I think you misread my comment. The data was comparing T25 students to all college students. The “all college student” group, by definition, is composed of mostly average college students ( presumably, a bell curve). In that group, many study nursing, which is great. Many study other things too.
The T25 student body is dissimilar to the average student body of the overall group in key factors. Fewer in that group study nursing, likely as a result of some of those factors. For example, the T25 students are disproportionately from top 1% in wealth or even .1% wealthy families. They may be much less likely to be interested in nursing. It is not just the difference in academic scores between the groups, but that is a factor too.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but I think this read as you saying nursing students are average students who aren’t suited for premed. My response was that many wouldn’t want to do premed, even if suited for it and it’s wrong to assume that’s it’s a backup choice for kids who can’t cut it in premed.
Northwestern’s 171 Visual/Performing Arts grads is far more Visual/Performing Arts than at any of the other 24 colleges composing the sum, even though Visual/Performing Arts is a less popular major than Economics and various others. The comment is meant to show where the Visual/Performing Arts grads are coming from, as it is not a consistent distribution across all 25 schools.
Clearly I am being inarticulate. Those elite students who choose to attend elite schools are not often choosing nursing as a major ( and it is often not even offered there). Some of them will enter the health professions, at higher than average rates of med school acceptances, for example.
There are nurses who could have attended med school, just as there are doctors who could have attended nursing school. Overall, as a group, however, there are differences between the aggregate groups ( tho not necessarily on any individual level).
As stated, in the original post " There was a recent thread about the high rate of economics majors at Williams and other selective LACs, which made me curious about the overall major distribution at highly selective colleges." The point is showing information about colleges that I find interesting.
I don’t think we can assume the difference in major distribution primarily relates to kids at highly selective private colleges being “smarter.” You mentioned history and philosophy. Are you suggesting that kids at typical public colleges often want to major in history, philosophy, and the like; but they can’t handle the tough major, so they switch out?
I’d expect switching out due to difficulty primarily occurs in math-heavy majors, not history and philosophy. Instead I’d expect that students are less likely to start out in those majors and more likely to start out in majors that have a more clearly defined path to employment related to degree after college. For example, it’s easier for many studies to see the path nursing major → nurse, education major → teacher, or criminal justice major → police officer; than it is to see philosophy major → ???, history major → ???, etc.
Biology is the only major that was top 3 at both highly selective colleges and all colleges. At both types of schools, I expect the bulk of those biology majors are thinking about becoming doctors, rather than applying their biology degree directly. Many students at both types of schools want to be doctors – not just “the very top students at elite schools,” The difference is in addition to the hope to become doctor group, a good portion of students at all colleges also pursue nursing and other health professions that do not require further degrees beyond a bachelors, while this is rare at highly selective, private colleges. One important contributing factor to that rarity is highly selective private colleges rarely offer bachelors degrees in pre-professional health fields and instead focusing more on liberal arts majors.
I think this is very college-dependent. History and philosophy are much more difficult than many HS students think (history because the emphasis on primary and secondary sources vs. a textbook means hundreds and hundreds of pages of reading; philosophy because it’s must more logic based than just “I think, therefore I believe” or whatever a HS assumes that major is).
I think we all know kids who start in finance and end up with a degree in sports management; start in history and end up in elementary ed; start in poli sci and end up in criminal justice.
Adjacent fields for sure- but none of them are scaling UP in rigor, workload and analytical complexity-- the trend is downward and I assume that’s for a reason. It certainly is with the kids I’ve known and know. Poli sci particularly- kids are SHOCKED at the math! As if you can analyze census data and voting trends (or population growth and redistricting) without math!!!
Yeah, serious college Philosophy is a shock to many–unpleasantly so in some cases, but some kids actually like it a lot better than they expected. I think it gets some people who swap out of sciences or math because at least some parts of Philosophy actually speak to overlapping interests. But at least in generally rigorous colleges, it isn’t likely to be appealing to the work hard/play hard/pre-professional kids. It is more for life of mind kids who realize analyzing dense texts and crafting arguments is more fun for them than they knew based on their HS-level experiences.
And then some kids learn that is not for them. I would not necessarily say they are not smart enough or that Philosophy is inherently too hard for them. But like most things in a competitive setting, if you don’t like it then it is going to be harder to do well against equally smart kids who actually do like it.
There are several ways to review which majors have higher or lower rates of attrition. One way is to compare the prospective major distribution when starting college to the major distribution of graduating students. Using the 2019 (pre-COVID test optional) SAT report, the change in distribution from college bound HS students to college graduates was as follows.
Change in Major Distribution from Pre-College to College Grads
Nursing/Health: 18% → 12% (lost 1/3)
Business: 12% → 10%
Engineering: 11% → 6% (lost nearly half)
Biology: 8% → 7%
CS & Related: 4% → 5%
Psychology: 4% → 7% (large increase)
…
History: 0.7% → 1.1% (large increase)
Philosophy: 0.2% → 1.6% (huge 8x increase)
Of the listed majors, engineering had the sharpest drop, which fits with my earlier comment about higher rates of attrition in math heavy fields. In contrast, history and philosophy both had large increases. Less than 1% of college bound kids said they wanted to major in history of philosophy, yet 3% of grads majored in history or philosophy. It is not suggestive of a large portion of kids wanting to pursue history/philosophy, but the fields being too difficult or not being “smart” enough.
I think much of this relationship relates to the more objective nature of grading in math-heavy courses. For example, many fields of engineering require completing a differential equations course. That’s not an easy course to fake your way through, if you don’t really understand the math. If you get the math wrong, the problems on your exam are objectively wrong, and you run the risk of failing the course. Grading of history or philosophy papers is more subjective. Even if it is not a good paper and you do not understand the material well, you still often have a good chance of getting a passing grade on the paper.
That said, I realize the list above doesn’t take in to account the reason why students change majors. Many students change majors during college for reasons other than difficulty, such as not being exposed to or even aware a particular field exists. Or taking a class, and deciding they like that field more than what they had originally planned during HS.
Um, yes, we can assume as a group kids at highly selective T25 schools are smarter than the average college student. That’s part of the definition of highly selective-smarter than average.
More kids at T25 schools will continue their education beyond a bachelor’s degree than the average college student. That also opens up different majors as a result
Um, yes, we can assume as a group kids at highly selective T25 schools are smarter than the average college student. That’s part of the definition of highly selective-smarter than average.
That’s not what the post said. You are arguing against a claim that does not exist.
More kids at T25 schools will continue their education beyond a bachelor’s degree than the average college student. That also opens up different majors as a result
You might be surprised about the relative portion of grads who pursue further degrees. As an arbitrary example, the first 2 colleges I compared were UConn and Yale. 33% of 2023 UConn grads say they plan on pursuing further degrees beyond their bachelor’s. 18% of 2022 Yale grads say they plan on pursuing further degrees beyond their bachelor’s – roughly half the rate of UConn. If I drop down in selectivity to UKentucky (95% admit rate), then it increases to 37% of grads continuing education beyond a bachelor’s – more than double Yale.
I don’t plan to do an extensive review, as it’s not especially related to this thread. However, the point is many large public colleges have a larger portion of students continuing education than various USNWR T25 colleges.
Whether they plan on getting a further degree and whether they actually do so, and in what, may differ. Teachers are often expected to get a masters, which is consistent with the large number of education majors at most schools. Psychology degree holders, another popular major, require at least a masters for licensure in counseling or social work. Criminal justice and phys ed majors probably pursue masters in those fields.
Presumably proportionately more T25 students pursue phd degrees or law/business/med schools, at least in the past, though with highly lucrative jobs available to them upon graduation, that may no longer be as common. As long as the trifecta of finance, consulting and tech remain busy recruiters there, much less pressure to attend grad school, at least not right away.
Nursing attrition is likely due to weed out in secondary admission programs (and some direct admission programs with high progression GPA requirements).
Philosophy gains may be due to it being not a typical subject that high school students think about, but may find out about in college.
Continuing with the Yale vs UConn example, 8.0% of UConn grads planned a PhD/MD/JD soon after graduation compared to 8.5% of Yale grads – not a dramatic difference. However, there was a difference in distribution of these 3 degree types, with Yale grads more likely to pursue law than other colleges. This fits the Yale law school connection and differences in distribution of majors.
I do think that satisfaction in career opportunities with only a bachelor’s plays a role, as does the larger portion pursuing finance and consulting – fields that typically do not require graduate degrees for initial employment.
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)
Engineering- 14% (highest = 36% at MIT)
CS & Related– 11% (highest = 38% at Caltech)
Biology – 11% (highest = 24% at JHU)
Economics – 10% (highest = 30% at Chicago)
Math / Stats – 6.3% (highest = 10% at Brown/Harvard)
Psychology – 3.8% (highest = 7% at Duke)
Political Science – 3.5% (highest = 12% at Dartmouth)
Interdisciplinary – 3.2% (highest = 16% at Vanderbilt)
Physical Sciences – 3.1% (highest = 20% at Caltech)
Visual/Performing Arts – 2.7% (highest = 8% at Northwestern)
Most Common Major Categories at Most Selective LACs (Median)
Economics – 14%
Biology – 13%
CS & Related-- 8.2%
Political Science – 7.6%
Physical Sciences – 6.2%
Psychology – 5.9%
English – 5.9%
Math / Stats – 5.3%
Visual/Performing Arts – 4.8%
Interdisciplinary – 3.7%
Most Common Major Categories at All 4-Year Colleges with >= 100 Grads (Median)
Business – 20%
Nursing & Health Related – 8.9%
Psychology – 6.1%
Biology – 5.6%
Education – 4.3%
Visual & Performing Arts – 3.0%
CS & Related – 2.9%
Sports Studies / Kinesiology – 1.9%
Accounting – 1.9%
Communication / Media – 1.5%
Most Common Major Categories at 25 Largest 4-Year Colleges (Median)