to me by friends now at lower-ranked schools in a wide variety of majors.</p>
<p>“Why is a Business degree considered an easy degree?”</p>
<p>Because Business majors are knowing for having lots of free time, being able to go to partys, activities, ski, and other stuff that requires free time, and many students who drop out of engineering migrate to business.</p>
<p>Working in a business setting doesn’t really require a business degree at all. There are some specializations, to be sure, but you don’t need to start out with business to work in business. This isn’t to say smart kids don’t go into business, just that there are other options if they want to work in business.</p>
<p>I believe JHS makes a very valid point. I attended lower tier undergrad schools, but had a positively fabulous humanities experience. Through them I was introduced (literally not through their writing) to, and was able to hangout with the likes of John Ciardi and Norman Mailer. I was able to study philosophy and literature with professors who earned their graduate degrees from Oxford, Chicago, and Harvard. They were young, enthusiastic and demanding. In a freshman class, the prof held up a paper I had written where he tore off page after page praising each in its own right until he got to the final page, where he said, “Yes this paper was quite impressive, until I got to this page, unfortunately, the author directly addressed the reader (using ‘you’). He receives an F.” I loved it. And, I have never done that again.</p>
<p>Investigate the faculty, find out who they know, show interest beyond class, attend seminars and invited lectures, amazing things can happen.</p>
<p>busdriver11 notes,"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 "</p>
<p>Response: This certainly isn’t true for most of the art and music majors that I met. My daughter regularly puts in late hours working on projects in addition to her 30-35 hours a week of class time. Music majors at her schools regularly practice 4-6 hours a day! Moreover, the tremendous hours of work are in addition to the tremendous amount of creativity required to succeed.</p>
<p>I would bet that most science majors would flounder in an art, music or humanities curriculum and the reverse would also be true, which is why I now think that most majors are equally hard for different reasons.</p>
<p>I feel like art and music should be considered separate from the discussion. They require some actual talent. I can’t simply decide that I want to work hard to be an artist or musician and get a degree in one of those things, just can’t do it.</p>
<p>Engineering, Humanities, Social Sciences, Business, all don’t really require that talent. You have to be good at math to do engineering, but even if you aren’t you can probably manage to pass (so long as you’re not awful at math) if you try.</p>
<p>I also want to quote my previous post… “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>
<p>Now if we are talking about grading, this might be different manner,but it does depend on the school. At some schools science and engineering and accounting generates lower average GPAs than that of humanities. At some schools , the average GPA is about equal.</p>
<p>Moreover, at my daughter school and for her digital design major, students only get an “A” if their work is equal to that of the professor. That is a pretty hard standard.</p>
<p>^ Music and logic combine non-quant AND quant thinking though. Something that I (Math challenged) can still do well, but they often rely on puzzles/time right?</p>
<p>I think the idea that some majors are “harder” than others, universally, is a myth. It depends on students’ individual aptitudes and interests. Some kids may have a harder time grasping sociology than they do organic chemistry, depending on their inclinations. I was a “purchased” student per se (full ride to my top 100 LAC) and I majored in psychology; none of the other Presidential scholars at my college were engineering or science majors. And I had a much easier time in college grasping statistics and linear algebra than I had grasping social theory.</p>
<p>Also, anecdotal experience…meh. Again, I went to a small liberal arts college, but my psychology department was anything but impersonal despite being the largest major at the school (biology was technically the largest, but large amounts of students dropped it after freshman year, so the graduating psychology class was always larger than the graduating biology class). Now I’m at Columbia and the department is large here, but not impersonal. The level of personality you get is largely dependent upon the work you do and how engaged you are in the department and the research.</p>
<p>I can’t do what the engineering kids do without significant retraining - but similarly, they can’t do what <em>I</em> do without significant retraining, either. My fiance, a math major in college, gives me a blank stare when I even talk about the multilevel models I’m doing in my stats consulting job, much less the structuring of my research on psychosocial risk in health. I don’t get set theory but he doesn’t get social cognition.</p>
<p>Major in what’s interesting to you. And don’t worry about the hype. You discover soon enough what the caliber of certain departments are like at your targeted university.</p>
<p>Yurtle, I took a logic/philosophy course in college. There’s nothing really quantitative about it. Logic =/= quant - math requires logic, but logic does not require math. Similarly, I studied music for years and there’s not much quantitative about it besides simple fractions and counting.</p>
<p>There’s more to the difficulty of a major than meets the eye. For example, psychology may have comparatively easy courses, but anyone who wants success in grad school admissions will HAVE to do a ton of research. So, while I may not have had to stay up all night doing problem sets, I HAVE had to stay up writing manuscripts, working on million dollar grant proposals, reading hundreds of pages of articles, doing data analyses, etc.</p>
<p>Similarly, social work may “seem” like an easy major… but when you’re faced with an ultra-resistant mandated client who seems more interested in challenging everything you say than actually sharing any information? Not so much!</p>