College Majors List: All 16 Fields, Pay & Admit Odds

24 min read

On the Common App, picking an intended major takes about four seconds. It is a dropdown. You scroll, you click, you move on to the essays. At some colleges that click is purely informational. At others it decides which admissions committee reads your file, which admit rate you are measured against, and whether you are eligible for a program that will not let you in later. This page gives you the whole universe of majors by field, the real numbers attached to each (degrees awarded, early-career pay, underemployment), and the part almost every majors list skips: where the major changes your odds.

Skip ahead to a field: Business · Health and nursing · Engineering · Computing · Biology · Physical sciences and math · Social sciences · Psychology · Education · Communication · Arts · Humanities · Agriculture and environment · Architecture · Criminal justice and public service · Interdisciplinary

How many college majors are there? (and why every list gives a different number)

The federal CIP 2020 taxonomy from the National Center for Education Statistics contains roughly 2,800 six-digit instructional program codes, grouped into 47 two-digit field families. That is the closest thing to an official count of college majors in the United States. Any individual college offers far fewer: a large public flagship usually lists 100 to 200 undergraduate majors, a small liberal arts college 30 to 60.

The federal answer: CIP 2020, the taxonomy colleges actually report under

The Classification of Instructional Programs is the code system every U.S. college uses when it reports enrollment and degrees to the government through IPEDS. A major is a CIP code in practice: "Computer Science" is 11.0701, "Registered Nursing" is 51.3801. The CIP 2020 edition maintained by NCES added dozens of new four-digit series and hundreds of new six-digit codes over CIP 2010, which is how fields like data science and cybersecurity got official homes.

Why this matters to you: when a college's website says a program leads to a "STEM-designated" degree (relevant for international students on F-1 OPT extensions), it is pointing at the CIP code, not the program's marketing name.

Why one site says 295, another says 1,800, and a catalog says 90

All three are defensible, and none of them are wrong:

• 295 is roughly the number of commonly offered undergraduate majors you would recognize by name. PrepScholar's list uses this scale.
• 1,800+ is a profiled-major database count (MyMajors), which splits variants apart: "Marine Biology" and "Biology" become separate entries.
• ~2,800 is the federal six-digit CIP count, including graduate-only and highly specialized codes.
• 90 is what an actual university catalog lists, because no school teaches the whole taxonomy.

The practical takeaway: never shortlist from a national list alone. The name on your application has to match a real line in that college's catalog, and the same field is called Biology at one school and Biological Sciences at the next.

What counts as a major vs. a concentration, track, or emphasis

A college major is the field of study that accounts for most of your degree requirements. Per ACT's college-planning guidance, a bachelor's degree runs about 120 credit hours, with roughly 30 to 60 of those in the major itself. Everything else is general education and electives.

• Minor: usually 15 to 24 credits in a second field. Appears on the transcript, sometimes not on the diploma.
• Concentration / track / emphasis: a specialization inside a major (Finance concentration within Business). Not a separate major, and usually not something you declare on an application.
• Double major: two full sets of major requirements, one degree.
• Dual degree: two degrees, often two colleges within the university, and frequently a separate application.
• Intended major: what you put on the Common App or UC application. At many schools it is non-binding. At some it is the application.

The full college majors list, by field (16 categories)

These 16 clusters mirror the CIP two-digit field groups that colleges and IPEDS actually use, so the category names match what you will see in a course catalog. Pay signals below reference the New York Fed's Labor Market for Recent College Graduates outcomes-by-major table, where the median early-career wage across all majors is $58,000 (2024 American Community Survey data, updated 2026).

Business and management

CIP 52, the largest undergraduate field in the country. Majors: accounting, finance, marketing, management, international business, business analytics, supply chain and logistics, human resource management, entrepreneurship, real estate, hospitality and tourism management, sports management, management information systems, insurance and risk management, actuarial science (sometimes housed in math).

Health professions and nursing

CIP 51. Majors: nursing (BSN), public health, health administration and policy, kinesiology and exercise science, athletic training, nutrition and dietetics, medical laboratory science, respiratory therapy, radiologic and imaging sciences, dental hygiene, speech-language and hearing sciences, health informatics, pre-professional tracks for PT, OT and PA. Nursing is the single most gate-kept undergraduate major in America; our guide to direct-admit BSN programs covers who gets in and how.

Engineering and engineering technology

CIP 14 and 15. Majors: mechanical, electrical, computer, civil, chemical, aerospace, biomedical, industrial and systems, materials science, environmental, nuclear, petroleum, agricultural and biological, engineering physics, robotics and mechatronics, engineering management, construction engineering technology.

Computer and information sciences

CIP 11. Majors: computer science, software engineering, information technology, information systems, cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, informatics, human-computer interaction, computer graphics and game development, network and systems administration, digital forensics.

Biological and biomedical sciences

CIP 26. Majors: biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, neuroscience, genetics, cell and developmental biology, physiology, ecology and evolutionary biology, marine biology, botany, zoology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, immunology.

Physical sciences and mathematics

CIP 40 and 27. Majors: physics, chemistry, astronomy and astrophysics, geology and earth sciences, atmospheric science and meteorology, oceanography, environmental chemistry, mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics, actuarial science, mathematical economics, computational mathematics.

Social sciences, history and political science

CIP 45 and 54. Majors: economics, political science, government, international relations, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, geography, human geography, urban studies, public policy, criminology, history, economics and mathematics joint degrees. If you are eyeing law school, our pre-law college and major breakdown covers which of these actually help.

Psychology

CIP 42. Majors: psychology (general), clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, behavioral neuroscience, developmental psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, social psychology, forensic psychology, counseling psychology.

Education

CIP 13. Majors: elementary education, early childhood education, secondary education, special education, subject-specific licensure tracks (math education, English education, science education), physical education, music education, educational studies, TESOL, agricultural education.

Communication, journalism and media

CIP 09 and 10. Majors: communication studies, journalism, public relations, advertising, strategic communication, broadcast and digital journalism, media studies, media production, digital media and design, sports communication, technical communication.

Visual and performing arts

CIP 50. Majors: studio art, graphic design, illustration, photography, art history, music performance, music composition, musical theater, theater and drama, dance, film and television production, animation, game art, industrial and product design, fashion design, interior design. Most of these admit by audition or portfolio; see our comparison of art schools versus liberal arts colleges and the music school admissions guide.

English, languages, philosophy and the humanities

CIP 16, 23, 24, 38 and 05. Majors: English literature, creative writing, rhetoric and composition, comparative literature, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, German, Russian, classics, Latin, linguistics, philosophy, religious studies, theology, ethics, medieval studies, area and ethnic studies (African American, Latin American, East Asian, Indigenous), women's and gender studies, liberal arts and general humanities.

Agriculture, natural resources and environmental studies

CIP 01 and 03. Majors: agricultural business and economics, agronomy and crop science, animal science, pre-veterinary science, horticulture, food science and technology, viticulture, forestry, wildlife and fisheries management, natural resource management, soil science, environmental science, environmental studies, sustainability.

Architecture and urban planning

CIP 04. Majors: architecture (typically a five-year B.Arch), architectural studies (four-year pre-professional), landscape architecture, interior architecture, urban and regional planning, environmental design, historic preservation, real estate development.

Criminal justice, homeland security and public service

CIP 43, 44 and 22. Majors: criminal justice, criminology, homeland security, emergency management and disaster science, fire science administration, forensic science, cyber operations, public administration, social work (BSW), human services, nonprofit management, legal studies and paralegal studies.

Interdisciplinary, general studies and self-designed majors

CIP 30 and 24. Majors: cognitive science, neuroscience (when interdisciplinary), data science (when interdisciplinary), international studies, global studies, sustainability studies, science and technology studies, behavioral economics, biological and physical sciences, general studies, liberal studies, and individualized or self-designed majors where you write your own curriculum with a faculty committee.

The field groups that rarely get their own section

CIP also includes family and consumer sciences (19), parks, recreation and leisure studies (31), library science (25), transportation and aviation (49), theology and religious vocations (39), military technologies (28 and 29), and personal and culinary services (12). These are small nationally but can be exactly the right answer, and a few (professional pilot, for instance) are among the most selective programs on their campuses.

The most popular majors, by how many people actually graduate in them

Business is the most popular college major in the United States by a wide margin. U.S. colleges awarded about 2.0 million bachelor's degrees in 2021-22, and six fields accounted for roughly 58% of them. Business alone accounted for 375,400 degrees, about 19% of everything conferred, according to NCES Digest of Education Statistics Table 322.10.

A vintage note, because most sites hide this: NCES publishes completions data with a two-to-three year lag, so 2021-22 was the most recent full year in this series when we built the table. Check the current Digest table for newer years before you quote these in an essay.

The fastest-growing fields

Health professions grew 62% over the decade to 2021-22 and engineering 51%, while business, the biggest field, grew only 2%. Computer and information sciences has been the fastest-climbing field in the years since, which matters for your application in a way the growth chart does not show.

What "popular" costs you when you apply

Growth in applicants is not matched by growth in seats. Departments are limited by lab space, faculty lines and clinical placements, so when applications to CS or nursing double, the admit rate for that program falls even if the university's overall rate holds steady. A major being popular is, from an admissions standpoint, a reason for caution, not a reason for confidence.

What each major pays, and how often graduates end up underemployed

Two numbers tell you most of what you need to know about a major's outcome floor: the median wage for early-career graduates (ages 22 to 27, working full time) and the share of those graduates working in jobs that do not require a bachelor's degree. The New York Fed publishes both for 73 majors. Across all majors, the early-career median wage is $58,000, and as of mid-2026 the underemployment rate for recent college graduates overall sits at about 42%, with recent-grad unemployment near 5.6%.

Highest early-career pay: engineering, then computing

Computer engineering leads the New York Fed's table at roughly $90,000 in early-career median wage, with computer science close behind at about $87,000. Nine of the ten highest-paying majors in the table are engineering fields. That premium is durable and it is the single strongest argument for engineering, which is also why those programs are the hardest to get into.

The high-employment, low-pay trade-off

Education and social services majors cluster near the bottom of the wage table (the lowest fields land around $40,000 to $45,000 early career) but they also post low underemployment, because the degree maps directly onto a licensed job. That is a real trade: predictable employment, capped pay.

Majors where over half of graduates are underemployed

The underemployment column is where the surprises live. Several broad majors with respectable median wages still show more than half of early-career graduates in jobs that do not require the degree, which usually signals that the major is a launchpad rather than a credential: the payoff arrives with a graduate or professional degree, or with an internship record you built yourself. Criminal justice, general business, hospitality, performing arts and some social sciences typically sit in that band. Read the wage number and the underemployment number together, never one alone.

Does your major change your admission odds? The part every majors list skips

Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the school's admission model. UCLA states that a first-year applicant's choice of major within the College of Letters and Science neither helps nor hurts, and Princeton states that the degree program indicated on the application does not affect a candidate's chances. At schools that admit directly to a college or major (Berkeley engineering, Michigan Ross, most BSN programs), the major is the admit rate.

Three admission models

1. Admit to university. One applicant pool, one rate. You declare a major later, often at the end of sophomore year. Princeton, most liberal arts colleges, UCLA's College of Letters and Science.

2. Admit to college or school. You apply to Arts and Sciences, or Engineering, or Business, and each has its own standards and its own rate. Rutgers is a textbook case, where the published rate swings depending on which school you count, as we broke down in our Rutgers acceptance rate explainer.

3. Admit to major. The program itself admits you, with its own capacity cap, supplemental essays and sometimes a portfolio or prerequisite list. Direct-admit nursing, CS at many publics, architecture, music performance.

Capped, impacted and direct-admit programs

California uses the word "impacted": when a campus or program receives more qualified applicants than it has space for, it applies supplementary admission criteria. Many flagships outside California use "capped," "secondary admission" or "professional program admission" for the same thing. The pattern to look for across the country: computer science, nursing, engineering, business, architecture, and studio/performance arts.

Our analysis of UC Berkeley's acceptance rate by major is the clearest worked example we have: the spread between Berkeley's most impacted engineering paths and its least competitive colleges runs from roughly 5% to around 25%, at the same university, in the same cycle. A student with a fixed profile can move their real odds by a factor of four or five purely by choosing which door to knock on.

Where the major is explicitly neutral

When a college publishes a statement like UCLA's or Princeton's, believe it and stop overthinking the dropdown. In those files, the major choice is read as context for coherence: does the transcript support the interest, do the activities, does the "why us" essay know what the department actually offers? That is a narrative question, not a scoring one.

Second-choice and alternate majors

Many direct-admit schools ask for an alternate major. Read that field as a genuine safety net, and fill it with something you would actually study. Two mistakes to avoid: listing an alternate that is also capped (naming CS first and data science second at a school where both are capped buys you nothing), and listing an alternate that contradicts everything else in the file.

Switching in later

Internal transfer into a capped program is usually harder than getting admitted from high school, because the program is already full. Expect prerequisite courses, a minimum college GPA (commonly 3.0 to 3.5 in specified courses), and a competitive internal review. Assume the door is one-way until the department's website tells you otherwise in writing.

Build the shortlist with your real odds in front of you

This is the point where a majors list stops being useful and a plan has to start. Unive was built by Yale graduates to do exactly this handoff: the AI admissions platform runs a Profile Evaluator on what your transcript and activities already prove, then College Matching sorts reach, target and safety schools by the admission model that applies to your intended major, not by the university-wide rate that gets quoted in rankings. Students working in Unive see a 3.48x higher acceptance rate, and the Application Roadmap keeps every deadline and supplemental essay in one place instead of a spreadsheet. It is a paid subscription with a 7-day money-back guarantee, which is roughly the difference between a rounding error and the $20,000 a private consultant charges.

Should you apply undecided for Fall 2027?

For most colleges, applying undecided will not hurt your chances, per College Board's BigFuture guidance, and at schools that admit to the university it is a genuinely neutral choice. The real costs of undecided are elsewhere: some major-specific scholarships and honors programs require a declared field, and at direct-admit schools "undecided" can mean you are not eligible for the capped program at all.

What undecided actually signals

An admissions reader sees "undecided" hundreds of times a week. It is not a red flag. What is a problem is an application that reads undecided everywhere: no through-line in the activities, a "why us" essay that could be about any school, no evidence of intellectual momentum. Undecided plus a focused file is fine. Undecided plus a diffuse file is forgettable, which is one of several patterns we list in college application red flags to avoid.

When undecided is the safer play

• The school admits to the university and lets you declare later.
• Your top two interests sit in different colleges and you would rather not be locked in.
• You are applying to a liberal arts college, where exploration is the stated design of the curriculum.

When declaring is worth points

• The program is direct-admit and you want it (nursing, engineering, architecture, music).
• The department has its own scholarships, honors track or research program tied to declared majors.
• You have four years of evidence pointing one direction. Declaring is how you cash that in.

Dates for the cycle you are in right now

If you are entering college in Fall 2027, you are filing applications this fall and winter. Early decision and early action deadlines at most private colleges fall on November 1, 2026, with a second wave on November 15. The University of California filing window runs October 1 to December 2, 2026 (confirm on UC's admissions site, which posts the official window each year). Many public universities also run scholarship-linked priority deadlines in November or December, which we cover in priority deadline vs. regular deadline.

Changing your major: how common, how costly

About 30% of undergraduates who had declared a major changed it at least once within three years of enrolling, according to NCES Data Point 2018-434, drawn from the federal Beginning Postsecondary Students longitudinal study. Among bachelor's-degree students the figure was 33%, and roughly one in ten students switched more than once.

Which starting majors churn most

In that same NCES analysis, mathematics majors switched at the highest rate (52%), followed by natural sciences (40%), education (37%), humanities (36%) and engineering (32%). Read those rates as information about the first-year curriculum, not about the students: fields with a brutal gateway sequence (calculus, organic chemistry, statics) shed the most declared majors.

What a switch actually costs

Within a college, a switch in the first three semesters is usually cheap because general education requirements transfer. Costs appear when you cross colleges (engineering to arts and sciences, or the reverse), when a major has a rigid course sequence offered once a year, or when the switch requires a fifth year. One extra semester at a private university can exceed $35,000 in tuition and fees; our Duke cost breakdown shows what a single additional term actually looks like on a bill.

The one-way doors

Hardest to switch into after enrollment: nursing, computer science at impacted publics, direct-admit business, architecture, and any performance or studio program with an audition requirement. If one of these is your real goal, apply to it now. Do not plan to arrive undeclared and transfer in.

The 5-filter shortlist: from 2,800 programs to 3 majors you would actually apply with

Every list tells you to "consider your interests, strengths and goals." That is not a method. Here is one. Run each candidate major through five filters in order and stop when you have three survivors: one primary, one alternate inside the same college, one genuine pivot.

Filter 1: Evidence. What does your transcript and activity list already prove? Not what you like, what a stranger could verify. Four years of orchestra, a self-taught Python project with commits, two summers in a hospital volunteer program. If a major has zero evidence behind it, it is a hobby right now, and a reader will treat it that way. (Our guide on finding the weakest part of your application is essentially this filter, run in reverse.)

Filter 2: Work content, not job title. Look up the day-to-day tasks, not the salary. Civil engineering is specifications and site coordination. Nursing is 12-hour shifts and charting. Marketing is meetings. Read two syllabi from the department's 300-level courses; that is the real preview.

Filter 3: Outcome floor. Pull the major's early-career median wage and underemployment rate from the New York Fed table and ask whether the floor is livable for you, since half of graduates land below the median. A major with a $45,000 floor is a legitimate choice if you know that going in.

Filter 4: Admission model. For every school on your list, answer one question in writing: does this school admit to the university, to a college, or to the major? This changes which rate applies to you and whether you need an alternate major.

Filter 5: Exit options. If you change your mind in year two, where can you go without losing time? Majors with wide exits (economics, statistics, biology, English) have real option value. Majors that are one-way doors demand more certainty up front.

Worked example: the same student, three choices

Say a student comes to you with a 3.85 unweighted GPA, AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C, two years on a robotics team, and a part-time job. Three plausible applications:

• Computer science at an impacted public. Strongest pay outcome, worst odds, hardest to switch into later. Only worth it if CS is first choice and the file is built around it.
• Mechanical engineering at the same school. Same college, materially better odds at many campuses, robotics evidence maps cleanly, and internal transfer to CS is at least defined.
• Applied mathematics in arts and sciences. Best odds of the three, widest exits (into CS, statistics, economics, or finance), weakest signal of commitment if the essays do not carry it.

Same student, same test scores, three very different admission probabilities. That is the decision the dropdown is actually asking you to make.

Majors by goal: quick-reference tables

Pre-med, pre-law and pre-PA

None of these are majors. They are requirement checklists you attach to a major.

Licensure and credential paths

These majors are the credential. Skipping the major means a longer, harder route later.

Crowded vs. undersubscribed

The right-hand column is not a consolation prize. Statistics and materials science both post strong outcome data, and a department that wants students reads your file differently than one turning away four qualified applicants for every seat. If you are still assembling the school side of this equation, our college choice database and checklist pairs with it.

Turn the shortlist into an application

Once you have three majors and a school list, the work becomes specific: a "why this major" paragraph that survives a skeptical reader, activities described so they prove the claim, and supplemental essays for programs that admit by major. Unive's Essay Brainstorming and Essay Grader work on that draft directly, Scholarship Matching surfaces awards tied to your declared field (those are the ones "undecided" locks you out of), and the Interview Prep voice agent runs mock program interviews out loud. If you would rather have a human read it too, 1-on-1 mentoring with top-school graduates sits inside the same workspace. Start with a profile evaluation and see which of your three majors your file actually supports.

College majors FAQ

How many college majors are there?

The federal CIP 2020 taxonomy from NCES contains roughly 2,800 six-digit instructional program codes across 47 two-digit field families, which is the closest thing to an official count. Popular lists cite 295 or 1,800 depending on how narrowly they split variants. Any single college offers far fewer, typically 30 to 200 undergraduate majors.

What is the most popular college major?

Business. U.S. colleges awarded 375,400 bachelor's degrees in business in 2021-22, about 19% of all bachelor's degrees, per NCES Digest Table 322.10. Health professions ranked second at 263,800. Six fields (business, health, social sciences and history, biology, psychology, engineering) accounted for roughly 58% of all bachelor's degrees that year.

What is the easiest major, and what is the hardest?

There is no official ranking, but average GPA and weekly study-hour data give a consistent picture: education, communications and some business majors report the highest GPAs and lightest study loads, while engineering, chemistry, physics and architecture report the heaviest. We break the data down in our guide to the easiest college majors.

Does my major affect my chances of getting in?

It depends on the admission model. UCLA states that a first-year's choice of major within the College neither helps nor hurts, and Princeton states the indicated degree program does not affect chances. At schools that admit directly to a college or major, it matters enormously: admit rates within one university can range from roughly 5% to 25% by program.

Can I double major or add a minor later?

Usually yes, and most students do it after enrolling rather than declaring it on an application. Double majors within one college are generally straightforward if you plan the sequence by sophomore year. Crossing colleges (engineering plus music, for example) often requires a formal petition, and capped programs may refuse second-major entry entirely.

Do colleges see which major I picked on the Common App?

Yes. Your intended major is visible to every college you send the application to, and at direct-admit schools it routes your file to the specific program's readers. Some schools also ask for an alternate major. Colleges that admit to the university treat the field as context rather than a criterion.

What if my dream school does not offer my major?

Check for the same content under a different name first, since programs vary by title (Biology vs. Biological Sciences, Media Studies vs. Communication). If it genuinely is not offered, options are an interdisciplinary or self-designed major, the closest department plus a relevant minor, or accepting that this school is a poor fit for this goal.

Does an undecided major affect scholarships or financial aid?

Not need-based federal aid, which depends on the FAFSA, not your major. It can affect merit money: departmental and industry scholarships (nursing, engineering, agriculture, education) frequently require a declared field, and some honors programs admit by cohort within a college. Declaring costs you nothing if the school lets you change later.