Work load of majors

apumic
Sun, 11 May 2008 12:25:37 +0000

Ranking these majors in terms of “workload” is simply silly.
For example, my 400-level neurobiology class this semester was certainly more difficult than my Physics course (for me, that is, although many of the Biochem majors would have disagreed with me on that). Despite this, however, I would say that my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy course was probably more difficult than the neurobio course – but it was difficult in a different way (i.e., we had to take and apply theories a lot more than in neurobio, which is, for the most part, rote memorization)

The reality is that to be at the top or succeed in any of these fields requires large amounts of work in addition to just class time.
For example, while you both seem to agree that psychology majors are the easiest, they are also, by far, the most competitive in terms of careers out of school. This ultimately results in having two levels in that major – students who simply do the coursework and that’s it and those who pay attention and do the extracurricular work to back up their applications (e.g., spending 10-40 hours/wk in a lab w/o course credit gaining research experience and working toward getting published).
Because each field has its own unique challenges, I really do not think it is possible to rank them. Even if we are talking about work load w/o difficulty, I would still have to say that the case studies of an applied psych course as well as the research you are expected to be doing far exceeds the number crunching of the math and physics courses I’ve taken as well as the bio classes’ labs and studying. I would have to say that I suspect you are doing little more than promoting stereotypes here unless you have really taken a substantial number of courses in all of these majors.