Which college majors are most difficult?

The content in physics probably isn't any more difficult than, say, chem. But there is a lot more voodoo math that you are required to learn on the fly.

This is a highly subjective topic, due to individual aptitude, selectivity for a particular program, grade inflation, and time consumption. There is no one pure way to measure it, but, from experience, I would say in a very broad sense:

1.) All things engineering and physics (some sub-components might be easier than others)

2.) All things math and computer science

3.) Chemical and biological sciences, though parts of chem are probably harder than parts of biology.

Philosophy could probably be inserted in the top three as well, particularly if it's a good school.

Look around your cross country team. Unless its an academic school, the engineering, computer science, and pre-med majors are probably far less represented than all the other majors. That's not to say that smart people don't major in other things that interest them.

Criminal Justice without a doubt

Leisure & Family Studies

lakai.90 wrote:

If you were to rate these majors 1-10, 10 being hardest, which would the following rank:

- History

- Engineering

- Psychology

Or do you believe they are all the same because each person is different.

For the average person, assuming a decent university:

-History 3/10

-Engineering 7/10 (depends on which, 7/10 is an average)

-Psychology 2/10

Highest rated:

-Math 10/10

-Physics 9/10

Voodoo math is also prevalent in Electrical Engineering. Some people get Fourier Transforms and similar stuff. Some people don't and never will. They won't finish an EE degree. Thermodynamics, a mechanical subject, with it's entropy calcs is also not particularly intuitive to many people. Within the Civil field, geotech and fluids has a lot of black magic, but the math is not particularly hard.

old college math professor wrote:

The content in physics probably isn't any more difficult than, say, chem. But there is a lot more voodoo math that you are required to learn on the fly.

Engineering is hard for sure, but personally I find 300-level and above humanities courses much harder. When it comes to serious academic writing and critical thinking, I just can't handle it. I find it very difficult to organize my thoughts into a coherent opinion, or to definitively choose a side in a debate over a nuanced issue.

-Education

-Physical Therapy

-Sports Management

I think people are going about it the wrong way. The way things work is that at higher levels (college, and especially post-graduate and beyond) it becomes harder for a single person to master multiple disciplines. This means that as a genius as Einstein was, he would probably not make a good history teacher. Therefore, people tend to think their majors are easy and wonder why other people don't get it. This is no different than how a professor feels teaching his subject; he probably wonders if there is something wrong with the students' heads that they cannot grasp "simple concepts".

Now, you would get more headway by asking if every student was required to take all these subjects, which one would result in most failure? I can guarantee you that math and hard science would dominate failures. While some science guys will struggle in learning history dates and events, they usually have a higher computing capacity that they might figure out a system for memorizing these dates. Moreover, you can guess intelligently in humanities and arts that you can get partial credits here and there e.g. you may not recall when a certain war was fought but there is so much floating information about war and history in general arena that you could have heard it elsewhere. Furthermore, unless you are an idiot, dates are structured in such a way that you should just write some year, like 1812. However, the chances that you will guess a math answer and get it is very little. The tricky subjects though tend to be languages. These tend to trick hard science guys, social science and art guys.

The evidence for my opinion can be seen by looking at schools around the world that have students do multiple subjects. You can tell that easier subjects tend to be more popular e.g. psychology will be the more popular major than physics in close to 100% of institutions. In addition I have never heard a sociology guy say, "let me take Phys 200 (Waves)for my elective". On the other hand, there are countless guys in hard science who take electives in Soci 200 (World Cultures) as an elective. Please take a look at standardized test and see people do worse in sciences in general. One exception I know is in GRE, where people tend to do worse in verbal English section than maths (which validates what I mentioned above in ambiguity of languages). However, even med students, who are very intelligent, tend to struggle with MCAT physics.

In college I was actually a double in Math and Physics. For the school I went to(Not ivy league, pretty decent), I would say that in descending order from my experience and from accounts of friends in other majors I would put list as

Physics

Engineering (depending on which one)/Comp Sci

Math

This is just my list though, and I also really didn't have any friends that were Chem majors, so I can't say if they would be in or out of this ranking, but its probably in the same tier if nothing else

hyperbolic topology

Education? Why anyone would want to get into this field ?

norphxc wrote:

I do think it depends on the person. I'm a chemist, and while there was plenty of hard work and late nights I don't think chemistry is objectively harder than anything else. I don't think I could cut it in English or Humanities. I've always done alright on writing assignments, and I'm a good presenter and teacher. So I'm able to make clear and consise arguments. But I simply couldn't come up with the deep literature analysis my classmates would present. My brain just doesn't let me interpret too far beyond the facts I'm given, unless I can test my interpretation.

This ^ is the only intelligent response. The rest of you are speculating without one iota of support. I sincerely hope your academic work contains more substance.

Hardest majors: African-American studies, sociology, social work and teaching.

It depends on the school. A lot of math programs have been watered down to encourage students to get a degree in math (usually as a second major). Also time consuming and difficult aren't necessarily the same thing.

I will go with physics, partially because it was my major, but mostly because I have never met a dumb physicist, ever. mathematicians, engineers, doctors, yes, but physicist, nope.

Former Academician wrote:

norphxc wrote:

I do think it depends on the person. I'm a chemist, and while there was plenty of hard work and late nights I don't think chemistry is objectively harder than anything else. I don't think I could cut it in English or Humanities. I've always done alright on writing assignments, and I'm a good presenter and teacher. So I'm able to make clear and consise arguments. But I simply couldn't come up with the deep literature analysis my classmates would present. My brain just doesn't let me interpret too far beyond the facts I'm given, unless I can test my interpretation.

This ^ is the only intelligent response. The rest of you are speculating without one iota of support. I sincerely hope your academic work contains more substance.

Let's say it's the best explanation...

It really depends on the program.

Physics, Math, Biochem, Computer Science, and Engineering are hard pretty much everywhere.

The humanities are tough at good schools, and a waste of time at poor schools. English, History, Religious Studies, Philosophy, etc. These materials can be taught at a variety of levels.

The social sciences seem to be kind of the bottom of the barrel for all of academia. There are some super smart people in these fields, and there's a lot of good work--but it seems like it's easy to get by with less.

POW wrote:

It depends on the school. A lot of math programs have been watered down to encourage students to get a degree in math (usually as a second major). Also time consuming and difficult aren't necessarily the same thing.

I will go with physics, partially because it was my major, but mostly because I have never met a dumb physicist, ever. mathematicians, engineers, doctors, yes, but physicist, nope.

Another good point. My former University forced anyone majoring in History to take classes in a foreign language up to the 300 level. For the undergrad Business school, you had to apply after your Sophomore year. Many apply, about 1/3rd get in. The rejects usually majored in Economics. Econ was seen at the University as a B-school reject, even though at most schools I doubt Econ would be viewed the same. I've met other business majors from other schools and many seem like absolute morons, which makes me assume they didn't have any process to weed out the weaker students at their school. Before anyone jumps on me, I'm not saying these two are more difficult than the hard science/math oriented majors. I think most humanities/social science students will recognize that.

In my worthless opinion, any major that is mostly multiple choice with a minimal writing or open-ended component, would be defined as the easiest major. At my school, Communications and Psychology both hit the mark.

I knew a lot of math/physics/chem/engineering majors in college. We didn't have much of a social life, nor did we have much time for much of a social life, even if we were hadn't been a bunch of nerds. I also knew a lot of education/communication/psych/anything else majors. They always had a lot of time on their hands. And, they were not that bright.