Are some College Majors Simply Harder than Others?

[hrugner]

Yeah I would assume chemistry is harder than gender studies.

I mean...obviously?

I guess it would depend on whether or not you are good at reading people. Those subjective nonsense classes can be rough on folks who can't figure out what the instructor believes is supported by their evidence. They're also pretty rough on people who have moral compunctions regarding lying for a grade. But I agree generally.

[Puupi]

Applied mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology are the things where shit becomes truly hard.

It's the part of science where you need to take the neatly packed theoretical idea and apply it successfully to the mess we call reality.

[hrugner]

Philosophy is really hard. History and literature too, mostly because it requires people to read and process huge amounts of information usually and for some people that is a lot of work and effort.

That's the baseline for humanities classes. Read and retain some 40 pages of writing for a couple weeks. This is required for almost everything after awhile. It only becomes challenging when you're working with original documents and such. Writing verification of authenticity papers is a real pain, but thinking about it I did that in print production not a humanities class.

[Elim Garak]

All majors are of the same difficulty, it's the people - they are different.

[Dug]

Depends on your definition of "hard" I suppose. Are mathematics difficult for a lot of people? Yeah. But would arts be difficult for people that aren't artistically inclined or ever practiced at the craft a day in their life? Of course.

[Celista]

I actually think it depends not on the major, but the institution and the work specific to a course. I completed premed coursework, and was a philosophy major with some social sciences coursework under my belt before I switched to finance, which was quant-heavy and had classes cross-referenced with the comp sci department.

In my experience, good humanities courses challenge you by teaching you how to think critically. Challenge your worldview. Most of my science courses were challenging because of memorization, but were less critical thinking intensive.

I honestly feel like I learned the most out of my humanities courses. I learned a lot in business/finance/hard sciences, but learning factual knowledge isn't the same thing as learning how to think.

[dextersmith]

People can call me whatever they want, but I generally believe that math and the hard sciences are simply harder majors than those in the humanities fields. The thing that frustrates me is that humanities majors whine like a wolf without his pack when they can't find a decent job after college, yet at the same time they vehemently try to justify that their liberal arts, kinesiology, or English degrees is just as valuable as a mathematics, physics, or engineering degree.

Definitely. Their utter shock is hilarious when they find out you're doing much better than them at their own major without effort too.

[Jimson]

Difficulty of a major depends on a lot of things. I was good at math and science so I got a degree in mechanical engineering. To me it wasn't too hard, I studied a decent bit and got out with an A/B average. My wife has a masters in accounting and I could never do that, though. For one, the field doesn't interest me in the slightest bit, so the coursework would be a dreadful slog.

That sort of sums up how I feel about liberal arts. It may look easy, but if I'm not interested in the material it's gonna be a chore to plow through it.

[Alydael]

Of course they are.

You can't tell me that "Organic Chem" is just as easy as "the Philosophy of Religion."

That doesn't even make sense.

[Elim Garak]

Of course they are.

You can't tell me that "Organic Chem" is just as easy as "the Philosophy of Religion."

That doesn't even make sense.

It depends on the person, not the subject.

[Independent voter]

I'm a history major, it wasn't very hard to get my BA. All the engineering and compsci students worked like dogs and had long labs in the afternoon, me I had about 3 hours of school a day while they worked I partied and slept.

Lot's of reading and essay writing though.

[Flarelaine]

People can call me whatever they want, but I generally believe that math and the hard sciences are simply harder majors than those in the humanities fields. The thing that frustrates me is that humanities majors whine like a wolf without his pack when they can't find a decent job after college, yet at the same time they vehemently try to justify that their liberal arts, kinesiology, or English degrees is just as valuable as a mathematics, physics, or engineering degree.

Majors are not equally hard. Even within the humanities. Back when I was at university the faculty had to institute a modifier to grade point averages depending on majors so that we in the "harder" majors like English where I was stood a chance when compensations or dorm room distribution were considered. The small majors (like Scandinavian or Mongolian Studies) where there were maybe 10-20 people to a class which all went drinking with the staff somehow always ended up with flawless GPAs.

(As a side note, they were a great source of off-major credits to boost my own GPA. They were always genuinely appreciative of outsiders taking a course or two in their field.)

[Deleted]

Yes. Yes they are.

[Draco-Onis]

The hardest part of college for me was liberal arts no joke, I greatly enjoyed getting my degree courses and pushed off the requirements. I spend my last few years of college taking the most mind numbing, boring classes ever I would have killed someone for a calculus course but couldn't since I already finished them. I think that these classes should be optional it is rather stupid to be forced to pay for some of these useless courses.

[Elim Garak]

Well that's just nonsense.

That's so meta.

It depends on both.

No, if you find some knowledge hard to understand - it's YOU. Knowledge has no difficulty - it just is.

[Ethris]

Literally no one thinks all majors are the same difficulty.

According to postmodernists, they are.

[Xjev]

My major was computer science I always found electrical engineering courses very hard.

[Tehshocka]

Somewhat relevant...




Back OT: At my university, Electrical Engineering was considered the most difficult major. Among other things, they had to take about 8 semesters of physics crammed into a 2 semester class. If you graduated with the EE major, you were just a few credits short of also majoring in Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science.

This is all true. I needed to take two Advanced Math Labs on top of my EE curriculum and graduated with both. I could of exchanged the Math for the Comp Sci (which looking back I probably should of) but yes EE degree plans even the states run like this. At least the ABET Certified ones do.

[ItachiZaku]

liberal arts

/thread

If there isn't a conservative arts degree, we should protest for equality reasons.

[Mormolyce]

Yes, of course. I took quite a few classes outside of my major and they were almost ubiquitously easier the less scientific they became.

I actually found humanities harder to study than science.

They either require a lot of work, a lot of rote learning or actual talent. Science you just learn the rules and apply them.