The number of sophomores concentrating in the University's five largest departments has decreased five percent this year, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel announced at a faculty meeting Monday afternoon.
With psychology replacing English as the fifth most-popular department for sophomores, 38 percent of the Class of 2007 has chosen to major in politics, history, economics, the Wilson School or English — down from 43 percent last year and 46 percent historically, Malkiel said.
The numbers come in the wake of Malkiel's campaign to diversify students' choices of concentrations and reduce the number of concentrators in the larger departments.
Humanities majors increased by 15 percent and natural sciences by seven percent, while social sciences concentrators decreased by seven percent and engineers by four percent. Malkiel attributed the drop in engineering majors to a lower yield of prospective B.S.E. students for the Class of 2007.
Malkiel said she is pleased with these new numbers and hopes the trend toward more diverse concentration choices will continue.
"Princeton will be a better place intellectually and educationally if we enable students to take advantage of the riches and treasures in all departments [rather than being] weighted so heavily toward a small handful," she said.
Among the 29 smaller departments that have gained more concentrators this year, Malkiel singled out several "whose achievements are particularly noteworthy" to congratulate their chairs. These included art and archeology, classics, comparative literature, religion, philosophy, several language departments, music, chemistry, physics and psychology.
Malkiel prefaced her remarks with the caveat that some current sophomores could "have an epiphany over the summer" and change their minds about their choice of concentration before graduating. She also noted that "10 errant young people ... may know in their hearts what they want to major in but haven't disclosed it to the registrar."
Yet Malkiel stressed that students whose true passions do lie with one of the larger departments should not feel bound to choose a less-popular concentration.
After she announced her campaign to diversify students' choices of majors, she said, "a couple of students wrote to me saying they had come [to the University] passionately devoted to studying politics or history and asked, 'Surely you're not telling me not to [study those subjects]?' I said, 'Sure, that's exactly what you're supposed to study if you love them.' But I'm trying to liberate [students'] imaginations and show that they can have an extraordinarily rewarding time in many different pursuits."
In response to a question about a recent Daily Princetonian article linking students' major choices to their high schools, Malkiel said the administration plans to conduct a University-wide study of the issue.
"We'll try to run a similar analysis across the student body to see if the same holds true for all students as for [the sampling used in the article]," she said. "Whether [a possible link between high school and choice of major] provides instructive analysis for Dean Rapelye remains to be seen."
Speaking after Malkiel, Rapelye emphasized that using the admissions process to try to influence distribution of majors is difficult, since so many students choose a different concentration than the one listed on their application.
"The one group that tends to follow through [on their projected concentrations] is the computer science majors," she said. "But usually, it's hard to predict majors, since 70 percent of students change their minds."
Rapelye added that prospective engineers are also less likely to change their minds, and the admissions office takes this into account.
"If [prospective B.S.E. concentrators] have a strong background in math and science and have written a good response to the essay on why they want to do B.S.E., we're more likely to admit them and try to get them to come," she said.
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