Competitiveness of different STEM majors

Hi there!

I’ve heard that different majors have different levels of competitiveness.

I was wondering if Crimson had data available for the admission rates of different STEM majors at Columbia University and other similar schools.

Thank you

Hi there! The admissions rates for different majors are not public, and our internal data is not robust enough to support strong conclusions either way. The best way to think about this is that the most popular majors on campus are the most competitive. If you look at Columbia’s breakdown of major choice - see below - you can see PoliSci, Economics, and CS are among the most popular majors. Since schools do try and create diverse classes with students interested in different disciplines, nabbing one of the “declared CS” slots or “declared Econ” slots will be tougher than the other ones. There are probably more of those slots, but I’d estimate a higher proportion of students applying for them as well.

https://opir.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/Statistical%20Abstract/cc_ug_degrees_by_program_of_study.pdf