Hey, I'm looking at Occidental College as one of my potential options but, honestly, I'm still pretty undecided about my major. Can anyone who's familiar with Occi tell me which majors usually have a bit more breathing room versus those that are super impacted?
It's a valid approach to look at less impacted majors, especially if you're undecided and open to different fields of study. At Occidental College, it's most well-known for majors like Diplomacy and World Affairs, Biology, Economics, Psychology, and Sociology, which tend to be popular among students and can therefore be more impacted.
However, from what I've gathered, majors such as Art History and the Visual Arts, Cognitive Science, Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, Computational Science, Critical Theory and Social Justice, and Physics tend to have fewer students. These could potentially present less competition for classes and resources, but these majors can still be quite rigorous.
Occidental, like most liberal arts colleges, values breadth as much as depth in a particular field, so many students with varying majors can largely take the same classes in their first one or two years. The college's size, along with a relatively low student-to-faculty ratio, also allows students the opportunity to form strong relationships with professors, regardless of how impacted the major might be.
This does not mean less popular majors are any less robust or valuable. The offerings are comprehensive, and the quality of education is consistently high across departments. Remember, the best major for you is the one that aligns most closely with your interests, skills, and career goals. If you enjoy your course of study and engage deeply with it, you're far more likely to excel.
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