What are the most difficult majors?

[Anonymous]

Engineering is pretty hard.

Architecture is a tremendous slog. LONG hours LATE in studio ALL the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the age of this college scandal, what are the majors that people that get in through back doors can’t hack? I feel like job recruiters/grad schools should look at majors, rather than specific colleges.

I'm not sure that the hardest degree is always the best if you are most concerned about job recruiting. DS just got though all of the math courses required for physics plus about half of his physics courses and is considering switching to a finance degree because at his school (Emory) he sees that most of the recruiting is done out of the undergraduate business school. It makes me kind of sad that businesses can't think outside the box when it comes to liberal arts majors, including physics.

I used to interview and hire for Microsoft. If the candidate sitting across from me had a physics degree he started the interview on second base. Granted I was hiring developer types but I never met a physics major that was not incredibly bright. Tell your son to stick it out - and if he wants Wall Street they want quants and they will appreciate the value of a physics major.

And btw if said candidate was a musician they started the interview on third base and if they happened to be left handed well then I pretty much asked them when they could start

Congrats to your son.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever you are not good at is the hardest major for you. If you’re not good at math, STEM majors would likely be the most difficult for you. If you’re not good at reading, analysis, and writing, majors like English and history might be the most difficult for you.

If your major is *that* difficult, you are likely not in the best major for you.

This. You couldn’t hack it as a music major if you just have the skills.

Music theory is really difficult. I once saw a list of MCAT scores by college major and music majors had the highest average scores, higher even than the physics majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The belief that math, engineering, and the "hard sciences" (i.e., not biology?) are the most difficult is directly related to the fact that those are highly male-dominated fields. I was a female math major and I can tell you, math is not that hard. It is just regarded as such because of sexism.

Agree.

[Anonymous]

Electrical Engineering, hands down ! And it gets much harder in Grad School.

[Anonymous]

Pharmacy, Nursing, Chemical Engineering, Materials Engineering, Biomedical Engineering. Electrical, Computer/Electrical, Aeronautical/Aerospace, Nuclear and Mechanical Engineering are about a third of a step less difficult.

[Anonymous]

Architecture

[Anonymous]

I am a Physicist. I never found the physics classes hard. The hardest classes for me were the ones which required a lot of memorization. My lowest grade in college was in Art Appreciation.

My approach is to understand the problem space and figure I could analyze my way through the classes. That working in Physics, Math, History, philosophy. But not Art Appreciation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a Physicist. I never found the physics classes hard. The hardest classes for me were the ones which required a lot of memorization. My lowest grade in college was in Art Appreciation.

My approach is to understand the problem space and figure I could analyze my way through the classes. That working in Physics, Math, History, philosophy. But not Art Appreciation.

You are an extreme outlier. A relative of mine who is very dumb got an A in art appreciation. Music theory on the other hand can be very tough.

[Anonymous]

Math at my school had varying degrees of difficulty based on the concentration/focus within the major. For instance, economics, cs, general applied, statistics, biology etc...

The top of the list as far a difficulty went to the pure math concentration. Basically theoretical underpinnings of all of the higher level topics using exclusively proofs to teach the material and using proofs to verify you knew the material. I don't think i did any calculations after my first semester of calculus. All just theoretical and very abstract. VERY smart people in my classes at the higher levels. And the professors teaching us, well, just indescribably beyond brilliant. Haven't met anyone at that level since.

FWIW, i'm now an actuary

[Anonymous]

Engineering may be difficult but In my family and among family friends I know a lot of engineers. Some of them are brilliant and some are not that bright. Even the brilliant ones have weak points: one is a very successful engineer who is a terrible writer, has trouble holding a conversation about any other subject other than engineering related stuff.

[Anonymous]

Well, there are some majors that are just a slog because of the long hours required that you can't get around (whether the content is challenging is another story). You have to be there, too, so there's no cheating on getting in those hours.

Certain lab sciences, especially if you do the research/thesis track are a massive slog...I knew cell and molecular bio people that were in lab all the time. Architecture is up there.
And as others have mentioned, nursing and pharmacy fall into this category, too.

[Anonymous]

Architecture

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Engineering is pretty hard.

Architecture is a tremendous slog. LONG hours LATE in studio ALL the time.

https://www.archdaily.com/805264/new-survey-confirms-architecture-as-most-time-consuming-major

Yep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Such a weird question OP. People are good at different things. So, for some people engineering is a breeze and for others they might think writing white papers is a breeze. Not everyone wants to be STEM<STEM, STEM. It's strange for people to presume those are necessarily difficult majors....different strokes for different folks.

I don’t know anyone who thought engineering was a breeze. In fact, usually engineering schools have lower cutoffs to make top 10% of the class because the average grades are lower.

This. Even the most brilliant people I studied with in engineering worked very hard. Very few people got As.

I get so tired of people acting like STEM majors had some innately magical talent for STEM. It’s actually just really hard work.