<p>What are the easiest/hardest lsa departments to be admitted?
ie-I would assume Economics is difficult and competitive due to more than half of Ross applicants rejected switching to Econ majors, but something like Chinese Studies?</p>
<p>You aren't "admitted" to any departments at Michigan, you just pick whatever major you want to do. As far as difficulty of the majors: economics is not difficult. The students who get rejected from Ross (um, let's just say they got rejected for a reason...) make the curve super easy for all the math majors who are taking econ as an interesting application of mathematical theory. So it's the math majors that make econ hard if anything, but there are so few, that it doesn't make much of a difference so it's pretty much an easy major overall. I think Chinese studies is actually supposed to be quite hard because we have one of the best programs in the country and the native speakers make the language classes kinda tough. Could be wrong on that one, though. In general, social sciences are going to be the easiest, humanities i could see being a lot of work, but how hard is it to analyze literature, really? Sciences can be tough, but since our departments aren't the greatest, they're still not all that hard.</p>
<p>Your assumptions are all completely incorrect. That is why assuming is seldom wise. At any rate, LSA does not consider major when evaluating applicants. All students who apply to LSA are evaluated the same way, regardless of projected major. The only reason LSA asks applicants for their projected major is for the University to have a rough estimate of how the class is going to shape up.</p>
<p>As for Economics, I'd say over two thirds of Econ majors never intended to major in Business and never even applied to Ross. Try to remember that Michigan's Econ department is as good as Ross and many students who are truly interested in Economics, like myself, considered Michigan very seriously because its Econ department is so highly regarded.</p>
<p>Thanks for the prompt response - I'm pretty familiar with the admissions process; looking for some more feedback however - besides A, A- .. 3.6 GPA + 1300 SAT - is there anything else SPECIFIC admissions loves to see..preferably for a transfer?</p>
<p>If you are already at a university, they will probably care most about your college grades. So a solid GPA at the university level would help.</p>
<p>C'mon chibears, where to start with all you wrote!</p>
<p>First off, can you expand on the idea that a department that hasn't attained top national ranking must be "not all that hard?" Is there some negative correlation between faculty stature and teaching ability? </p>
<p>Humanities is not just about "analyzing literature" and I'm not convinced it's terribly easy at any rate. I had a snooty attitude about English majors when I was in college, until I took some lit classes with upper level lit majors and realized it's not an easy thing. Besides which, humanities is more than literature.</p>
<p>Why would social sciences be the easiest? This doesn't fit in with your assertion above that low ranking = not that hard. Many of the social sciences are very well-regarded. There must be some other reason.</p>
<p>I'm not saying all this so much in defense of Michigan (I've taken no undergrad courses here) but out of surprise for the generalizations about disciplines.</p>
<p>With the sciences, hoedown, would you say classes are harder at a community college or ivy league school? Faculty stature will affect exactly what you can teach and to what depth, and for that reason, many departments are limited on what they can teach because they simply aren't at the forefront of their fields, not to mention their program will not attract the nation's top students, so they can not afford to make it difficult. This is why Harvard may have harder social science classes than Michigan even though Michigan is ranked higher, but Michigan, whether ranked higher or lower, probably will not have classes harder than Harvard's, else many would fail. Also hoedown, I threw out an example of a humanities class. Of course in addition to english we can include philosophy, history, comparative lit, etc. I know some VERY intelligent english majors, so I definintely don't have a snooty attitude about english majors, more of a snooty attitude toward english. It's plenty of work and I would probably do poorly because I'm very ADD when it comes to reading so I'd never get anything done, but the analytical skills required for literature do not compare to those required for a major like mathematics, or at least that has been my experience (having competed at the top levels of both areas in high school). Again, social sciences aren't easy because they have a low ranking (indeed they are tops in the country at Michigan) but because a lot of Michigan's lower-level students decide to major in these fields (psychology is the most popular major, so it obviously cannot be filled with Michigan's top students like honors math or some engineering majors). Class difficulty is a combination of the academic level of faculty and students, and in the social sciences, the level of student drops it a bit, and in sciences, the level of faculty drops it a bit. The majors where both are excellent (honors math and engineering being the only two that immediately come to mind) seem to be the only that can afford to be terribly hard.</p>
<p>I understand the differences between a community college and the Ivy League. I don't think those differences explain why econ and chemistry--indeed nearly every social science, nearly every science, nearly every humanities major-- at Michigan are "not that hard."</p>
<p>I guess we'll agree to disagree. I have no problems with the math department, but I don't accept that math is the only hard major in LSA.</p>
<p>the double honors orgo II class i took last sem was the hardest class i've ever taken in terms of workload and volume information to understand. yes grades are inflated, but raw averages in that class were pretty low. avg on the final was 52% and these people are all nerds (including me)</p>
<p>"In those schools/colleges where the number of applications exceed available spaces (e.g., College of Literature, Science, and the Arts), admission is competitive." - is there another school/department to transfer that IS NOT as "competative" as LSA/where applications exceed # spaces? --I wouldn't imagine Ross, but Kinesiology?</p>
<p>Not really... Several people on this forum got deferred and then waitlisted from Kines. this year.</p>
<p>Yeah, pretty sure enrollment cutbacks are across the board. My friend said they only took 1/4 as many voice majors this year as opposed to last year.</p>
<p>While this doesn't affect class difficulty per se, the grades at Harvard are much more inflated than the grades at Michigan.</p>
<p>Totally agree and not surprised at all - in fact, I believe many Ivy league schools as well as top Univ.'s do this to keep the status quo that their students have these awesome gpa's - I've sat in on classes at these top schools..Cornell, Brown, NYU etc. and believe they are EASIER than mediocre colleges in the big 10 such as Wisconsin, MSU</p>
<p>can i take economics and chemistry as a double major or is that just friggin wierd? im inetersted in both ... and then wanna do a phd in one of them ... i think</p>
<p>LS&A makes it easy to do a double major due to having a distribution, which is ~30 credits in certain fields. By double majoring, especially in similar fields, the distribution of one major can be satisfied by the other -- allowing you to get two majors in the same time as one.</p>
<p>Chemistry and Economics is not a common double major, but it is certainly possible.</p>
<p>Yeah, i guess most would call it "weird", but if you love both, by all means, go for it! Plus, I guess it makes you pretty marketable for someone who wants to be involved in the business side of the chem business (or you could just stay in the academic world, like you said, haha. Tis the life for me).</p>
<p>Folks, economics at a major national university like Michigan with a top 10 graduate program is not going to be easy. Well, it may be "easy" to stumble and barely graduate, but to master the subject sufficiently so as to be qualified to study it further (whether or not one does so) is not easy. My twin brother is an econ PhD who taught a Uva for a while - same kind of student body as UM - his classes were far from easy - and he had quite a few that went on to bigger and better things in econ - and he would freely admit that UVa is nowhere near Michigan's caliber in econ. Let's be fair and realistic in our criticism.</p>
<p>well mam, did your brother study economics as an undergrad before he got his Ph.D.? Because I've actually heard that if you want to pursue economics at the graduate level like that, you're much better off having a mathematics degree as an undergrad because of how mathematically intense the econ material becomes at the grad level. Perhaps he struggled so much because of a weak math background. So I agree in that regard, matthew. If you're looking to do econ Ph.D. stuff, then you're probably better off doing something more math-oriented than chemistry. If, however, you'd like your Ph.D. stuff to be in chemistry, you're probably fine with having econ as your other major.</p>