Are some majors harder than others?

Thomas_1
Fri, 23 Nov 2012 05:20:00 +0000

I’m not sure I can see how that is the case. If a candidate major was difficult by ucbalumnus’s metrics, then surely there would be some students who cannot or will not put in the effort to complete that major and would therefore emigrate from that major for another one that doesn’t possess those characteristics. That other major would then be the true safety major (and the former major would not be).

You are contradicting my definition by saying that a student “cannot” put in the effort to complete a safety major. By my definition, a safety major is a major where a certain amount of effort (however much that may be = difficult by ucbalumnus metrics) will guarantee successful completion. For every person, there exists an amount of effort that would lead to successful completion. That’s what makes such a major “safe”. For some majors, particularly technical ones, this cannot be guaranteed, because the effort you put in may not matter if you don’t have the right aptitude. These majors are “unsafe”, because many people really don’t know beforehand if they have the right aptitude or not.

By your definition, all people switching out of a “difficult” major would be concentrated in a subset of a few safety majors. I don’t think that’s the case. People who are switching are usually choosing a new major based on their interests, while keeping the “difficulty” or “safeness” as secondary consideration in mind.

Just to be clear, while you think there are some majors that are “true” safety majors I believe that there are possibly 2-3 “tiers” of majors, safe to non-safe, based on how certain it is that you complete them given a certain amount of effort only. However, switching between those majors happens mainly based on interest, as long as you keep the “tier” in mind.