The Hardest College Majors

It’s true that some of the more challenging college majors often lead to high-paying careers.

If you’re currently looking into choosing a major, and difficulty is an important factor, you may want to keep reading. Smartypal, a site that outlines some of the best online degrees and college rankings, recently identified ten of what they consider the hardest majors.

Chemistry

Listed as the No. 1 hardest major, with the lowest GPA of the group (2.78), is none other than Chemistry. Chemistry majors explore the composition, structures, properties, and reactions of matter, often spending a lot of time in the lab. Unlike any of the humanities fields, there’s little room for subjectivity – there’s much more black-and-white answers. While hands-on lab work and potential discoveries are exciting, the field demands frequent testing and may require niche expertise for certain jobs. There’s great pay with this major. On the lower end, Environmental Scientists make about $73,230 and Biochemists earning $94,270 on average.

Economics

Coming in as the No. 3 hardest major is Economics, with an average GPA of 2.95. This major is challenging due to its heavy emphasis on math, statistics, and critical thinking. Graduates often find careers in business, technology, government, and finance, or become analysts who share their insights through interviews and writing. With this major, you’ll find diverse job opportunities, but you’ll need strong math skills and frequent analysis of graphs and data – tedious work.  Accountants make about $73,560, whereas Actuaries earn $111,030 annually.

Finance

Coming in at No. 7 is Finance, with an average GPA of 3.08. Finance majors are constantly in demand, and they usually must have strong skills in math, data analysis, strategy formulation, and communication, making it one of the toughest college majors. You need both emotional intelligence and strategic acumen to study finance. The challenge with this field is it requires continuous learning due to constant changes in finance, banking, and business – but it continuously leads to big bucks. Post-grab, Logisticians make about $76,270 annually, and Personal Financial Advisors bring in about $89,330.

What makes these majors harder generally? Smartypal says it could be hours spent in class and labs, hours studying, measures of strict professors, and strict grading policies. To rank these majors used data from Cornell’s report of the lowest GPAs, suggesting a harder major.

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