What Do Ivy League Students Major In? It May Surprise You...

College Search & Selection
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<p>Here are the top 20 most popular majors at the ancient eight (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, U Pennsylvania, and Yale) for the last graduating class with data available:</p>

<li>Economics (1196)</li>
<li>Political Science/Government/Politics (1074)</li>
<li>History (885)</li>
<li>Biology - Includes Molecular Biology AND Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton (833)</li>
<li>Psychology (683)</li>
<li>English (672)</li>
<li>Business, General - AEM & the Hotel School at Cornell, Commerce Organizations and Entrepreneurship at Brown (502)</li>
<li>Public Policy - ILR at Cornell, Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell, Business and Public Policy at Wharton, and Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown (436)</li>
<li>Finance (379)</li>
<li>Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering (287)</li>
<li>Mechanical Engineering (259)</li>
<li>Sociology (254)</li>
<li>Neuroscience/Biological Basis of Behavior/Neurobiology (248)</li>
<li>International Relations/Studies (242)</li>
<li>Philosophy (231)</li>
<li>Anthropology (227)</li>
<li>Biomedical Engineering/Bioengineering/Biological Engineering (225)</li>
<li>Operations Research/Financial Engineering (217)</li>
<li>Philosophy Politics and Economics at Penn/Ethics Politics and Economics at Yale/Social Studies at Harvard (216)</li>
<li>Computer Science (205)</li>
</ol>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

<p>*Notes: two Ivy League Schools only listed # of engineering graduates as Engineering Sciences not by discipline (Harvard and Dartmouth), and combined with the Engineering (General) major at Brown the total was not large enough to make the list. For the other schools the specific number of majors in each engineering discipline were included in the totals.</p>

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<p>wow... i really didnt think i would be seeing that many psych/history/english kids.</p>

3

<ol>
<li>Sociology (254) surprised me</li>
</ol>

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<p>With the exception of Princeton, they could be double or triple majors (triple majors are rare but there are actually many at Brown). Often people double major in Psychology and another subject like Economics, for example.</p>

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<p>Econ, poly sci, bio...shocking.</p>

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<p>econ & poly sci is understandable bcuz of prelaw students. (or econ for IBs)
bio is all premed kids.. not really surprising.</p>

<p>all the majors from 1 to 6 are all typical premed-prelaw majors.</p>

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<p>Very interesting. Is it easy for you to get total engineering? Total sciences? Total social sciences? Total business?</p>

<p>Broader breakdowns?</p>

<p>You put a lot of thought into how you combined majors with different names.</p>

<p>I wonder how this compares with national statistics.</p>

1 Like
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<p>A lot of people on CC think that elite admissions is dominated by those who have math and science awards. Hopefully this will shut them up.</p>

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<p>Just because you win a math or science award doesn't mean you're not interested in Economics, Psych, or Sociology. Thanks for the post davida, interesting stuff.</p>

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<p>Not surprising in the least. Considering most people at Ivy league schools are either pre-buisness, pre-med, or pre-law this kind of list is expected. Also, the only reason you see a lot of engineering students there is because of Cornell's size.</p>

11

<p>...why is any of this surprising? MechE surprises me a little bit (though I think Cornell probably boosts the MechE numbers), but that's about it. In fact, I correctly guessed three of the top five before actually opening the thread.</p>

<p>What were you expecting?</p>

1 Like
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<p>This is not surprising at all. Most of the engineering students come from Cornell- we have a class size of 700 for engineering.</p>

<p>All of the finance kids must have come from Wharton- Wharton is the only Ivy b-program that offers finance I think.</p>

<p>I definitely expected econ to come out on top.</p>

1 Like
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<p>Oh cool :P I wanna double major in econ/poli sci</p>

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<p>why is this surprising? Premed & prelaw & prebiz (econ) are huge at every college.</p>

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<p>The Wharton kids are awarded a BS in Econ, and more than half concentrate in Finance. Are they put under Finance or Econ for their major in this list?</p>

1 Like
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<p>Wharton Finance concentrators are listed under Finance.</p>

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<p>Are Wharton Operations Management concentrators listed under OR/FE?</p>

1 Like
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<p>pretty interesting list although in reality im not THAT surprised at most of the things on there...#12 did surprise me a bit though for sure</p>

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<p>I'd be interested in seeing how much lower the engineering numbers drop if you take out Cornell.</p>

1 Like
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<p>The reason why GPA's are so high at the Ivies are because of the non-engineering majors. If I never had to take a Electrical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Physics, Calculus, Chemistry, or Propulsion class, my GPA would be a lot higher. I find a lot of kids at the Ivies are just looking for that piece of paper at the end that says, "Ivy League Graduate"...don't even argue because I'll drop the hammer.</p>