Trend in Undergraduate Majors 2005-2012

[doc toothache]

ADEA made a change in the way undergraduate majors are reported. It has dropped math and computer sciences, education, language/humanities/arts, pre-dentistry and “other”. It has added health professions and related programs, psychology, parks/recreation/leisure/fitness studies, family and consumer sciences or human sciences and “no major”. It has modified biology to biology/biomedical sciences and chemistry/physics to physical sciences. It is not clear whether the changes seen in the increase in the biology and/biomedical science majors is due to a change in the criteria used for admission or simply reflects a change in the accounting system. There appears to be a substantial drop (40%) in the number of applicants with chemistry/physical science. Even more dramatic is the 60% drop in applicants with engineering majors. The new majors in parks/recreation/leisure/ fitness studies and he family and consumer sciences are particularly interesting. The former has the highest percent rate of enrollment at 51.6. Perhaps dental schools desire to have a more fit/lean cadre of dentists. The health professions and related programs have the lowest percent rate of enrollment at 35.3. The subgroup, which includes pre dents, pre meds, pre- other health professionals fare the worst, at 28.8%.

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[jeffity]

Maybe kinesiology falls under fitness studies? When I was doing pre-reqs, there seemed to be a number of pre-health kids going that route because it was less rigorous (or so I was told).

 

[KittySquared]

I'm seeing quite a few exercise science kids at the pre-dental club at a local university here.