Most Common Majors at Highly Selective Colleges and at All 4-Year Colleges

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The earlier totals for 25 highly selective colleges include both small LACs and universities as large as Cornell. The totals below split the most selective LACs and universities in to 2 groups. These totals are computed as median % of grads in the majors, giving equal weight to each college, and ignoring outliers.

With LACs removed, engineering becomes the most common major for the most selective universities. However, engineering drops to 0% when computing median for all 4-year colleges since the majority of US 4-year colleges do not offer any engineering majors. Engineering drops to 0% at LACs for the same reason.

Most Common Major Categories at Most Selective Private Universities (Median)

  1. Engineering- 14% (highest = 36% at MIT)
  2. CS & Related– 11% (highest = 38% at Caltech)
  3. Biology – 11% (highest = 24% at JHU)
  4. Economics – 10% (highest = 30% at Chicago)
  5. Math / Stats – 6.3% (highest = 10% at Brown/Harvard)
  6. Psychology – 3.8% (highest = 7% at Duke)
  7. Political Science – 3.5% (highest = 12% at Dartmouth)
  8. Interdisciplinary – 3.2% (highest = 16% at Vanderbilt)
  9. Physical Sciences – 3.1% (highest = 20% at Caltech)
  10. Visual/Performing Arts – 2.7% (highest = 8% at Northwestern)

Most Common Major Categories at Most Selective LACs (Median)

  1. Economics – 14%
  2. Biology – 13%
  3. CS & Related-- 8.2%
  4. Political Science – 7.6%
  5. Physical Sciences – 6.2%
  6. Psychology – 5.9%
  7. English – 5.9%
  8. Math / Stats – 5.3%
  9. Visual/Performing Arts – 4.8%
  10. Interdisciplinary – 3.7%

Most Common Major Categories at All 4-Year Colleges with >= 100 Grads (Median)

  1. Business – 20%
  2. Nursing & Health Related – 8.9%
  3. Psychology – 6.1%
  4. Biology – 5.6%
  5. Education – 4.3%
  6. Visual & Performing Arts – 3.0%
  7. CS & Related – 2.9%
  8. Sports Studies / Kinesiology – 1.9%
  9. Accounting – 1.9%
  10. Communication / Media – 1.5%

Most Common Major Categories at 25 Largest 4-Year Colleges (Median)

  1. Business – 17%
  2. Engineering – 9.2%
  3. Biology – 8.5%
  4. Psychology – 6.9%
  5. Nursing & Health Related – 6.7%
  6. CS & Related – 4.6%
  7. Visual & Performing Arts – 3.5%
  8. Interdisciplinary – 3.4%
  9. Education – 2.6%
  10. Communications / Media – 2.6%
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