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40 percent or more of the people majoring in STEM curricula switch to other degrees

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ivysaur12

Banned
opticalmace said:
Or maybe he just has a strong aptitude for those subjects. I think you're putting words into his mouth.

I have aced every single liberal arts course I've taken in college so far -- philosophy, upper-level English, theology, etc. As a neuroscience major, I cannot even begin to relate how much easier these classes are than biology, chemistry, math, physics, etc. In saying this, I do not intend to devalue the work put into by folks who choose to get a liberal arts degree. I agree that STEM majors are much more difficult and time-consuming than other majors, though. Sure, you'll sometimes see people who excel in science but can't compose a coherent paragraph, but I don't think it's hard to see why the sciences are considered to be more difficult than liberal arts fields.

Putting a caveat that "I don't intend to devalue anyone's work!" is worthless when you surmise that "sometimes" there are science majors who can't write, but that all liberal arts classes are easier.
 
ivysaur12 said:
Putting a caveat that "I don't intend to devalue anyone's work!" is worthless when you surmise that "sometimes" there are science majors who can't write, but that all liberal arts classes are easier.

So is your argument that there is no objective way to demonstrate that the STEMs are typically more difficult than liberal arts degrees?
 

dvolovets

Member
ivysaur12 said:
Putting a caveat that "I don't intend to devalue anyone's work!" is worthless when you surmise that "sometimes" there are science majors who can't write, but that all liberal arts classes are easier.
The first thing you bolded refers only to my personal experience. The last bolded sentence refers to an average science major compared to an average liberal arts major. I'm sorry if I'm not getting my message across, but again, the last thing I want to do is devalue somebody's work somebody in a liberal arts field. I have put countless hours into learning the guitar, performing professionally, recording CDs, etc. It's not easy stuff. But on a purely technical level, I would concede that, on average, science is a more difficult discipline than music simply considering the rigorous pace, as well as the relative amount of time I need to put into it to succeed.

Edit - Alpha-Bromega, exactly. Like I said, this is a subjective thing. But I think if you were to take a statistically representative sample of science majors and liberal arts majors and ask whether these students found their core curriculum classes to be difficult, you'd find that the former would be more likely to say that their coursework is harder. Doesn't mean anything in terms of objective difficulty, though, if we're talking in technical terms...
 

ivysaur12

Banned
Byakuya769 said:
So is your argument that there is no objective way to demonstrate that the STEMs are typically more difficult than liberal arts degrees?

I don't think it's really comparable. They're both completely different disciplines that have equally different methods of evaluation.

dvolovets said:
The first thing you bolded refers only to my personal experience. The last bolded sentence refers to an average science major compared to an average liberal arts major. I'm sorry if I'm not getting my message across, but again, the last thing I want to do is devalue somebody's work somebody in a liberal arts field. I have put countless hours into learning the guitar, performing professionally, recording CDs, etc. It's not easy stuff. But on a purely technical level, I would concede that, on average, science is a more difficult discipline than music.

Edit - Alpha-Bromega, exactly. Like I said, this is a subjective thing. But I think if you were to take a statistically representative sample of science majors and liberal arts majors and ask whether these students found their core curriculum classes to be difficult, you'd find that the former would be more likely to say that their coursework is harder. Doesn't mean anything in terms of objectivity, though, if we're talking in technical terms...

I'm mostly fighting the stereotype that because someone is a liberal arts major, there's this assumption that they must not have worked as hard or that they must be coasting through college. I realize that this comes with the territory - there are plenty of mid-to-high C students in the liberal arts field that are doing zero work and are going to graduate and work for their father's company. Fine. But it's unfair to categorize those who do work hard, in whatever field, in the same swathe as those who aren't taking advantage of their education.
 
ivysaur12 said:
I don't think it's really comparable. They're both completely different disciplines that have equally different methods of evaluation.

But what does GPA's being shown to be lower on average in STEMs than other disciplines say to you?
 

ivysaur12

Banned
Byakuya769 said:
But what does GPA's being shown to be lower on average in STEMs than other disciplines say to you?

That writing a paper and taking an exam on two completely different subjects with two completely different types of students isn't something you can put a number to and call it a day.

I realize this brings up a host of other issues.
 

genjiZERO

Member
Byakuya769 said:
Interesting.

Three different friends of mine who are ChemE's:
a 3.2
a 3.6
and a 3.99

All had the hardest time with organic.

Organic chemistry just isn't taught properly. It's not that hard if you demystify it at the beginning. It also doesn't help that students freak out about it because of all the horror stories they hear.
 

Averon

Member
I'm currently a pre-med, but I'm looking to switch to another STEM field. It's a toss up between CompSci, EE, or Chemistry. In terms of personal difficulty, I actually find my Spanish 101 elective harder than Calc 2 (which I passed with an A) or Calc 3 (which I'm currently taking). I actually failed Calc 1 (got a "D"), but with Calc 2 and 3, I'm finding them not that hard. MyMathLab/CourseCompass makes a HUGE difference in understanding the material and working out the problems correctly.
 

irishcow

Member
I'm in medical school and had to do organic in undergrad. I thought Orgo was the easiest as well. It was just like a puzzle videogame once you learned the rules...

Orgo had like 500 kids in it too. And I swear everyone wanted to be a doctor or nurse. Since ~1% of students applying to med school actually get in, I wonder what the rest are doing now?

Byakuya769 said:
Interesting.

Three different friends of mine who are ChemE's:
a 3.2
a 3.6
and a 3.99

All had the hardest time with organic.


On topic of the thread, I did Mechanical Engineering undergrad and now i'm in medical school. It was hard the entire way through my undergrad degree.

There is no way you can compare a liberal arts degree, psych degree, whatever to an engineering degree. NO WAY. The level of understanding and comprehension of concepts and applications to do well in upper level engineering courses shits all over other subjects in level of difficulty.

My classes in the first couple of years had like 50 kids. Down to 9 or 10 senior year. 80% attrition rate? lol

Now I'm in medical school and the workload is astronomical.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
irishcow said:
I'm in medical school and had to do organic in undergrad. I thought Orgo was the easiest as well. It was just like a puzzle videogame once you learned the rules...

Orgo had like 500 kids in it too. And I swear everyone wanted to be a doctor or nurse. Since ~1% of students applying to med school actually get in, I wonder what the rest are doing now?




On topic of the thread, I did Mechanical Engineering undergrad and now i'm in medical school. It was hard the entire way through my undergrad degree.

There is no way you can compare a liberal arts degree, psych degree, whatever to an engineering degree. NO WAY. The level of understanding and comprehension of concepts and applications to do well in upper level engineering courses shits all over other subjects in level of difficulty.

My classes in the first couple of years had like 50 kids. Down to 9 or 10 senior year. 80% attrition rate? lol

Now I'm in medical school and the workload is astronomical.

Tell me more! Enlighten the proles, please.
 

dvolovets

Member
irishcow said:
I thought Orgo was the easiest as well. It was just like a puzzle videogame once you learned the rules...
Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way! It really does feel like a bunch of puzzles. Even doing homework doesn't feel like homework, haha.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
Gnub said:
EDIT: I stuck with CompSci. My freshmen classes were overflowing with people. Like 40+ students in a class that supposed to cap out at 30. People sitting in laps to get in a full class! Had 11 CompSci majors my graduating class in 2007. :(
What's worse is how few people are even entering these programs versus the past.


I graduated with a CompSci degree a little over a decade ago. Pretty large number of students in the program ... 6 or so professors and a handful of adjuncts.


Fast forward to now ... this is the last year for the program. They're actually removing the major due to lack of interest. There's only a couple of people even in the program getting their degree :\







A side-note given some of the discussion here, I had an interesting trip getting to computer science. I started out as a Psychology major with some art and music classes to fill in electives, etc. Ended up graduating with honors majoring in CSci, with a minor in fine arts (combination of music and art - both history and studio work for each).

In the end, I was only 1 class shy of having a math minor, and probably a semester away from a studio art major lol.
 

irishcow

Member
ivysaur12 said:
Tell me more! Enlighten the proles, please.

You can be sarcastic but you can't deny the truth.

Try taking a heat transfer exam that is 3 problems and you have 3 hours. Each problem takes 5 pages front and back of writing to solve. In a class of 20 people over 50% fail.

How about a mechanics of vibrations course where the class average is 55% and over half are retaking?

Engineering is difficult. It shits on other undergrad degrees. Plain and simple.
 

Zzoram

Member
It's hard for arts degrees to be seen as equally hard as STEM degrees when people who want an easy degree take arts. Who ever met someone taking engineering claiming it would be an easy path to a degree? There are plenty of political science majors who did it just because it would be an easy way to get a degree on their resume.

I have no doubt it takes a lot of work to become a master in the arts. However, it takes WAY less work to coast through with a C- just to graduate in an arts degree than a STEM degree.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
irishcow said:
You can be sarcastic but you can't deny the truth.

Try taking a heat transfer exam that is 3 problems and you have 3 hours. Each problem takes 5 pages front and back of writing to solve. In a class of 20 people over 50% fail.

How about a mechanics of vibrations course where the class average is 55% and over half are retaking?

Engineering is difficult. It shits on other undergrad degrees. Plain and simple.

Try spending an entire semester researching modern dystopian literature, pouring over every single major dystopian and post-apocalyptic novel written from the 1700s to 2011. Good, done? Awesome. While you're doing that, you're going to read every single political theorist you can think of, big and small. Now you're going to cover your room in endless piles of post-it notes, and notecards connecting different dystopian novels to different political theories and their historical references. Now try synthesizing all of that into a contemporary study of feminism, feminist theory, and minority repression in North America during the Reagan Revolution and the Bush years. You're also going to look at the study of conservative economic theory and its effects on women and minorities. Yay! Now you're going to make a six hour presentation on your findings which will be scrutinized in front of the entire department, along with the 150-page paper that you wrote on the subject.

Not to mention your professors will be wearing robes when they read your shit. Big fucking scary robes. Especially if they got their PhD at Cornell cause that shit is red.

I'm sure that you worked very hard on your degree. Congratulations. But please don't argue that you're the only one who did.
 
ivysaur12 said:
Try spending an entire semester researching modern dystopian literature, pouring over every single major dystopian and post-apocalyptic novel written from the 1700s to 2011. Good, done? Awesome. While you're doing that, you're going to read every single political theorist you can think of, big and small. Now you're going to cover your room in endless piles of post-it notes, and notecards connecting different dystopian novels to different political theories and their historical references. Now try synthesizing all of that into a contemporary study of feminism, feminist theory, and minority repression in North America during the Reagan Revolution and the Bush years. You're also going to look at the study of conservative economic theory and its effects on women and minorities. Yay! Now you're going to make a six hour presentation on your findings which will be scrutinized in front of the entire department, along with the 150-page paper that you wrote on the subject.

I'm sure that you worked very hard on your degree. Congratulations. But please don't argue that you're the only one who did.
Do you feel the amount of work you did is representative of that of an average graduate in your field of study? Because that is what people are debating, not whether you personally worked hard or not.
 
ivysaur12 said:
Try spending an entire semester researching modern dystopian literature, pouring over every single major dystopian and post-apocalyptic novel written from the 1700s to 2011. Good, done? Awesome. While you're doing that, you're going to read every single political theorist you can think of, big and small. Now you're going to cover your room in endless piles of post-it notes, and notecards connecting different dystopian novels to different political theories and their historical references. Now try synthesizing all of that into a contemporary study of feminism, feminist theory, and minority repression in North America during the Reagan Revolution and the Bush years. You're also going to look at the study of conservative economic theory and its effects on women and minorities. Yay! Now you're going to make a six hour presentation on your findings which will be scrutinized in front of the entire department, along with the 150-page paper that you wrote on the subject.

Not to mention your professors will be wearing robes when they read your shit. Big fucking scary robes. Especially if they got their PhD at Cornell cause that shit is red.

I'm sure that you worked very hard on your degree. Congratulations. But please don't argue that you're the only one who did.

you did that shit in undergrad? because the dude you quoted was talking about an undergrad engineering degree. i double majored in history and poli sci and i didn't do a tenth of that shit.

i'm in law school now and even this is way easier than the math/chemistry/physics classes i took in my first year undergrad. it's not about shitting on anyone's field of study, sometimes facts are facts and it is just a truism that as an undergraduate, it is way easier to earn a liberal arts degree than a STEM degree. i have a ton of respect for those that have one of those majors, i tried it and i couldn't do it.
 

braves01

Banned
irishcow said:
You can be sarcastic but you can't deny the truth.

Try taking a heat transfer exam that is 3 problems and you have 3 hours. Each problem takes 5 pages front and back of writing to solve. In a class of 20 people over 50% fail.

How about a mechanics of vibrations course where the class average is 55% and over half are retaking?

Engineering is difficult. It shits on other undergrad degrees. Plain and simple.

I think this is one point the article is trying to make. Sciences are difficult, but poorly designed tests and curricula make them even harder. Why design tests that half the class fails and has to retake? Surely there's a way to make these subjects more accessible and still cover the necessary material.
 

areal

Member
ivysaur12 said:
Try spending an entire semester researching modern dystopian literature, pouring over every single major dystopian and post-apocalyptic novel written from the 1700s to 2011.
Man, that sounds poring.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
opticalmace said:
Do you feel the amount of work you did is representative of that of an average graduate in your field of study? Because that is what people are debating, not whether you personally worked hard or not.

Every English major was required to attempt a thesis. Not all passed and most of the C-level students turned theirs into "independent studies" which still counted (they were given a certain letter grade). The rest of us all finished their thesis.

We had ~80 English majors in my year. Around 50 were lit, 30 were creative, 10 were film. The film and creative thesises were different, I'm not entirely sure what they had to do. But of the 50 lit concentrations, around half of us worked on something similar to what I described. Almost all of the creative concentrations did a thesis. No clue on film, it was a new concentration.

Frank the Great said:
you did that shit in undergrad? because the dude you quoted was talking about an undergrad engineering degree. i double majored in history and poli sci and i didn't do a tenth of that shit.

i'm in law school now and even this is way easier than the math/chemistry/physics classes i took in my first year undergrad. it's not about shitting on anyone's field of study, sometimes facts are facts and it is just a truism that as an undergraduate, it is way easier to earn a liberal arts degree than a STEM degree. i have a ton of respect for those that have one of those majors, i tried it and i couldn't do it.

Undergrad.


areal said:
Man, that sounds poring.

Bu-dum chhhhhhh.
 

Prologue

Member
He is right you know.

A student might find the sciences easier but have a hard time with the liberal art classes, but at the end of the day, the average student has a harder time grasping science material than liberal arts material. Can't really argue with that...
 
opticalmace said:
Do you feel the amount of work you did is representative of that of an average graduate in your field of study? Because that is what people are debating, not whether you personally worked hard or not.
Exactly.

Listen, ivysaur, back when I was a biology major I would get pissed because my engineering buddies didn't seem to think my coursework was that tough compared to theirs. I felt compelled to defend it.

Then, you know what happened? I switched to BMEn and now I agree with them. This stuff is just hard. And again, all of that stuff you just typed is really subjective stuff. It's all studying the ideas of others, which can be interpreted in a ton of ways.

actually I'm just gonna stop typing now this is getting nasty
 

irishcow

Member
I've never heard of any undergrad doing that much work for an english degree. I guess I am uninformed.

Was your work published? What are you doing now with your degree?

ivysaur12 said:
Every English major was required to attempt a thesis. Not all passed and most of the C-level students turned theirs into "independent studies" which still counted (they were given a certain letter grade). The rest of us all finished their thesis.



Undergrad.




Bu-dum chhhhhhh.
 

MrFortyFive

Member
irishcow said:
You can be sarcastic but you can't deny the truth.

Try taking a heat transfer exam that is 3 problems and you have 3 hours. Each problem takes 5 pages front and back of writing to solve. In a class of 20 people over 50% fail.

How about a mechanics of vibrations course where the class average is 55% and over half are retaking?

Engineering is difficult. It shits on other undergrad degrees. Plain and simple.

I took an Organizational Behavior class where each exam consisted of 2-3 questions that required approximately 15 pages of writing in 3 hours that about half the class failed.

The point is this thread is comparing and debating two things with worthless anecdotal evidence. If I had to guess, I would say that these engineering/math/physics classes being discussed in the thread are nearly impossible to bullshit your way through compared to a more subjective discipline, but it doesn't change the fact that liberal arts classes vary wildly from professor to professor and school to school.

It depends entirely on how the subject is taught and what is expected. ANY subject can be horribly difficult and demanding. It's no secret that students in high schools are severely lacking in mathematical and quantitative skills. If it were reformed (which is another debate and thread in itself) the differences in the average GPAs in these majors might not be so large.

Either way, a liberal arts program might be a joke at one school and nothing short of a grueling hell at another. To generalize and say that one major simply "shits on" others is a gross simplification of an already desultory argument, and I have to agree with ivysaur12 as he's mentioned a number of times that it devalues the hard work of so many students.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
irishcow said:
I've never heard of any undergrad doing that much work for an english degree. I guess I am uninformed.

Was your work published? What are you doing now with your degree?

We all got our work published by the university's journal. I could have gotten it into a better journal with my advisor but I really didn't care by the time I graduated because it would be extra work for something I never wanted to get into.

I'm working in LA trying to be a TV writer. I get coffee and change diapers. I also answer phones and deliver mail.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
ivysaur12 said:
Try spending an entire semester researching modern dystopian literature, pouring over every single major dystopian and post-apocalyptic novel written from the 1700s to 2011. Good, done? Awesome. While you're doing that, you're going to read every single political theorist you can think of, big and small. Now you're going to cover your room in endless piles of post-it notes, and notecards connecting different dystopian novels to different political theories and their historical references. Now try synthesizing all of that into a contemporary study of feminism, feminist theory, and minority repression in North America during the Reagan Revolution and the Bush years. You're also going to look at the study of conservative economic theory and its effects on women and minorities. Yay! Now you're going to make a six hour presentation on your findings which will be scrutinized in front of the entire department, along with the 150-page paper that you wrote on the subject.

Not to mention your professors will be wearing robes when they read your shit. Big fucking scary robes. Especially if they got their PhD at Cornell cause that shit is red.

I'm sure that you worked very hard on your degree. Congratulations. But please don't argue that you're the only one who did.

Sure that, that a lot of work. But is a different kind of effort than the one required for hard science. Talking about Math, how about taking weeks trying to solve a single problem. Doesn't matter how hard you work (though it helps a lot and is always recommended, and necessary), if you don't get the right idea you simply won't solve it.

My degree Thesis was only 70 pages long and the presentation was 40 minutes long. It took me two and a half years.

Mr.FortyFive said:
I took an Organizational Behavior class where each exam consisted of 2-3 questions that required approximately 15 pages of writing in 3 hours that about half the class failed.

One Topology III (on a fairly specialized subject) took us more than 12 hours for five questions. We had access to every single resource we wanted, and the answers could be written on half a page each. Everyone failed.
 

Puddles

Banned
ivysaur12 said:
We all got our work published by the university's journal. I could have gotten it into a better journal with my advisor but I really didn't care by the time I graduated because it would be extra work for something I never wanted to get into.

I'm working in LA trying to be a TV writer. I get coffee and change diapers. I also answer phones and deliver mail.

You change diapers?
 

TheQueen'sOwn

insert blank space here
chiym1992 said:
I'm a first year in aero/materials dual major. My calc 2 class lost half of its students after the first test.. and my school is supposedly academically competitive.. lol

I found calc 2 easy... hated fluids 2 (the labs were fine though).
 
At Dartmouth science and engineering courses are very demonstrably harder. It is no coincidence that the lowest average gpas are in chem bio and engineering, while the highest are in things like asian or caribbean studies. You can't fake a knowledge of science or work your way around a lack of understanding like you can in the different 'soft' studies of liberal arts.

Btw Dartmouth is a liberal arts college.
 
ivysaur, if it's any consolation, I'd take conversation with a person who received a 3.7 in your line of studies over a person who received a 3.9 in engineering any day of the week. I find engineers to have a strange propensity towards being boorish and generally uninformed about anything outside of their area of study and work.
 

Puddles

Banned
opticalmace said:
I assume he meant he is doing those jobs on the side while trying to break into the writing business.

Well, I can see a low-level assistant at AMC or Showtime or whatever having to get coffee, deliver mail and answer phones. Hell, I'd expect that to be most of the job. But having your assistant change your baby's diapers doesn't seem like it should be part of the job description.
 
Zzoram said:
You have to draw the line somewhere. Neuroscience is more closely related to what one would think of as Biology than Psychology.
Neuroscience and Psychology aren't even close to being the same thing. They just minorly overlap.

Again about the same as Biology and Chemistry.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
opticalmace said:
I assume he meant he is doing those jobs on the side while trying to break into the writing business.

I work for a writer/director as his personal assistant. But it's for their kids. Shit's gross. My other favorite job is "hey, do you know this job *hums something incomprehensible* put it on my iTunes!"

But most of the other kids in my class that were English majors are doing other things. Some work at non-profits, a few work at publishing houses, a few at major newspapers, and some work for other entertainment companies. A lot of people work at CBS in New York. I, of course, am a sadist and had to choose the most atrocious path towards a career I can think of.


Puddles said:
Well, I can see a low-level assistant at AMC or Showtime or whatever having to get coffee, deliver mail and answer phones. Hell, I'd expect that to be most of the job. But having your assistant change your baby's diapers doesn't seem like it should be part of the job description.

:(
 
Byakuya769 said:
ivysaur, if it's any consolation, I'd take conversation with a person who received a 3.7 in your line of studies over a person who received a 3.9 in engineering any day of the week. I find engineers to have a strange propensity towards being boorish and generally uninformed about anything outside of their area of study and work.
lol. this is true of many degree holders.

lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc.
 

XMonkey

lacks enthusiasm.
Puddles said:
Well, I can see a low-level assistant at AMC or Showtime or whatever having to get coffee, deliver mail and answer phones. Hell, I'd expect that to be most of the job. But having your assistant change your baby's diapers doesn't seem like it should be part of the job description.
It's La-la Land :\
 

Prologue

Member
Prologue said:
He is right you know.

A student might find the sciences easier but have a hard time with the liberal art classes, but at the end of the day, the average student has a harder time grasping science material than liberal arts material. Can't really argue with that...

I wanted to add something. I took my fair share of liberal art classes and did well in them, but there were people in those classes that could write circles around me. I mean, most of my papers were B's and A's but they were typical papers with no heart or spark. I could never write the way some of my peers could. They had that spice, that creativity. Thats something I would/will always admire.
 

irishcow

Member
lol I have a mechanical engineering degree and I'm in medical school. I guess I'm fucked.

Byakuya769 said:
I'd put MDs at #2 on that list below engineers.

This is my own personal comparative analysis.
 

Zzoram

Member
Byakuya769 said:
ivysaur, if it's any consolation, I'd take conversation with a person who received a 3.7 in your line of studies over a person who received a 3.9 in engineering any day of the week. I find engineers to have a strange propensity towards being boorish and generally uninformed about anything outside of their area of study and work.
People only know what they spend years studying, not a shocker.

Maybe those liberal arts people can talk about so much more because they had the time to spend on more varied interests ;)
 

mooooose

Member
Currently a math major because my school's comp sci department got deactivated, but I'm basically an undeclared CS double major. I suck at Calc II but don't study enough, admittedly. Probably going to transfer and do straight CS, mostly because I'm not even sure about a straight math degree and job prospects.

Any opinions? Should I continue what I'm doing or just go straight CS? Or transfer and do Math and CS elsewhere?
 

Zzoram

Member
Prologue said:
I wanted to add something. I took my fair share of liberal art classes and did well in them, but there were people in those classes that could write circles around me. I mean, most of my papers were B's and A's but they were typical papers with no heart or spark. I could never write the way some of my peers could. They had that spice, that creativity. Thats something I would/will always admire.
That's the issue at hand. It may take tons of work and supreme skill to write a masterful A+ liberal arts paper, but you can easily half-ass a C- paper and graduate with the same degree.

STEM has a higher minimum difficulty bar than liberal arts. Both have societal value but they are not equally difficult degrees when it comes to minimum requirement to graduate.
 

Kalnos

Banned
mooooose said:
Any opinions? Should I continue what I'm doing or just go straight CS? Or transfer and do Math and CS elsewhere?

What do you want to do with your CS degree? If you're just interested in software development then I don't see why you would *need* a math degree.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Zzoram said:
That's the issue at hand. It may take tons of work and supreme skill to write a masterful A+ liberal arts paper, but you can easily half-ass a C- paper and graduate with the same degree.

STEM has a higher minimum difficulty bar than liberal arts. Both have societal value but they are not equally difficult degrees when it comes to minimum requirement to graduate.
Oh I totally agree, but part of the problem for me is that half-assed papers can get As. I remember one last semester that I got back with a 93% and I literally wanted to say to the professor "but almost a third of the essay had only weak ties to my thesis, and a whole paragraph was clearly filler. Why did you grade me so high?"
 
mooooose said:
Currently a math major because my school's comp sci department got deactivated, but I'm basically an undeclared CS double major. I suck at Calc II but don't study enough, admittedly. Probably going to transfer and do straight CS, mostly because I'm not even sure about a straight math degree and job prospects.

Any opinions? Should I continue what I'm doing or just go straight CS? Or transfer and do Math and CS elsewhere?
Do you even need to decide now? I looked at my undergrad's CS/Math program and you have a lot of math until the third year anyway. I was undecided between astronomy and astrophysics, but I realized it didn't change my curriculum until several years in anyway.

If you have to decide, I guess try to think about how much you really enjoy math. Take a look at what courses you would have to take in the future. If they sound interesting to you and you're willing to put in the work then go for it?
 
Zzoram said:
People only know what they spend years studying, not a shocker.

Maybe those liberal arts people can talk about so much more because they had the time to spend on more varied interests ;)

Oh no, they're all about Housewives of ______, American Idol, and whatever popular culture bullshit is in. That's why I said boorish.
 
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