Had a friend study STEM at a UC instead of taking a full ride for music at NYU. Extremely smart guy, but he hated it and dropped out within 18 months. Never ended up studying music.

Why waste an opportunity to study and network in a field you are passionate about and love? Taking a "safer choice" major has been a regret of myself and many people I know.

Yes, maturity and discipline are tremendously important life skills. As is resiliency and commitment, related principles.

So why do you think it's so weird to say that a lot of people lack the skills to succeed at a STEM undergrad? Those skills are scarce. That's in part why they're valuable. If you're not able to perform Deep Work, you will fail. Period.

I don't really disagree with this. I was just saying that if law and accounting ( presumably fields his nephew doesn't have passion for) are on the list, STEM should not be excluded. I agree finding something you actually like tempered with realistic career planning is ideal. It's just that many HS seniors are not all that passionate about any major/career. For them STEM should definitely be considered.

Electrical/Computer engineering and take lots of CS courses. If he's really into music production then skip college and find a studio who will take an intern and learn on the job!

Yeah I agree, my post wasn't directed at you. As someone who wasn't super passionate about any subject besides studying history, I wish I would have considered STEM

I'm just saying it's wrong. I think it's much easier to get a STEM degree than become a lawyer. And both require mostly discipline, good study habits etc rather than specific intellectual abilities So if law is an option, STEM is also.

Hmm. Maybe. It's funny you make that your comparison, because my older brother is a lawyer. And I'm the STEM guy. I don't know. I'd like to think they are equally hard. I know we've both worked our asses off.

Equally hard is reasonable. But in that case we should be encouraging STEM even more because it's not any harder than law, comes with an extra 500k (3 years tuition plus opportunity cost of law school vs working) and you can also just go to law school with a STEM undergrad degree anyway.

I think a legit STEM degree is harder to be honest.

Any lawyer can get a STEM degree but not any STEM degree holder could go complete law school and pass the Bar.

Definitely more lawyers could get STEM degrees than STEM degree holders could be lawyers, but "any lawyer can get a STEM degree" is way wrong. There are plenty of people with good enough verbal reasoning skills to be a lawyer whose math and symbolic reasoning aptitude is so poor they couldn't complete a STEM degree. That's without even counting the personal qualities needed to deal with the amount of self focused work, such as introversion and tolerance for boredom. Law is a more social profession with boredom outlets.

Not like you to make unfalsifiable statements with no evidence.

Are we really doing this thing where we make arrogant statements with supreme confidence?

Wait so the idiot above makes this absurd statement:
And I politely disagree with the absolute but throw him a bone, why have a problem with me?

I do think there's a lower bar for entry level STEM than there is for law. STEM includes things like biology and sport science, and those guys are definitely dumber and lazier than lawyers. On top of that lots of computer science degrees these days never get harder than java, which is a clown language about on par with learning a foreign language; it's not really computer science nor is it brain stretching. You can get through a computer science degree easily from most schools now without understanding pointers and recursion and formal logic and the higher level abstract reasoning that weeds out the <115 or so IQs.

Physics degrees and some engineering and a proper CS degree are inaccessible to most lawyers of course, but that's only a fraction of STEM.

People who can complete a law degree are fairly hard working. It's a huge grind getting through stuff like torts. Meanwhile I think a lot of STEM grads would struggle with law, both the workload and the personal skills. It's a social profession that requires decent verbal reasoning skills, a skill that often doesn't overlap with spatial analysis skills.

I think it's pretty much ANY lawyer can get a STEM degree because you have to take the LSAT, get into law school, pass law school and pass the bar. I know none of those things can be all THAT difficult given the number of law schools/lawyers out there, but neither is anything you need to do to get a CS or physics degree at an average school. Like 80% of lawyers can do just as well on a Putnam exam as an average physics/CS major, and the other 20% can do better.

Hahaha, I don't have a *problem* with you! I know you can actually engage and give a well-thought out answer, though.

Plus it's hard to pass up a Russillo riff.

(Not to imply ecriture d'adulte is an idiot, though; I don't know him well, and his avatar is amazing and he seems fine enough. Why do you think he's an idiot?)

See? This is a good answer. Thank you. I think I was/am overindexing on the "hardest" STEM degrees, as well as not having a nuanced understanding of CS degrees (which I idolize).

Getting a degree in code broing just isn’t that hard if you try. At the best schools you can get a CS degree without ever coding if you really wanted. Being able to explain why IP=PSPACE probably weeds out people based on intelligence...but 90% of CS majors can’t do it anyway. Getting a BS and not going to grad school just doesn’t take much talent or intelligence if you try. Grad school is a different story and closer to peoples perception of how much raw ability just completing a degree takes that many lawyers might not have.

Just because a person's brain works well in one area doesn't mean it will work well in a non-similar area.

I agree. But your brain doesn't have to work all that well in math/physics/CS just to finish with an undergrad degree in those majors. A lawyer has to have pretty good ability in absorbing large amounts of information, understanding it and regurgitating it back on command. That's good enough to get decent grades at an average university in any STEM subject provided they put in a reasonable amount of effort. I'm not saying they could complete a PhD or be in the top half of a major at MIT. Both of those take at least some natural ability....just completing a BS/BA doesn't.

I think you are overestimating the difficulty of passing the bar, as well as the persistence needed to get through lower-tier law schools.

If you took the bottom quartile of lawyers out of the equation and compared the remaining lawyers to all STEM undergrad degree holders, maybe I'd agree with you. But straight up, no way.

But the bar exam basically does eliminate the bottom 25%(or whatever) of law school grads. There is a bottom quartile of STEM grads as well who probably couldn’t pass a comprehensive exam on their major and don’t get jobs in their field. Seems like any actual lawyer would be able to at least duplicate that unimpressive record.

This sounds like it was written by someone with a natural ability that doesn't understand why everyone just can't do it like them.

That's the vibe I got as well. He's not giving *himself* enough credit.

Not everyone. Everyone who has the mix of intelligence, worth ethic and study skills to get through law school and pass the bar. People who drop out of STEM degrees do so in the first two years. Which is basically saying if you can pass linear algebra, multivariable calculus and differential equations you can grind out the degree. Getting Bs in those classes just shouldn't be a problem for people with above average intelligence and study skills that all lawyers should have.

Just think about your high school. Do you know anyone who became a lawyer in your class that didn't take AP calculus?

I've know a lot of lawyers. I've worked with several very high priced ones. lol at assuming they could pass differential equations.

Yes, literally every person that became a lawyer from my high school (at least the ones I know became lawyers) didn't take AP Calculus. And from what I know about them, I won't say they couldn't have taken it, but I will say that if they were told being a lawyer required taking AP Calculus, they would have very likely pursued a different career path. I went to a pretty normal, large public high school (maybe slightly above average for public high schools).

It's also quite normal in my experience for eventual lawyers who took the SAT to score quite well on Verbal and mediocre-slightly above average in Math sub-section, even after putting in significant time/effort preparing for both.

I think you are really overestimating the intelligence and dedication it takes to pass the bar (no disrespect meant to any lawyers). Maybe if you were comparing STEM graduates from all schools and law school graduates from t14 schools it would make more sense, but otherwise I agree with previous posters that you seem to be taking your own abilities for granted.