People often wonder what is the typical percentage of college students that are math majors, and perhaps more importantly, what is the range of percentages across different institutions. I have seen a few efforts where people try to collect the data by hand.
This seems like the kind of question a computer should be able to answer, so I used publicly available data to generate a spreadsheet with this data for most of the colleges in the US.
I list for you (1) my approximate methodology so people can reproduce this and improve on it, and (2) some highlights of the data. If you think I'm wrong, blame Excel and the IPEDS data that the institutions reported.
Please email me if you have suggested changes.
- Eric Hsu, Sep 11, 2013
The raw spreadsheet: Math Majors Percentage by Institution, 2010
1. Download raw data from IPEDS. http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/InstitutionByName.aspx
I; downloaded all math and stats majors for 2010, total. You can specify breakouts by demographics and by specific submajors, but I didn't. The interface is cranky, but mostly documented.
2. Import into Excel. Massage data with pivot tables to sum up the total first and second majors for each institution, then combine that with the total bachelors given. Use more pivot tables to assemble a single spreadsheet.
| Institution | All Bachelor's | Math majors, 1st or 2nd | % of BAs that are Math | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of California-Berkeley | 7092 | 252 | 4% | |
| University of California-Los Angeles | 7543 | 214 | 3% | |
| University of Washington-Seattle Campus | 7753 | 171 | 2% | |
| University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 6457 | 166 | 3% | |
| Stony Brook University | 3525 | 159 | 5% | |
| The University of Texas at Austin | 8838 | 158 | 2% | |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | 6558 | 121 | 2% | |
| University of California-San Diego | 5857 | 121 | 2% | |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1116 | 116 | 10% | |
| University of Minnesota-Twin Cities | 6942 | 115 | 2% | |
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 7422 | 114 | 2% | |
| Grand Valley State University | 3928 | 110 | 3% | |
| University of California-Santa Barbara | 5005 | 107 | 2% | |
| Purdue University-Main Campus | 6385 | 103 | 2% | |
| University of Chicago | 1209 | 102 | 8% | |
| University of Maryland-College Park | 6569 | 101 | 2% | |
| Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus | 11496 | 98 | 1% | |
| Harvard University | 1801 | 96 | 5% | |
| Northwestern University | 2219 | 95 | 4% | |
| University of Virginia-Main Campus | 3561 | 93 | 3% |
| Institution | All Bachelor's | Math majors, 1st or 2nd | % of BAs that are Math | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California Institute of Technology | 192 | 35 | 18% | |
| Harvey Mudd College | 172 | 22 | 13% | |
| Wabash College | 204 | 22 | 11% | |
| St. Olaf College | 716 | 76 | 11% | |
| Williams College | 525 | 55 | 10% | |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1116 | 116 | 10% | |
| University of Chicago | 1209 | 102 | 8% | |
| Bryn Mawr College | 319 | 26 | 8% | |
| Edward Waters College | 89 | 7 | 8% | |
| Pomona College | 375 | 28 | 7% | |
| Wheelock College | 163 | 12 | 7% | |
| Hamilton College | 498 | 36 | 7% | |
| Grinnell College | 379 | 27 | 7% | |
| St Lawrence University | 521 | 36 | 7% | |
| Colorado School of Mines | 667 | 46 | 7% | |
| Centre College | 293 | 20 | 7% | |
| University of Alaska Southeast | 105 | 7 | 7% | |
| Colby College | 481 | 32 | 7% | |
| University of Minnesota-Morris | 296 | 19 | 6% | |
| Scripps College | 231 | 14 | 6% | |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 1371 | 83 | 6% |