Which college majors are most difficult?

RunMT wrote:

Chemistry

Organic chemistry is like memorizing an entire phone book. Not very complicated, but full of endless details. I have a lifelong hatred of benzene because of that class.

Biology, especially at a good school, can be pretty tough. I guess you can sort of drift through at a so-so school but to do well and make something of it, a student needs to have a lot on the ball.

Intro Bio - you'd think it would be a cake walk but they throw the entire field into one text book and you need to have it down in two semesters. Usually not enough detail in these texts and lectures to really understand what's going on.

Chem - One and a half to two years of chem, including inorganic and analytical, and then a half year to a year of organic. Many take semester or two of biochem.

Genetics - tough weed out class (either you get it or you don't) some can sort of muddle through in the B-C range, but very few get As.

Physics - one year of intro

Calculus - one semester or one year

Communication - you need to be a decent to good writer; public speaking is also necessary.

After that the upper level courses vary between being somewhat easy (depends on the professor) to moderately hard (say Comparative Anatomy, which requires a lot of memorization of anatomy and taxonomy, as well as understanding of evolutionary relationships and adaptations) to very difficult (for example the heavy hitting upper level courses on metabolism, which are quite heavy into biochem).

I have a PhD in math. As an undergrad, I doubled in math and philosophy and minored in physics.

Philosophy is actually a pretty tough subject. In many ways it's like math. The concepts are tough, but, if you understand them, then, the courses aren't demanding. That's a big if, though.

I thought I'd mention philosophy since so many forget about it. It's a humanity, yes, but it's hardly in the same class as most of the other humanities.

Among the disciplines mentioned by most, the sciences, I like the xkcd comic about levels of purity:

http://xkcd.com/435/

The rest of the sciences are pretty much easy math with some vocabulary words thrown in. If you can succeed in math, any other discipline is a relative snap. The reverse couldn't be less in evidence.

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.

Engineering is by far the most difficult of those majors if for no other reason than simply because it is so math-intensive. There is a correlation between logical reasoning and mathematical abilities, so the students who perform well in engineering are generally more intelligent (have higher IQs) than those who study history or psychology.

Withing the Engineering field, Chemical and Electrical are probably the most difficult, whereas something like Industrial Engineering is generally considered one of the easier disciplines.

Taco Truck wrote:

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

Yes, the geniuses usually major in "African-American studies"!! I believe that this is the major that Goldman Sachs looks for when filling out its Investment Banking positions.

Communications is another major in which brilliant students get degrees.

Diamond5 wrote:

Taco Truck wrote:

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

Yes, the geniuses usually major in "African-American studies"!! I believe that this is the major that Goldman Sachs looks for when filling out its Investment Banking positions.

Communications is another major in which brilliant students get degrees.

Ronald Reagan was a communications major and look what he did.

Math and Physics are generally considered the hardest with Engineering not far behind. Other sciences after that, then all the others. Psychology and history are probably about the same.

I am pretty surprised that anyone is saying chemistry. While difficult, it is definitely not as difficult as engineering or physics.

I'm pretty sure there have been studies relating average IQ and majors and physics and math are the highest as I recall. Anyone who makes the argument "Oh, it just depends on what you're good at" simply does not understand intelligence or the topic we're discussing. Most everyone who can do engineering can do other things, but the reverse is not true.

The most difficult freshman course, hands down, is calculus based physics. I can't think of any course that even comes close to this.

Architecture. Studio commitment is brutal. Not a lot of athletes can even do this major.

Linguistics.

old college math professor wrote:

The most difficult freshman course, hands down, is calculus based physics. I can't think of any course that even comes close to this.

+1

Definitely the hardest college course I ever took. I got a C in that course while getting all As in everything else I took that semester. However, I have never been good at physics, being my lowest grade by a longshot in high school. The strange thing is my brother is just the opposite, going for a PhD in physics.

Guppy wrote:

Math and Physics are generally considered the hardest with Engineering not far behind. Other sciences after that, then all the others. Psychology and history are probably about the same.

I am pretty surprised that anyone is saying chemistry. While difficult, it is definitely not as difficult as engineering or physics.

I'm pretty sure there have been studies relating average IQ and majors and physics and math are the highest as I recall. Anyone who makes the argument "Oh, it just depends on what you're good at" simply does not understand intelligence or the topic we're discussing. Most everyone who can do engineering can do other things, but the reverse is not true.

It’s a real shame that this wasn’t the first and only answer on this thread.

Link wrote:

I have a PhD in math. As an undergrad, I doubled in math and philosophy and minored in physics.

Philosophy is actually a pretty tough subject. In many ways it's like math. The concepts are tough, but, if you understand them, then, the courses aren't demanding. That's a big if, though.

I thought I'd mention philosophy since so many forget about it. It's a humanity, yes, but it's hardly in the same class as most of the other humanities.

Among the disciplines mentioned by most, the sciences, I like the xkcd comic about levels of purity:

http://xkcd.com/435/

The rest of the sciences are pretty much easy math with some vocabulary words thrown in. If you can succeed in math, any other discipline is a relative snap. The reverse couldn't be less in evidence.

Physics major here - after a tough first year, I learned how to be a student. Beyond that, I wouldn’t say it was easy, but at least it was comprehensible. The only exceptions were advanced math and theory courses. I learned pretty quickly that I was an experimentalist and not a theorist. In grad school, I took many-body physics and as an senior undergrad I took a general relativity theory course. The worst was the backhanded compliment from my many-body professor that I had ‘…done well for an experimentalist.’ Thus ended my theory pretentions with a B+ while the other 8 students probably got an A. I’m not sure that I deserved to pass, but he was a kind person. I will never forget Wick’s theorem though. Also, General Relativity helped me to understand any Tensor Calculus that subsequently came down my path. I would never have learned that in a ‘pure’ math course.

So, a lot of what you say is true. However, I will also say that a number of theorists really struggled with the ‘applied’ section of our qualifying exam in grad school. I prepared for the exam by studying for 8-10 hours per day for 8 weeks and tutored several of them. The year I took the exam (12 hours over 2 days), I had the second highest score (to a theorist), but I finished above many of them. A lot of theorists were thrown by the qualifying exam questions because there wasn’t always a ‘right’ answer, but there was a ‘best’ one. Additionally, sometimes more than one answer is right, but there is a best one — think singular value decomposition and light scattering for example. Once you take away uniqueness, you can be left high and dry if you don’t really understand the physics. For anyone scoffing, spend a few minutes looking at Scalar Diffraction Theory and then come back and talk to me. After, we can talk about Vector Diffraction Theory and see if you are still alive.

That being said, I could never even do a proper math major as an undergraduate. Real Analysis would be my downfall. I took the usual science major courses - Calc I-III, Diff EQ, LinAlg and an applied math year-long course. I also did reasonably well in Differential Geometry and that was it. I had no patience for proofs, and worse, I didn’t even care. I definitely could do applied math, but nothing more.

For reference, I spent 20 years in academia - tenured/full within 10 years and an h-index of 29 for 69 pubs. The most amusing thing is that my h-index has gone from 27 to 29 after I left for industry. Google scholar is way better about keeping track of all my pubs than I am. If I would have selected Philosophy of Science, I would have crashed and burned.

I agree with you about philosophy. Loved the intro course and philosophy of science. The whole Kuhn/Popper debate was central to why I got into science. Sometime in the middle of a course on Kant (won’t is my standard joke) I realized that I had no chance in this field — ugh wanna vomit about Critique of Pure Reason. I got into the #500 (tied) graduate program for physics and the #1 program in the world for philosophy of science for grad school and I chose physics. It wasn’t ideological purity, but rather an honest assessment of my abilities.

During the time I was mentoring undergraduate students, the brightest two students that I ever had wound up doing Econ and Biology in graduate school. Sleep on those disciplines if you want, but you are pretty ignorant if you do. There’s a huge difference between ‘most difficult to complete’ and ‘best’ or ‘most competitive.’

Bad Wigins wrote:

Math is an easy major, if you are capable of it.

You'll find out if you're capable when you take your first-level analysis course. If you can learn the difference between uniform continuity and pointwise continuity, you can learn anything.

Absolutely true for me. Real Analysis was a no-go. We all have to learn our limitations.

Heartless wrote:

Guppy wrote:. Most everyone who can do engineering can do other things, but the reverse is not true.

It’s a real shame that this wasn’t the first and only answer on this thread.

Simply not true in my experience. I think you might be confusing ‘competitiveness’ and ‘difficulty.’ In terms of the sciences, I’d put Biology as the 100m with Physics as a 200m race. Chemistry is the b@stard stepchild in between where Michael Johnson pulls his hamstring. Right now, if you ‘can’ you would do Biology/Biochem/Biophysics. This is coming from someone with a Ph.D. in Condensed Matter.

A guy I worked with during my summer job when I was in college, told me a story about a friend of his that was an engineering major. On Friday nights, after a week of intense studying, the engineering student would drink whiskey while staring at a lit candle.

English is the most difficult as in you will likely have the most difficult career with that major.

It's really not even worth arguing. engineering and math simply much more difficult and demanding than any humanities course encountered. This is coming from somebody who has an engineering degree with a non-stem minor.