That’s always been the case at UChicago, even back in the days when it was famous for not graduating anyone who was employable! (not accurate, btw, but - similar to “where fun comes to die” - some “truths” about UChicago just won’t quit). Edit to add: I think that the percentage doing econ was even higher pre-2000.
Not surprising. The common wisdom is that if you are going to major in a hum subject, you need to go to a top school with good career placement. Those same limitations don’t seem to apply for C/S, nursing, business, engineering . . .
The source specified in my post did not use winter 2021. It used an earlier year. As noted in the thread, CS major enrollment has increased rapidly in recent years, so even looking a small number of years in the past can result in a very different order. In any case, the increased CS enrollment adds to my point rather than takes away. The updated list (see previous post for disclaimer about lack of precision) is below. The majors associated with the highest earnings are extremely similar to the majors that have largest enrollment.
Highest earning majors at Chicago: CS $91k, Economics $86k, and Math $72k
Most popular majors at Chicago: Economics, Computer Science and Biology, Math
Suppose 55% of pre-meds major in bio and the next most common in the “plethora” of other majors (maybe chem?) is 10-20%. If that’s not bio being by far the most common major for pre-med, I don’t know what is. In any case, I was speaking about pre-med major selection in general, not specifically at Chicago.
Is there any detail about where all those economics majors go after graduation? 22% of the class is pretty stout. I suspect a much higher percentage go on to grad school than most schools.
Great data from NCES. Psychology overindexes by 6 pts with Hispanic and 3 pts with Black students. Social sciences also overindex by 3 pts with Hispanics and flat with Black students. Engineering and CS significantly overindex with Asian students while underindexing with all other ethnicities.
In general, applicants and matriculants to medical schools have had about half with biological sciences as the primary undergraduate major, so Chicago is not an outlier in this respect. Biological sciences does greatly outnumber any of the other listed groups of undergraduate majors, although it is only slightly larger than all other majors combined.
Maybe some of that, but some of the CBOs have the model where one of their people is physically in the low SES high schools that have chosen to participate. Other CBOs spend a great deal of time trying to get the overwhelmed GCs to at least make students aware of these external, and free, college counseling options.
That makes sense. Bio for pre-med is over 50% so is still the most common even at UChicago in comparision to any one particular major. My perspective is bio/non-bio.
Yep. I should have clarified why I posted the Winter '21 data: it just became available and is the most up-to-date information on how many are majoring in which subject. However, one caveat is that it includes about 3,100 or so students who have yet to declare (out of about 6,900 enrolled). That number will include pretty much all the first years, of course, but also a good majority of second years (maybe over 2/3rds). Looking at graduation stats in the spring is useful because UChicago will also categorize those by academic division as well as major, thus enabling an easy look-see at “humanities” vs. “sciences” etc. However, that table doesn’t quite capture the very current trends in majors such as C/S. The census data is always the most current. I think that Stanford students might declare their majors earlier on average than UChicago students do, but that might to do with being enrolled in heavily technical degree programs as opposed to a BA program.
As mentioned previously, UChicago’s proportion of majors in Econ used to be HIGHER even back before the sophisticated career placement resources they now have in place existed. But you are probably correct that a large number go on to grad school. Not sure about what happens at other schools, but according to the College Admissions website:
“Within five years of graduation, around 85 percent of UChicago students are attending or have attended graduate school, and 15 to 20 percent go on to receive PhDs.”
I have two at UChicago and both are very likely headed to grad school. It’s not even a question on their part. In both cases it would be for a graduate professional degree, not a PhD. However, neither is an econ major. One will graduate with a major in history, and the other is considering a major in philosophy.
Note that interdisciplinary humanities majors are excluded from the NCES totals above for Stanford, which I expect is a significant chunk of the total humanities. For example, the previously linked senior survey had 13% social sciences, 11% humanities, and 10% IDP humanities+SS. It’s probably closer to 15% in total. This makes the totals from the NCES year
Most common major: 18% CS at Stanford vs 22% economics at Chicago
Percent Humanities: ~15% humanities at Stanford vs 18% at Chicago
Yes, Chicago has more humanities majors than Stanford, but it’s not a drastic a difference as several posts imply, and humanities seems to be a quite unpopular major choice at both schools. Similarly both schools also have a notable portion that seem to target majors associated with higher earnings over humanities . The difference more seems to be which higher earnings majors are most popular. With Stanford’s history and location in SV, CS/Eng are notably more popular at Stanford than Chicago. With Chicago’s economics strength + history combined with lack of engineering, economics is notably more popular than Stanford.
Do we have evidence that the admissions office is notably favoring certain groups of applicants based on prospective major? We certainly didn’t see this in the Harvard lawsuit. The regression analysis found concentration selection generally did not have a statistically significant impact. Undecided prospective major may be an exception, which was near statistical significance. The fact that major enrollment can change so dramatically over a short period of years is also not suggestive of admission favoring particular majors. The discussed recent CS boom is an example of this, which has occurred an nearly all highly selective private colleges with open major enrollment. If applicants from particular majors were notably favored at a highly selective college with open major enrollment, then that also opens the door to kids saying they are interested in an easier admission major on their application, then switching to a harder admission major after they attend.
I also question whether Chicago really has notably more diverse major selection than at Stanford. The major distributions are certainly different – Chicago has more social sciences, and Stanford has more CS + engineering. However, Chicago does not appear to be any more diverse major selection to Stanford than me. Instead Stanford has a slightly smaller portion of students clustered in the most popular majors than Chicago.
Portion in 6 Most Declared Majors in Most Recent Year
Chicago
Economics-- 23%
Computer Science - 7%
Mathematics – 6%
Biology – 5%
Political Science – 5%
Public Policy – 4%
Total = 50%
Humanities (see earlier post) – 18% Chicago vs ~15% at Stanford
Social Sciences
Economics – 22% at Chicago vs 5% at Stanford
Political Science – 6% Chicago vs 3% at Stanford
Public Policy – 8% Chicago vs <1% at Stanford
Psychology – 5% Chicago vs 2% Stanford
Interdisciplinary – 0%? Chicago vs ~5% Stanford
Total Social Sciences – 45% Chicago vs ~22% at Stanford
Sciences
Physical – 7% Chicago vs 5% Stanford
Biological – 7% Chicago vs ~4% Stanford
Interdisciplinary – 0%? Chicago vs ~6% Stanford
Total Sciences – 14% Chicago vs ~14% at Stanford
UChicago students don’t need to declare a major as part of the application process and, barring one exception that I know of, are welcome to major in whatever they wish to. Many explore and change their minds or don’t make a decision till well into sophomore year. The only potential evidence I know of is from the dean of admissions who, in the context of discussing their Test Optional policy introduced a couple of admissions cycles ago with the Class of '23, mentioned that those declining to submit scores were more likely to be humanities majors while those submitting scores were more likely to be doing science. We don’t have the data to understand yet how that will play out because it appears that that over 2/3 of the class of '23 has yet to declare a major! Does that mean there are a bunch of hum kids still shopping around? Who knows? So that’s a TBD.
The common wisdom is that hum guys and stem gals will have an edge, all else equal, since it’s a holistic admissions process, but not sure that’s supported by the data. Over the past 17 years, males have made up just under 42% of Hum first majors. It’s gone up and down over the years but it hasn’t consistently been dropping, despite the large increase in enrollments by the College and the overall shift toward non-hum (as a first major) AND the introduction of and growth in CS and molecular engineering.
What IS interesting is that since the current admissions dean took over in 2008/2009, the percentage of those graduating with a hum major has stabilized from a noticeable decline earlier. In 2004, 27.2% of the College graduated with a hum (first) major. That percentage was down to 20.8% nine years later. Beginning in 2012-13, the number of applications began to skyrocket due to new admissions marketing policies and outreach under the new dean, and the College started graduating classes admitted under the new admissions department. While the percentage of the graduating class in a hum major still declined, it was far more gradual. Most recent data is the Class of 2020 and hum (first) majors were 18.6% of the total (compared to 20.8% in 2013). And this despite continued growth in the size of the College. So the data are consistent with some management going on. It’s possible, for instance, that they’ve been striving to keep a relatively diversified class across the academic divisions so choose those qualified candidates who have interests and skill sets that support that sort of diversification.
Not sure how some of those percentage are being calculated as physical sciences and Math/stats, combined are about 25%, not 18%. Perhaps there are more majors in the physical sciences at UChicago than at Stanford? The percentage breakout (recent) is bio sciences (including biology and neuro) 10%, humanities 19%, Physical sciences/Math Stats 25% and social sciences 46%. I think that this distribution is all that different from Stanford, especially if humanities for the latter suddenly jumped from 11% to 15%! I think the two schools are distinct from one another, but similar trends and student interests impact both schools.
Actually, when similar humanistic interdisciplinary majors are added back to UChicago, the percentage bumps up a couple percentage points there as well. So more like 15% (Stanford) compared to 20% (UChicago) using the NCES data. But still in the ballpark with one another.
Taking a longer look at UChicago, I found that humanities really hasn’t been out of the ballpark for at least 40 years. Many changes to the College have occurred since 1980, but humanities seems to be a fairly constant course of study. Consider:
1980: 19% of declared majors
1990: 21% of declared majors
2000: 17% of declared majors
2010: 20% of declared majors (Class of 2010)
2020: 18% of declared majors (Class of 2020)
I find this very interesting given that certain majors (English, Philosophy) have declined and others (C/S) have soared.
It’s also possible things like marketing to a new group of students, what majors are most hot/lucrative, the economy, and world/national events will change the portion of students favoring different majors from one decade to the next; even if there is no admissions preference. I wouldn’t assume changes in major patterns from one decade to the next indicates admission preference by major.
As listed in my post, there were 2 sources. The first list was from the most recent available declared majors (not degree recipients). The 2nd was from IPEDS degree recipients. When Chicago listed their 2018-19 (most recent available) bachelor’s recipient distribution in the IPEDS federal database, it was 18.1% as specified below.
Math = 130
Stats = 41
Physics = 47
Chem = 42
Astronomy = 9
Geophysics = 6
Total = 275/1520 = 18.1% math + physical sciences
If I instead look in the most recent declared majors, then it appears to have decreased slightly to 17.2%, as listed below. The discrepancy might occur because University of Chicago groups CS as in the math + physical science category in internal reports. Other sources do not.
Math = 310
Computational Math = 73
Stats = 155
Physics = 152
Chem = 100
Biochem = 59
Astrophysics = 63
Geophysics = 21
Total = 801/5414 = 17.2% math + physical sciences
I don’t think we can rule out external events and admissions clearly won’t be sharing their strategy regardless of what they decide to tweak. As I posted upthread, UChicago seems to be able to bring in a pretty consistent percentage of humanities majors anyway so maybe the drop from 2004 - 2012 was just a return to long-term trends. Admissions made further changes over the last four years (switching to ED, going test optional, starting Empower, etc.) with specific comments about what sort of student they wish to reach. Will it have an impact on the number of humanities majors? Stay tuned.
Regarding data, it’s probably best to compare a time series by looking at degrees conferred OR declared majors, either using just the university’s own internal reporting. That’s the most consistent approach. Unfortunately, UChicago switched their presentation of declared majors several years ago and no longer categorizes that by academic division (but does so when reporting degrees conferred). Anyway, for spring 2018 - 2020, the College reported the following total degrees conferred pertaining to physical science majors:
These include C/S, engineering, math and stats (since UChicago consistently reports them as part of the physical sciences division). Physics and astro might have been lumped together before 2019. In any case, not a lot of change from year to year.
And Troy Bolton went to Cal-Berkeley, rather than University of Albuquerque. This way he could do BOTH theater AND basketball, and would also be nearer to his girlfriend. Troy Bolton | Disney Wiki | Fandom
So it worked out well. But they did have to miss prom.
If people don’t read the link, Peter Kavinsky is a fictional character. The actor playing the character didn’t complete HS. One can get some hints about popular perception of “ethos” by which fictional characters attend which college. Some other fictional characters who attended or were accepted to Stanford for undergrad include:
Richard Hendricks from Silicon Valley (fits with Stanford CS → SV entrepreneur history)
Captain Jonathan Archer from Star Trek (fits with Stanford astronaut history)
Hannah Montana / Gabriella Montez / Peter Kavinsky / various shows. with young audience (don’t watch these shows, may relate to signaling a generic highly selective and desirable college among young persons)
Schools like MIT and Harvard tend to have a larger number and different “ethos” type of fictional alumni than Stanford. MIT fictional alumni are often geniuses or near geniuses, particularly in a technical sector. They also seem to be overrerpesented as having questionable values or personality. Examples include Tony Stark, Lex Luthor (varies depending on story), Howard Wollawitz (Big Bang Theory). Harvard fictional alumni seem to be overrepresented as elitist or privileged. Examples include Fraiser Crane, Patrick Bateman (American Psycho), and Thurston Howell III (Giligan’s Island).
For the honor of UChicago I have to mention Indiana Jones and the Martian - stand-up guys with a distinctly scholarly bent. That’s our ethos! As a recent admit proclaimed, “Maroons, not baboons!”
I have to wonder how UChicago and Stanford would have handled this controversy
Does the University really have the power to act in the way it did?
The reaction is very similar to the demand made by faculty at Stanford regarding the Hoover fellow, but the Stanford administration reacted very differently. I would like to think UChicago Administration would not have gone down the path that the UNT administration did. Now they face a lawsuit
I think the two schools are distinct from one another, but similar trends and student interests impact both schools.
