ASG Academic Advising: Picking a Major – Families of Majors: Humanities

A primary part of the Advising Program at the American Scholar involves helping students choose potential majors for study at U.S. universities. It’s an important question for guiding how you enrich your 5 Factors of U.S. University Admissions.

To appreciate the majors available for study, we will explore some common families of majors. These families are groupings of majors by common themes or methodologies that are closely related to each other.

Today we are looking at the humanities.

What is humanities?

The areas of study in the humanities family propose and debate claims of value, meaning, and purpose in human experiences.

What is the point of our lives & what should we do with them?

How did people from around the world live in the past & what lessons can they teach us?

Asking these types of questions helps us to evaluate & appreciate our actions & choices as humans. These proposals can come in many forms: long scholarly books, a review of ancient stories, even through art & dance.

It isn’t a surprise then that many fields in the humanities celebrate and inspire our imagination and creativity.

Disciplines within the humanities include:

• Art & art history
• Modern & ancient languages
• Literature
• Law & rhetoric
• Philosophy
• Religious studies

The sciences explore and describe the patterns and rules of nature so we can understand how it works and how to use it to our advantage.

The humanities look at the why to help us to decide whether we should do a thing, regardless of whether we could do that thing.

Approaches in the humanities tend to be:

• Qualitative rather than quantitative
• More speculative than the sciences
• Not restrained by requirements such as empirical data and a preference for testable hypotheses.

What scientists study, how they choose to study it, and the explanations they give to their results are affected by attitudes, ethics, and agendas that have their roots in areas covered by the humanities.

Whether you choose a major, minor, or double major with humanities and something from another area like a business or science major, consider the value such study brings:

• Improved communication skills and confidence in self-expression
• Broadened awareness of other perspectives from looking at history and various cultures
• Access to great thinkers and ideas beyond those tied strictly to STEM
• Greater ability to assess the value and potential of STEM discoveries and creations
• Greater inspiration & appreciation for human needs/aesthetics in designing things beyond mere function
• Lasting value for personal growth and good citizenship

The increased exposure to and practice with creativity, persuasion, critique, and collaboration gained from studying the Humanities has been sought ought over the past decade by places like Silicon Valley to add value to the products and services being created.

Such skills are also desired for managing people, situations that require original thinking for issues without clearly established guidelines, or where policies, rules, and laws need to be created or challenged.

They are also useful for getting attention and changing peoples minds, which can be useful for a marketing firm, a political campaign, or in a court of law.

Next stop in our tour of the families of majors at U.S. colleges is a review of the sciences.

Families of Majors

To help give a sense of the types of majors available for study at U.S. colleges and universities that might for your strengths and passions, we will be exploring the more common “families” of majors, such as the Humanities, Sciences, Engineering, Business, and more.

Do you have a dream career, or a hobby that you are passionate about? Have you ever wondered how you could pursue it? Join us for our tour of majors.