Also i’m not sure if I should major in humanities or liberal arts. Is there a difference between liberal art studies & liberal arts & sciences?
It kind of depends on what you mean. Liberal arts has two meanings.
The broader term is “liberal arts and sciences”, which are those subjects that were, in classical antiquity, considered essential for functioning in a free democratic society (hence the term “liberal”). Those subjects are pretty much your standard traditional majors: history, economics, mathematics, physics, biology, English, literature, psychology, sociology, art, philosophy, languages, etc.
Some people use “liberal arts” as a shorthand term for the social sciences (psychology, political science, sociology, anthropology, economics) and humanities (philosophy, languages, literature, history).
The type of math you take will vary by the major. Most humanities majors will not require any math as part of the major. (Some philosophy majors may list a few math courses as cognate courses, but you are unlikely to be required to take them.)
Most social science majors will require a basic statistics course at least. Some political science departments will require a bit more, and most economics departments will require a semester or two of calculus and some higher-level statistics/econometrics courses.
Most science majors will require a semester or two of calculus; physical/computational science majors like physics and computer science will require a lot more math, although the type you take will depend a lot on your interests and concentration in the field. I think chemistry also has the potential to require quite a bit of math.
Math requirements vary by major among the liberal arts majors. Typical requirements:
- math: obviously, lots of math courses
- statistics: calculus 1-3, linear algebra, differential equations; more advanced math often recommended; plus obviously statistics courses
- pre-PhD economics: calculus 1-3, linear algebra, differential equations, statistics; more advanced math and statistics often recommended
- physics: calculus 1-3, linear algebra, differential equations; more advanced math often recommended
- chemistry: calculus 1-3, linear algebra, differential equations
- biology, non-pre-PhD economics: calculus 1-2, statistics
- other social studies: statistics or major-specific quantitative methods; may (not that often) require calculus
- humanities, arts: none, beyond general education requirements; some philosophy courses may be similar to some math courses (e.g. logic)
What @ucbalumnus said, with some caveats—so, for example, the English major where I work doesn’t require anything beyond the bare minimum of math to graduate with a degree from the university (specifically, college algebra), but one of the tracks of the English major includes a couple partially-quantitative subfields, and so strongly recommends some advanced statistics, and even pre-calc-level or higher math if students feel they can handle it.
But yeah—the TL;DR answer is that liberal arts & sciences and humanities are such broad categories that there really can be no easy single answer—and even for a single discipline within them (e.g., English) there may be multiple answers.
@ucbalumnus, have you seen many majors at different schools that require differential equations? I’ve looked at the curricula at a couple different universities and I’ve never seen a statistics or chemistry major that required differential equations (although I’d imagine ODE would be useful for a lot of statisticians). Haven’t seen too many chemistry majors that asked for linear algebra either, although again, it’s probably really useful particularly for the grad school-bound. I’m just curious if asking for more math beyond calculus is becoming a thing for a lot of life sciences majors.
@julliet I just looked up my own school’s requirements for statistics and chemistry out of curiosity. I thought that statistics required DE while chemistry didn’t, but as it turns out the opposite is true! Or I should say, the BS option in chemistry requires DE while from the looks of it the BA and applied chem options don’t. Chemical physics also requires DE, but that’s to be expected when it’s a recommended prereq/coreq for the required physics series.
Chemistry requirements: http://catalog.ucdavis.edu/programs/CHE/CHEreqt.html
Interesting to note: Besides the chemical physics and chemistry BS options, the other chemistry major options allow you to choose between calculus for social sciences/humanities, calc for biosci, and calc for engineering and hard sciences. The former two both require calculus for engineering and hard sciences.
Statistics requirements: http://catalog.ucdavis.edu/programs/STA/STAreqt.html
Worth noting: While the BS option in statistics doesn’t require DE, it does require the lower division real analysis class.
For bio majors, I can’t think of any that require math beyond calculus. I also don’t know a whole lot about the bio majors, so I could very easily be wrong. What I do know is that my biosci friends (one in biochem and the other in neurobiology) don’t have to take anything beyond calculus.
D is a freshman at Notre Dame’s school of Arts & Letters. She came in with a 5 AP score on Calc BC & AB. She did not have to take any college math but she has decided to take Multivariable Calculus which is normally something an Engineering student would take. I think if you complete AP level calculus while in high school, at many liberal arts colleges you would not have to take math in College.
To add more data, my institution (an open-access college, so many but certainly not all programs have relatively bare-minimum major requirements) has the following minimums:
•All graduates of the university are required to have at least college algebra.
•Both the BA and BS in math (to set the presumably highest benchmark) require partial differential equations.
•Statistics (administered by the math department) is a minor-only program here, and requires calculus II plus one of a big list of upper-division statistics courses, most of which require calculus I or II as a prerequisite.
•Biology requires no(!) math-as-math for the BA, but rather a basic statistics course; the BS requires calculus II.
•The BS in chemistry (which is being phased out as a major due to lack of student demand, sadly) requires linear algebra, and has a “pick one of these” list that is mostly made up of beyond-calculus II math courses.
•The BS in biochemistry (which falls under chemistry here, also being phased out) has the same math requirements as chemistry, and actually has more higher-level math courses in its “pick one” list than chemistry does.
•The BS in environmental science (administered by biology) requires 5 “math and computational skills” courses, but they could all be satisfied without taking any calculus—there are a bunch of GIS and geology and such courses on the list with none-to-minimal math prerequisites, for example.
•The BS in general natural sciences (also administered by biology) also requires no math beyond the university minimum.
Some of these results, quite frankly, disturb me.
Here are some statistics and chemistry majors that require linear algebra and differential equations:
http://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/statistics
http://statistics.berkeley.edu/programs/undergrad/major
http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/ugrad/degrees/chem/ba
http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/ugrad/degrees/chem
However, students who take statistics or chemistry courses in support of life science majors generally would not need to take linear algebra and/or differential equations.
Maybe Berkeley and Harvard are outliers on statistics, though it does seem odd that a statistics major would require less frosh/soph math than a math, physics, or engineering major.
Huh, it seems like the top schools are going towards a model requiring more math. THat’s good for graduates, since those skills will be in demand!
Stat is really good for psych and sociology majors.