Does Relative Excellence Matter for Highly Selective Colleges?

[MirandaKnight]

@Data10

I suspect the different average personal ratings by intended major has more to do with self selection. Students who favor majors/careers that emphasize studying people or interacting with people on average rate higher in measures correlated with interactions with people. Students who favor majors/careers that emphasize calculations with numbers or code over people are more likely to rate lower on such dimensions. Note that these are relatively small differences in the overall average, and there are many exceptions to these generalizations.

Yes and that’s what I thought might be the case since it was mostly STEM but there is one exception - Biology. Yes, Biology falls under STEM technically but unlike the rest of the categories, there are more females in Biology and it’s a subject that is about studying the living system not calculations. For instance, when you ask Biology majors what would be their second choice of major, it will often be Psychology more so than Chemistry. I would think that Biology would not follow the STEM trend which is mostly dominated by males but it doesn’t. It is a popular major though as Psychology would be. Again would be interesting to see the rate of admission for majors.