<p>isn't that what forums are about? sharing knowledge?</p>
<p>just trying to keep things accurate. </p>
<p>no need to be an antagonist, protagonist.</p>
<p>Although it's not technically a "major," fulfilling the undergraduate requirements for veterinary medicine is brutal -- commonly, two semesters of inorganic chemistry, two semesters of organic chemistry, at least two semesters of biology/zoology, two semesters of physics, one or two semesters of genetics/animal breeding, one semester of microbiology, one semester of biochemistry, one or two semesters of calculus/statistics, one semester of animal nutrition, one semester of animal anatomy/physiology, two semesters of English composition, one or two semesters of speech/communications, 8-12 semester hours of social science/humanities, 8-12 semester hours of electives. More demanding than the prereqs for medical school -- and harder to gain admission to vet school than med school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
isn't that what forums are about? sharing knowledge?</p>
<p>just trying to keep things accurate.</p>
<p>no need to be an antagonist, protagonist.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>if thats the goal, you may want to re-examine what it means for differences in results to be statistically significant.</p>
<h2>""The central limit theorem says that the distribution of a sum of many independent, identically distributed random variables tends towards the normal distribution. If a data distribution is approximately normal then about 68% of the values are within 1 standard deviation of the mean, about 95% of the values are within two standard deviations and about 99.7% lie within 3 standard deviations. This is known as the 68-95-99.7 rule, or the empirical rule."</h2>
<p>If 95% of the data is within 2 standard deviations, it's not statistically significant."</p>
<p>Please stop, you're making suck a fool of yourself!</p>
<p>Look, I don't mind being wrong. I'm just telling you what I remember when I took stats last year.</p>
<p>If you're going to call me a fool (which I have no problem with!), at least post something that can discredit what I said.</p>
<p>The 68-95-99.7 rule has nothing to do with statistical significance.</p>
<p>Statistical</a> significance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>"The significance level is usually represented by the Greek symbol, α (alpha). Popular levels of significance are 5%, 1% and 0.1%. If a test of significance gives a p-value lower than the α-level, the null hypothesis is rejected. Such results are informally referred to as 'statistically significant'. For example, if someone argues that "there's only one chance in a thousand this could have happened"</p>
<p>When I was applying for an MBA, the average GMAT score was 540, with a SD of ~120. A 660 (Average + 1 SD) is the bottom of the class at Harvard, while a 540 MIGHT get you into Valdosta State. This is a HUGELY significant difference.</p>
<p>
Not to mention the several hundred hours of veterinary or animal handling experience required for admission. </p>
<p>
I'm a classicist, but this seems a rather narrow-minded view. Some of the greatest contributions to the humanities have been from people outside the field. Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B and established that the Greek language was much older than previously thought- and he was an architect by training.</p>
<p>
Although I somewhat disagree with her (see the above post), you did not at all disprove Consolation's point. ANYONE could write a paper on Shelley. Even a very good research paper of that sort requires relatively little thought or effort. To do original research on his works and discover something new and useful, however, is something different altogether.</p>
<p>i guess i should have stated it clearer. I feel that many people who intend to major in engineering could write excellent original research on Shelley. Why? because they have a different point of view than many English majors. I am going to major in engineering and History, so i have to be able to write as well as do math. Engineering doesn't preclude the ability to write.
I like your point about contributions to the humanities from outside the field. very well stated.</p>
<p>
[quote]
i intend to major in engineering and i can easily write multiple papers on Shelley.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sure you can. But would they be GOOD papers that actually contributed some NEW insight?</p>
<p>Doubtful. Because you probably do not have the talent to come up with the kind of perception required. (Neither do many English majors, of course.) You probably have no idea what actually constitutes real work in the field, any more than someone who passes pre-calc has a good idea of the work done by or the level of insight required of mathemeticians.</p>
<p>Some of you sure crucified the individual who pointed out that a statistical difference in a dataset you were all discussing lacked a high degree of certainty. If you are one of these people, you should strongly consider taking stats in college as you are clearly ignorant of the power of data analysis. Good for whomever brought up the point about statistical significance in the first place, I have a feeling your college experience will go well.</p>
<p>^^^^^</p>
<p>I'm not sure what you're saying here, but the GRE has been tested on hundreds of thousands of college graduates, all declaring an undergraduate major when registering for the test. There is a VERY high degree of certainty and significance associated with the GRE data when the subgroups (majors) are analyzed in aggregate.</p>
<p>ehhh... back on the subject, I think philosophy majors have the highest avg GRE scores.... and personally, I've never met a stupid philosophy major, but I find most of them very quirky. :)</p>
<p>why would one major in philosophy? what kind of job would you find with a philosophy bachelors degree.. not many i dont think</p>
<p>^Not true, actually. An undergraduate degree in philosophy is quite common among investment bankers, many finance related occupations, physicians and lawyers.</p>
<p>I'm sorry but those who say that the difficulty of a major depends on your talents and interests have no idea what they are talking about. Sure, a student who loves math, science, and problem solving will ENJOY engineering - that doesn't mean that engineering is an easy major! They still have to put in the extensive hours completing problem sets and study for ridiculously hard midterms and finals.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, most liberal arts majors can skate by and earn their B.A. That's not to say that there are some difficult classes in their, but on the aggregate engineering/science degrees are much more difficult to obtain.</p>
<p>From what I've seen throughout my undergrad, I'd rank the majors as follows (hardest to easiest, listing the largest majors), at least at a large public:</p>
<ol>
<li> Chemical/Electrical engineering (these guys are nuts)</li>
<li> Other engineerings (bio, mechanical, civil, etc)</li>
<li> Physical sciences (physics, chem)</li>
<li> Math/Stats</li>
<li> Biological sciences</li>
<li> Business (mostly because our business program is competitive to get into)</li>
<li> Economics/Philosophy</li>
<li> English/Rhetoric/Linguistics</li>
<li> PoliSci/History</li>
<li>Communications</li>
</ol>
<p>Education is deff the easiest. On a related point, education departments are a huge fueling factor of grade inflation. If (non IVY) colleges were to spin off education departments, i bet the average GPA would drop by .5+.</p>
<p>It doesn't really tell us which major is easiest, but here's a ranking of majors by LSAT score from a few years back:</p>
<p>TABLE 3. Average 2002–2003 LSAT Scores
Rank Major field Average score No. of students
1 Physics/math 158.9 723
2 Philosophy/religion 157.4 2,410
3 Economics 156.6 4,163
4 Government/service 155.5 811
5 Engineering 155.4 3,367
6 Anthropology/geography 155.2 1,103
7 International relations 155.1 1,557
8 History 155.0 4,716
9 Computer science 154.8 1,115
10 Chemistry 154.5 1,000
11 English 154.5 6,736
12 Biology 154.4 3,110
13 Arts 154.2 2,534
14 Foreign languages 154.0 1,174
15 Finance 152.6 3,492
16 Political science 152.1 15,023
17 Psychology 152.1 5,164
18 Accounting 151.1 2,232
19 Sociology/social work 151.1 4,337
20 Journalism/communication 150.9 4,281
21 Health profession 150.4 1,120
22 Marketing 150.2 2,068
23 Liberal arts 149.9 1,447
24 Management 149.7 4,189
25 Business administration 149.6 2,615
26 Education 148.9 728
27 No major/other 148.1 8,197
28 Prelaw 147.4 856
29 Criminology 145.1 4,123
Weighted mean 152.2 94,391</p>