Experts have worked out which majors have the highest IQ (thetab.com)
Some things that jump out to me:
Economics:
This one is weird. On the table it is tied for 5th highest behind only Physics, Mathematics, Philosophy, and Materials Engineering. I don't know how other schools handle it, but at Ohio State (at least ~30 years ago when I was there), there were three different ways to major in Economics:
- BS: They offered a Bachelor of Science with a major in Economics. This was BY FAR the toughest one and involved a LOT of math which is probably why, on this table, it is up near math.
- BA: They offered a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Economics. This was BY FAR the easiest one and involved a lot less math. It was more of a "generic" degree with a concentration in Economics.
- BSBA: All Business degrees were Bachelor of Science in Business Administration so this was just a BSBA with a major in Economics. This one fits between the other two on the intellectual difficulty scale and was obviously much more business-focused than the other two.
Business degrees generally:
On the table there are five business-type majors:
- 125 Business and Finance
- 124 Computer and Information Science - I listed this as business because when I was at tOSU this was combined with Accounting, the major was "Accounting and Management Information Systems".
- 114 Business
- 111 Business Admin and Management
- 110 Accounting
When I was at Ohio State I triple majored in:
- Accounting and Management Information Systems
- Finance
- Real Estate
Real Estate is somewhat of a niche thing so it isn't on the table, we can ignore that one. My other two were, per this table, the highest and lowest IQ business majors. What I find odd is that Accounting is the lowest. My observation was the opposite. I knew plenty of Finance majors who had started out Accounting and dropped "down" because Accounting was too hard, I didn't know anyone the other way around. Not that Finance was all that easy, just that my guess would have been more like:
- Accounting/MIS
- Finance
- Admin
- Business
Ohio State also had another oddity that I did not discover until my final quarter (fall, 1997):
I had decided to stay an extra quarter to get the third major (and another season of football tickets). I was done with the requirements for my Accounting and Finance majors and just needed a few classes to add the Real Estate major so I was taking all Real Estate classes (and a fairly light load basically enjoying a final quarter, going to football games, and getting a third major).
Anyway, one of my classes was in Real Estate Appraisals. It was offered only at night because the instructor was an Appraiser who came in a couple evenings a week to teach this class. The first day he had everyone in class introduce themselves (name, major). The Real Estate major in the Business College was EXTREMELY small, there were only maybe a dozen of us TOTAL and only a few were in this class but the class was PACKED. As people introduced themselves only a few of us were Business/Real Estate majors. The rest were all "Personal Finance" Majors. None of us (the business majors) had ever heard of that so finally someone asked what it was and one of them answered that it was an Arts major for people who couldn't get into the Business College. Several of the others objected to that definition but, as we learned, that is exactly what it was.
In the class we had income property appraisals where the main consideration was the value of the income stream that the property produced. For those of us from the business college these were EXTREMLY simple problems. The Personal Finance majors (almost without exception) could not understand the concept and we (the business majors) tried again and again to explain it to them.
My lesson from this: NEVER TRUST A STOCK BROKER:
The majority of these Personal Finance majors planned to become stockbrokers because that is what you do with a BA in Personal Finance.
