The Most Popular Majors at Ivy League Schools -- and How They Compare to Other Top Universities

Pull the actual degree-conferral data for all 8 Ivy League schools and a matched set of other top universities, and a clear pattern shows up fast: economics and computer science are the two most-conferred majors across almost the entire top tier of American higher education, Ivy or not. What's genuinely interesting isn't that the Ivies are different from other elite schools -- it's where the real differences actually show up, and they're not where most people assume.

The Ivy League's most popular majors, school by school

Based on the most recent IPEDS Completions data available (via Data USA), here's each Ivy's top 3 bachelor's degree fields by number of degrees conferred:

(IPEDS files economics under the CIP label "Econometrics & Quantitative Economics" -- that's the standard federal taxonomy bucket for the major, not a narrower econometrics-only track.)

Economics is #1 or #2 at 6 of the 8 Ivies, and appears somewhere in the top 3 at all 8 once you count Penn's Financial Analytics, an econ/finance hybrid major. Computer science is #1 or #2 at 6 of the 8 as well -- the two majors are, in effect, trading the top two spots across the entire Ivy League.

How that compares to other elite private universities

The same pattern holds -- and in one case, goes further -- outside the Ivy League entirely:

University of Chicago's 678 economics degrees is a real, widely reported figure, not a data artifact -- economics has long accounted for roughly a third of UChicago's graduating class, making it the single most econ-concentrated school in this entire comparison, Ivy or not. Northwestern's top major is also economics. In other words: "economics-and-CS-dominant" isn't an Ivy League trait. It's a trait of generalist elite research universities generally, whether or not they carry an Ivy label.

Where the real split shows up is at the two most STEM-specialized schools in the set. MIT and Caltech's top 3 majors are entirely computer science, math, engineering, and physics -- no social science, business, or humanities field appears at all. That's a genuinely different shape than every Ivy, and different from Stanford, Duke, and UChicago too, all of which still show an economics, biology, or nursing major somewhere in their top 3. If you're choosing between an Ivy and a school like MIT or Caltech, the honest framing isn't "Ivy vs. non-Ivy" -- it's "generalist university with a strong econ/CS core" vs. "specialized STEM institute," and the Ivies sit almost entirely in the first category.

How that compares to top public flagships

Two things stand out here that don't show up anywhere in the Ivy or elite-private data. First, business and health fields surface directly in the public flagships' top 3 far more often -- Michigan's business administration major and UVA's management sciences major both crack the top 3 outright, something that never happens at any Ivy (Penn's nursing major is the closest analog, and even that sits behind two econ/finance majors). Second, UCLA is the only school in this entire 18-school comparison where computer science doesn't appear in the top 3 at all -- economics, political science, and psychology take the top spots instead, which lines up with UCLA's computer science major being famously capacity-capped and separately admitted, unlike the largely open CS programs at the Ivies and most other schools here.

Political science is also a more consistently top-3 major across this set than it might seem at first -- it shows up at Columbia, Dartmouth, and UCLA, but is essentially absent from the top 3 at every STEM-heavy school (Stanford, MIT, Duke, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan). That's a genuine social-science-vs-STEM divide, but again, it cuts across the Ivy/non-Ivy line rather than tracking it.

What actually separates the Ivies from everyone else

Stack all 18 schools together and three real patterns emerge:

1. Economics and computer science are the two most-conferred majors at nearly every school in the top tier of American higher education, Ivy or not. Between the two, they take the #1 spot at 15 of the 18 schools in this comparison. This is a "generalist elite research university" pattern, not an Ivy-specific one -- UChicago, Northwestern, Stanford, and Berkeley all show it just as strongly as the Ivies do.
2. The sharpest real divide is STEM-specialized vs. generalist, not Ivy vs. non-Ivy. MIT and Caltech look nothing like any Ivy in their major mix -- but Stanford, Duke, and UChicago, all non-Ivy, look far more like the Ivies than like MIT or Caltech does.
3. Public flagships are the outlier group, not the Ivies. Business and health/nursing fields surface directly in flagships' top-3 lists in a way that essentially never happens at an Ivy, and UCLA's capped CS major produces a major mix unlike any other school in the set.

What this means for you

• Don't pick between an Ivy and a similarly ranked private school expecting a dramatically different academic culture based on major mix alone. Stanford, Duke, and UChicago's most popular majors look far closer to the Ivies' than to MIT's or Caltech's -- the meaningful divide is STEM-institute vs. generalist university, not Ivy vs. non-Ivy.
• If you specifically want a campus where CS, math, and engineering are the dominant academic culture with little competition from social science or business majors, MIT and Caltech are the real outliers here -- no Ivy matches that profile.
• If you want econ or CS specifically, that major will have significant institutional weight and course capacity at essentially every school in this comparison -- it's the most-conferred major (or tied for it) at 15 of the 18 schools, Ivy and non-Ivy alike.
• Check whether a school's CS program is capacity-capped before assuming it's freely accessible. UCLA's CS major is separately admitted and capped, which is the direct reason it doesn't crack UCLA's own top 3 despite CS being the single most popular major at most peer schools -- a detail worth checking directly with any school's own website, since it can meaningfully affect whether you can actually get into your intended major once enrolled. See what else each Ivy actually discloses about itself in its own Common Data Set for the same kind of official-source-over-assumption approach applied to admission factors.
• If business or nursing is your target major, top public flagships (Michigan, UVA, Penn among the Ivies) show those fields carrying more direct institutional weight than at most Ivies or elite private research universities. See our national look at the most popular college majors and why for how these same fields rank outside the most selective tier of schools entirely.

Sources

• Data USA institutional profiles (IPEDS Completions data, most recent year available) for Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford, MIT, Duke, University of Chicago, Caltech, UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Michigan, and UVA -- datausa.io/profile/university/
• Yale Office of Institutional Research -- Bachelor's Degrees Awarded by Major
• Yale University Academics -- U.S. News & World Report
• What Are the Most Popular College Majors -- and Why Are They Popular?