Razib at GNXP Discover has a good graph showing grad school specialties by GRE scores. Fields that score exceptionally well in verbal and quite well in math include Classical Language, Classics, History of Science, Philosophy, Russian, Comp Lit, and Linguistics. Physics of course does well in math, but is also strong verbally (i.e., no surprise, physicists tend to be smart). Low in math, low in verbal include PE, Criminal Justice, and Social Work.
January 27, 2012
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Low in math, low in verbal include PE, Criminal Justice, and Social Work.
No, duh!
I like how there is essentially nothing in the low-IQ mathematical quadrant. Looks like you need smarts to work numbers! It reminds me once again that math is essentially foreign to our makeup (unlike sitting around a fire telling stories).
Ceiling effects and the fact that lots of STEM grad students are immigrants who don't speak English natively lead to an underestimation of differences between fields.
According to the graph, one of the highest verbal/low math subjects is 'creative wriging'.
Pretty clear what quadrant the graph maker falls.
I went to graduate school in physical science at a top school. My advisor once told me, regarding admissions, that in the faculty's experience, the verbal was the only section that correlated with any kind of intelligence. It stands to reason--in calculus intensive subjects, the mathematics understood on a day to day basis is much more conceptual and in depth than the baby math on the GRE. Almost all the math scores will be in the near perfect catagory. On the other hand, these people tend to be verbally deficient(nerds). Your vocab and reading abilities are what you've picked up along the way on your own.
It seems like these classical majors are an indication of being upper class. You do not study something completely inapplicable to work in grad school unless you rest upon a bed of family money.
One important quibble with this graph is using countrywide average GRE scores to rank majors.
The fact is today, the averages matter less and less - especially when discussing an increasingly heterogeneous population. It's what is happening at the far right tail that is most interesting, that driving our society and where most readers here focus on.
My observation is that the quality gap between elite and non-elite STEM undergrads is noticeably wider than the gap for non-STEM majors.
For example, the GRE gap between an undergrad physics or ChemE major at CalTech (or Harvard, Berkeley, etc) and one at Arizona State (or Univ Cent FL, Ohio State or Cal State Anywhere) is likely going to be bigger than the GRE gap between English majors at Yale, Harvard, or Princeton and other high volume public universities and colleges.
The big GRE gap between elite and non-elite STEM universities would be even larger if the GRE wasn't centered so low, compressing everyone with far right tail abilities.
At Berkeley 20yrs ago, the College of Engineering had their own admissions process and the *average* SAT of accepted undergrads was above 99% math and 98% verbal. I'm sure all elite STEM programs have similar demographics. I have not witnessed a similar profile in non-STEM admits.
There are two other factors significantly increase the gap between elite and non-elite STEM vs non-STEM majors. (1) First, and most importantly, the talent pool US STEM programs draw from is several billion larger than elite US non-STEM programs. (2) Second, the elite non-STEM US universities have marginally to unqualified legacies, athletes or affirmative action students that almost uniformly avoid STEM and compress the elite/non-elite non-STEM gap relative to the STEM gap.
Possibly the verbal for engineering and computer science is mediocre because of foreigners who may have a hard time with verbal but not math.
sadly he does not list the scores of "ethnic studies"
This graph bolsters the findings of the Duke University academic study showing that black students mitigate the GPA gap with whites by taking majors where 1-2 sigma lower verbal and math ability is the norm.
1. The only language majors in the list seem to be Classics and Russian. I think any non-Spanish language majors would be very verbal and intelligent.
2. Economist are very smart. They are almost as smart as physicists, smarter than most engineers, and much smarter than computer programmers.
3. I love how the "More Mathematical/Less intelligent" quadrant is nearly completely empty.
I didn't expect to see nursing in the low/low quadrant of the graph, but it bears out some of the tragic stories I've heard in the past about nurses who have failed to distinguish the difference between a grain and a gram of morphine.
It always amazes me how well these scores stack up against which fields seem to have smart people in them---of course, keeping in mind that the graph is more about people who are going to get PhDs and MSs than it is about BSs.
Mathematicians and Physicists are conspicuously the smartest people on campus, and the results show that. The disciplines in the low-low quadrant are conspicuously awful. Linguists are impressively smart. Among non-joke disciplines, Biology does badly, naturally. It's amazing how rarely one reads or talks to a Biologist who seems smart. Dolts like Dawkins and PZ Meyers are smart for Biologists. Actuaries, right where they belong: very smart but not-so-articulate.
The things Razib picks out as surprising are not. He just must not have experience with Classicists or Philosophers of Science. They are way smart. Getting next to one of these guys at a cocktail party is generally rewarding.
There are puzzlers, though. Planetary Scientists don't usually strike me as all that. Why is Anatomy so crappy? Why are Theologians so much dumber than Philosophers?
Also, the second graph is kind of lame. Equally weighting math and verbal to come up with intelligence seems wrong to me. But it leads to the best line of the post:
Economists are rather like duller physicists.
That's exactly what we're like! His explanation for that is a little dated and overdone, though.
Yeah, baby!
-- Classics major
720V, 780Q here. Didn't get into the bioinformatics program I wanted.
er...derp? the physics guys scored slightly higher on math than the math guys? well, i guess that's possible since the GRE does not test anything the math guys actually do. it's definitely ceiling limited and would present no esoteric math problems which only the math guys and a few physics guys could approach. by GRE time any math undergrad is already doing math that only the physics and engineering guys can even begin to understand anyway.
i wonder what it is about computers that makes the computer guys less linguistically facile. seems somewhat incongruous as they must learn to speak the languages of the machines. but perhaps that's just it.
chemical engineering still pays the best for those who just want a career where they go to work for somebody else.
speaking of that though. you know what's funny is that EU law which only allows foreigners to work in the EU for 3 years and then they must either hire you full time or kick you out. my friend just got kicked out of the netherlands after 3 years when the company decided to not hire him. in the united states, politicians would have a conniption if companies were regularly kicking out guys with a PHD in physical chemistry.
many bash the EU but at least they are solid on this issue - they have their own PHDs who also need jobs and they don't want to fill every position with some foreigner. wonder if my buddy will go back to work for GM again. i doubt it though after what he told me from working with them 10 years ago on their hydrogen car projects. he said GM had a long way to go in all aspects of R&D and he was proven right. the volt is a flop. oh, and then there was the matter of the bankruptcy er i mean, the bailout. and the post bailout stock price crashing.
Lawyers are as dumb as PE majors?
Crap, as a business major it's disheartening to know that other business majors scored shitty on the GRE like I did.
Some of them seemed so smart. Just ask them, they would tell you.
To some degree I suspect that the groups in the bottom left quadrant (low verbal and math) are there in part due to sheer numbers. They include various types of education, social work, and business admin - all very popular graduate programs. And they are dominated by women, while those in the upper left (high math/low verbal) are especially dominated by men (industrial & pertroleum engineering, comp programming, etc.)
The math scores of the folks in the lower right quadrant (high verbal/low math) are almost uniformally better than those who are low verbal/low math.
"Lawyers are as dumb as PE majors?"
Correction: Law students are as dumb as PE majors. Lawyers are the top quarter or so of law students who actually obtain a legal job after law school.
The GRE isn't the most challenging of the grad school entrance exams now is it.
Lawyers aren't in this study because prospective law students take the LSAT, not the GRE. Grad programs in criminal justice train administrators in prisons and police departments.
Let me confirm this from observation. I started as math/philosophy person, didn't work hard, graduated in drama/medieval English, and eventually ended up working as a social worker.
Social workers are generally not all that smart, though a few have good verbal abilities. The studies in the field are essentially political training, to have the correct beliefs. In a career of over three decades, I have had almost no co-workers I would see socially. Maybe a psychologist or a psychiatrist. My adult friends are in STEM fields. I shoulda been wiser earlier.
It seems like these classical majors are an indication of being upper class. You do not study something completely inapplicable to work in grad school unless you rest upon a bed of family money.
Sorry, this is entirely false. I have a doctorate in Classical Philology from what some claim to be the most prestigious university in the world (guess which), and I myself am from a reasonably upper-middle class background. One of my idle interests was the social backgrounds of my fellow graduate students, and while some of them were well-to-do (very few really wealthy), a surprisingly large number were from comparatively humble families. In addition, whatever their background, most graduate students first became exposed to Classical languages at college and didn't go to fancy-shmany high schools that taught even Latin (not to mention Greek). In fact, I could cite a certain number of people who either were embarrassed by their backgrounds or even made a big deal about *not* being hoi-toity types.
And the underlying premise that you go to graduate school in something "impractical" only if you come from a moneyed background is also entirely false. If you go to a major school and have talent, the school pays your way, and at lesser schools there are always student loans (and either way, money can be made through acting as a TA). Part of the problem with the post-graduate education is the over production of PhD's in fields where the only likely profession is teaching the subject, which results in large numbers of surplus PhD's who wind up teaching for peanuts as "adjuncts". And the reason for this ultimately is that people who go to graduate school in fields like Classics or philosophy really do care only about the "world of the mind" and don't have practical considerations in mind at all. It's an "avocation" that has little to do with social background.
So, it turns out that you can't just go making stuff up on the basis of your "intuition". You actually have to have some substantive knowledge of what you're talking about in order to make worthwhile assertions.
Law students generally take the LSAT; I'd be careful about ululating over the low GRE scores of law students.
Looks like you need smarts to work numbers!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/files/2012/01/schematic2.jpg
I'd modify that to you need smarts and number skills go to university.
Having good number skills relative to your low intelligence just won't cut it.
There basically isn't anything useful they can teach you there.
Frankly, there isn't anything much useful they can teach the low intelligence, but relatively verbal people either, but educational studies (at least!) probably aren't all bad.
Physics of course does well in math, but is also strong verbally (i.e., no surprise, physicists tend to be smart).
This is probably why the male-female gap is noticeably larger in the TE of STEM than in the S and the M.
Mathematics and science load a bit more on general ability (where men and women are similar) and a bit less on the specific spatial factor (and its math pathway), which is why there are relatively more girls in these fields (which are more prestigious, if not necessarily well compensated, than engineering).
Of course, not as many as you would even expect from their IQs, as women aren't systematizers as much, but still...
Lawyers don't take the GRE, you chuckleheads.
well, i guess that's possible since the GRE does not test anything the math guys actually do.
The GRE tests applied math. It doesn't test pure math which proving theorems.
It's also important to note that pre-med students don't take the GRE either, they take the MCAT. So doctors and lawyers are not part of this study at all.
And MBAs take the GMAT, which is tougher than the GRE, so what gives?
Bill: Dolts like Dawkins...
Huh??!!
Oh, I see "Bill" mentions he's an economist. Ha, ha!---That's explains everything...
"I didn't expect to see nursing in the low/low quadrant of the graph, but it bears out some of the tragic stories I've heard in the past about nurses who have failed to distinguish the difference between a grain and a gram of morphine.:
I would get allergy shots and each week they increased the dose from .03 to .035 etc.. I usually didn't look at the nurse or the syringe when she gave me the shot, but I glanced at it once and noticed it was almost full. I said are you sure you want to give me all of that and she looked at it and said oh no. She was going to give me .7 instead of .07. I am sure it happens all the time with much stronger drugs than an allergy shot.
If you want to see where doctors and lawyers and scientists and humanities professors lie in their M,V,S profiles see the link below, which has data from a big longitudinal study of gifted kids.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2011/06/human-capital-mongering-m-v-s-profiles.html
I think this thread may have more typos, poor grammar, etc., than any other in recent memory.
"It seems like these classical majors are an indication of being upper class."
All the classics majors I know are clergy.
Dolts like Dawkins
If you read his earlier work like his papers and his books The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, it's clear that he's a brilliant man. The Extended Phenotype is a brilliant and original work.
For some reason, he decided about 30 years ago to focus on promoting atheism, and of course that's what most people know him for. Most people don't read his papers or earlier books.
The data at the link given above:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2011/06/human-capital-mongering-m-v-s-profiles.html
avoids the two main problems with GRE data shown on the gnxp plot:
1. no foreign students to lower the V averages in STEM fields
2. no ceiling effect -- SMPY used SAT administered before age 13; the ceiling extends beyond 1 in 10,000! (Compare to GRE math, which doesn't even reach 99th percentile.)
Averages Don't Capture Heterogeneity
My observation is that the quality gap between elite and non-elite STEM undergrads is noticeably wider than the gap for non-STEM majors.
For example, the GRE gap between an undergrad physics or ChemE major at CalTech (or Harvard, Berkeley, etc) and one at Arizona State (or Univ Cent FL, Ohio State or Cal State Anywhere) is likely going to be bigger than the GRE gap between English majors at Yale, Harvard, or Princeton and other high volume public universities and colleges.
Not true. You can scrape by in an English major, but not in a STEM major- the freshman and sophomore weed-out courses take care of that. There are no such weed-out courses for English majors. This weeding out process will result in STEM graduates at non-elite schools having GRE profiles that 1) are higher than English majors at their prospective schools and 2) more closely resemble GRE profiles for STEM graduates at elite schools.
The difference in GRE scores between graduates from elite schools compared to public universities/colleges will be less for STEM majors than for English majors. The not so-bright English majors at public universities/colleges would not have been admitted to the elite schools. Because there are not any weed-out courses in English compared to STEM courses, the not-so-bright English majors will continue on to graduate from public universities/colleges. At public universities/colleges, the not-so-bright freshman and sophomore prospective STEM majors will not survive to graduate and take the the GRE, as they will have been weeded out
If you want to see where doctors and lawyers and scientists and humanities professors lie in their M,V,S profiles see the link below, which has data from a big longitudinal study of gifted kids.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2011/06/human-capital-mongering-m-v-s-profiles.html
Lawyers still don't look too impressive.
there is also a difference in the self-selecting nature of grad study. As an example, there is very little work available for a B.S. bio student and so to *actually* work in bio you need a higher degree, but a B.S. in nursing is 99% as useful as an M.S. De facto, any MS seeker is looking to teach nursing, which is more or less a lateral movement.
I'd be interested in seeing the number of students in each program and the percentages of men and women in each.
Calling the people in any of these grad programs "dumb" is a bit unfair. They're only dumb relative to other grad students, not the population in general.
About nurses being in the low/low category:nursing is the best field for someone who is not too bright but reasonably conscientious. The pay for a 40 hour week is $120K + benefits and pension in the San Francisco area.
For chuckles, take a look at some nursing coursework. "Sociology of nursing in a multi-cultural setting" is considered an advanced course.
Economist are very smart. They are almost as smart as physicists, smarter than most engineers, and much smarter than computer programmers.
I don't believe that for a second.
No law enforcement official worth a lick pursues a criminal justice graduate degree. The motto for education in law enforcement is diversify (and not in the minority sense you trolls).
avoids the two main problems with GRE data shown on the gnxp plot:
There are some other issues with those of course, in the form of the aggregation of social/humanities/education and of math/computer science and chemistry/biology/physics. (This is more a problem for math/comsci and chem/physics since the others are split in at least one graph.)
And of being limited to people already selected for high math and verbal scores (which may distort matters).
I'd expect that physics and chem and biology wouldn't really shift positions much, but that would just fit a smooth cline of general intelligence.
I'd also expect mathmaticians to be more central and physicist like in terms of their general intelligence and ComSci types to be more engineer like (both as shown pretty clearly by Razib's graphs) and have a higher math skew with a lower general intelligence.
I find it interesting though, on those graphs, that the lawyers and businessmen have math and verbal ability in about even quality, but tend to really be deficient on spatial, given who is commonly stereotyped as lawyers and businessmen (AJs who are supposedly spatial deficient).
Also interesting is that people who work in math have a spatial improvement in excess of their measured math improvement - kind of suggests that either a) math tests don't measure everything that makes one a good mathmatician or b) spatial makes you more interested in math, even if you're no better at it (I'd be more likely to bet on b than a, but there's no way to find out from this data).
Also, the second graph is kind of lame. Equally weighting math and verbal to come up with intelligence seems wrong to me.
It's more or less the way IQ tests do it.
Economists are rather like duller physicists.
That's exactly what we're like!
Certainly does dampen my enthusiasm for the Steve Hsu type predictions of physicists moving into other fields to revolutionize them!
If the success and quality of economists is anything to go by.
"I don't believe that for a second."
Economics requires heavy, heavy math. Sorry to burst your bubble, econ-haters, but they're smarter than you. By far.
Maybe spatial cognitive skills tend to kick in at puberty?
As a linguistics/philosophy major I testify that contemporary work in those disciplines demands high math abilities combined with verbal abilities. Books and articles in philosophy aren't anymore plain texts but have a substantial amount of formal logic and probability calculus in them. When dealing with language you can't avoid logic and *very* formal grammatical and semantic theories (generative grammar, truth-conditional semantics, etc.).
I am pleased to see that Comp Litters are among the highest on the verbal, since I have a Comp Lit PhD. My own GRE V score was 560, which is a little low for my discipline. I think the reason is that CLers usually study foreign languages and literatures (I did French and Italian), which requires, if I may say so, exceptional verbal skills. Since getting my degree, I have wandered the East Asian ESL racket, however, although its better than working as a adjunct in the States. Now I have a good job on a special department in a major EA university. I have no idea how well or poorly I'm doing compared to other CL PhDs, though.
Why are there two Music History data points?
What is Creative Wriging?
If economists are so freakin' smart, how come they're so freakin' dead?
How about iq scores by occupation? Where do factory workers come in, the ones on the floor?
In the SMPY/SVPY data physical scientists actually had higher verbal scores than people in the humanities. This suggests that Razib's results are misleading and that the scientists' GRE V averages are reduced considerably by foreign test takers. Probably 30% of grad students in some STEM fields are from Asia and I bet they average quite a bit lower on the V section than native English speakers. If one restricted the GRE scores to Americans the Classicists would be blown away by the physicists because the V gap would go away. You could easily check this by looking at SAT-V or GRE-V scores by major at US universities. I bet the physics average is on par with any of the humanities majors.
Economics requires heavy, heavy math.
They just take theorems proven by real mathematicians and try to apply them to economics with no empirical support whatsoever. So they are quite dumb.
"Anonymous said...
Economics requires heavy, heavy math. Sorry to burst your bubble, econ-haters, but they're smarter than you. By far."
"Heavy Math" - Like what, Calculus? Differential equations? Wow! I'm impressed. Those mighty economists - they scale mathematical heights unknown to mere mortals.
It's the lower right that baffles me. Why on Earth are Drama and Creative Writing majors better at math than cops and teachers?
"Like what, Calculus? Differential equations? Wow! I'm impressed. Those mighty economists - they scale mathematical heights unknown to mere mortals."
In one thread, kids shouldn't take calculus because it's way too hard!
In another, calculus isn't impressive!
I'm sorry you're so jealous of economists. Did they steal your wife?
"I'm sorry you're so jealous of economists. Did they steal your wife?"
Yeah but they calculated that she was a Declining Value Asset and that the cost of entering into a long-term partnership with her held a strong negative correlation with their future growth aspiration graph, so they returned her.
I'm still baffled by the stats for nursing students. MS in Nursing is necessary to become a nurse practitioner. In some states they serve as family doctors- diagnose patients, write referrals and prescribe medication. MS in Nursing grads are also found pretty high up in hospital administrations. Most nurses anesthesiologists hold a master's degree, and they make around 100k to start with and around 150k on average. PhDs in nursing earn as much as an average doctor. How can they be as dumb as people in grad programs for education?
I have come to believe that my most impressive academic accomplishment was my 800 on the late great SAT analytic section, taken mere months before it was abolished. I admit I studied hard for it from test prep books, however - I'm surprised I don't still have nightmares about arranging crayons of five different colors.
""Heavy Math" - Like what, Calculus? Differential equations? Wow! I'm impressed. Those mighty economists - they scale mathematical heights unknown to mere mortals."
Applicant profiles for PhD programs in Econ listed here:
http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/130345-profiles-results-2011-a.html
Typically, they have grad real analysis, point set topology, may be algebraic topology, measure theory or measure-theoretic probability.
Ben Golub, a Stanford theoretical economics PhD student says that over 75% of his grad microecon class had students who had previous coursework in algebraic geometry.
See this thread also:
http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/136325-math-required-game-theory-phd-level.html
Functional analysis and measure theory for PhD-level game theory even in no-name departments.
Most Engineers would flunk out of these courses without understanding a darned thing, except for a subset of EEs and Theoretical CS people.
Really, if all the physicists and mathematicians are such all-around bon vivants and polymaths today, why don't a few of them turn out like Borodin even?
There's a current of opinion in vogue here that would hold Bach, Dante, and Henry James as the Aspie outliers. How quaint, that a spark of something fell onto the heads of mere mortal non-mathematicians and they could shape something out of mere mortal dross. I know: sex, beauty, pragmatism, BS detection-- all mere epiphenomena, when you could be sunning your pencil protector on CalTech Flying Island.
Here's something I'm curious about: Henri Bergson won mathematics prizes as a student, was hailed by at least one of his mentors as a math prodigy. Or so I gather.
Now, Bertrand Russell-- certainly a math genius-- bullwhips Bergson in his crank History of Western Philosophy because Bergson had the temerity to offer a definition of number that didn't accord with the Frege-to-Principia Mathematica orthodoxy.
I assume Russell knew more about math than Bergson (though not more than Whitehead, who ends up with a philosophy rather at evens with Bergson's). Bergson himself, I daresay, spells 'mystic quack' to many people who consider themselves more on the hardedge of thinking. Understandable.
Yet even Russell could amuse himself with releasing aphorisms about how math is about--nothing.
Not that he meant it, the swine. But Berkeley pushed nominalism to its radical conclusion: mathematical objects are subjective, imaginary.
Can mathematical logic ever truly "prove" that Bergson, or Berkeley, was wrong? I mean, Aristotle's Posterior Analytics essentially answers in advance the objections Hume would make, yet we're really "supposed" to agree (in the practice of Anglo-American philosophy) that Hume proved-- well, if he didn't prove something, he somehow nonetheless proves unassailable in his skepticism.
Meanwhile, physicists still look for "dark matter" because their models say it must be there-- cosmic Keynesianism?
And economists still preach the gospel of homo economicus, and all the mathematical models to tart him out, and yet what do they see coming? How much "scientific" consensus have they arrived at-- you understand, any firm predictions I can take to the bank?
Just because French fake-Phenomenologists have pimped out the Humanities for forty years, doesn't mean History is bunk or Husserl, Kant, Nietzsche can't shoot arrows over the battlements of Aspie Anglo-Analytic Flats.
Sometimes it's like eavesdropping on one of Edmund Morris's imaginary conversations with guys in pencil protectors. You think Nelson Rockefeller can conjugate Greek, it's so easy-- go on then, try it.
"I'm still baffled by the stats for nursing students. MS in Nursing is necessary to become a nurse practitioner. In some states they serve as family doctors- diagnose patients, write referrals and prescribe medication. ....."
Doesn't mean they are smart. The nursing curriculum is geared to the intellectually mediocre, with dumbed down science and heavy doses of "social-science" crap. Master's degrees are just exercises in credentialism, soon to be elevated to "Doctorates of Nursing".
Most of medical practice doesn't require much intellect, and nurse practitioners do fine. The question is do you want to pay more for someone with higher cognitive function (i.e., a physician)for the same job?
As I said in a previous post, Nursing is a great career for a conscientious, not-too-bright person. In my area of northern CA, the pay is $120K + benefits for a 40 hour week, which is more than many engineers.
Economics requires heavy, heavy math. Sorry to burst your bubble, econ-haters, but they're smarter than you. By far.
It's no heavier than the math engineers at my school took. Hard scientists and engineers have to deal with reality, in that when you're wrong and you build things that can't work, they don't.
Has there ever been a profession as collectively wrong as economics? I'm sure there are some really smart economists. But there's nothing to drive out the dolts who talk a good game, and it shows.
Nice post about GRE score it is very useful for students
Funny. I signed up to do philosophy in college and ended up doing economics for employment reasons. I'm a philosophy guy though at heart and have a verbal in the top 1% of the population (please don't spell check me to make sure haha). I think about philosophical problems all the time, but never had concepts, rebuttals or views until I actually took an evening course in it last year. I regret not staying the course. I'm more interested in the personalities of people that do these things. My observation is that verbal people have much better social skills in the same way spatial ability is correlated with quant.
I've met physics guys, nuclear/civil engineering guys, medicine guys, comp science guys, law people, stat guys, lit people, 1 materials scientist and 1 classicist.
I would say, adjusting for age, the most socially maladjusted people were definitely comp sci/eng guys. The verbal scores reflect this well. Some people here are borderline aspergers or outright. Generally the biggest personality traits were: risk averse, regimented, timid and a terrible sense of irony/humour. Also no intellectual depth/wider knowledge.
Medicine students are an even balance. I get on most with these people. Their work involves a human element which requires EQ too. 100% will probably end up marrying a doctor.
Philosophy students come in two types: Stoners who wanted to do something fun and serious guys who have an insatiable curiosity. People forget philosophy is the original academic subject of inquiry. A good philosophy student will delve into every other area of knowledge as needed. Thats the beautiful thing. You can write whatever you want, not answer the specific problem as defined on a paper. My objection is that some of the teaching staff can be a bit weird, not socially retarded, but weird.
Physics guys are probably the smartest guys overall. These tests don't measure sense of humour, but its a very strong indicator of intelligence to me. Unlike many chemists and biologists, they get it. In terms of personality, most like myself, even if my GRE would be heavily tilted to V. Some of the quantum people are stereotypical nerds, but astrophysics and generalists are good company.
Lit people are reflective people. Their field is really studying an art form, not a technical application of intelligence. Problem is that many here a Politically Correct types.
Materials science was a very intelligent swiss woman. Logical, but not risk averse. Good intellect.
Law people are the most varied. Generally though, you get a lot of Type A bitch types that will mow you down if you're not careful. Their social intelligence is the highest, but in a manipulative and cunning manner unlike the classicist.
Classicists are quite boisterous people. Probably the only uber intelligent type that could thrive socially in a working class bar and then do a dinner party with diplomats in the evening. Very rare to find them these days. It used to be much more popular in the past.
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