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Art subjects are harder than STEM ones

This forum seems to be filled with people who believe that any subject other than STEM ones are ridiculous and a waste of time.

However, none of them realise it is much harder to succeed in arts subjects, simply because of the sheer amount of information, imagination and writing skills required. STEM requires no other than maths and a bit of memory.

The cleverest arts students will almost always be more than competent in, for example, maths. However it is not often you see STEM students excel in another subject; say history. The amount of times I've seen the A Level combination Maths, Further Maths, Physics & Chemistry is unbelievable.

I'm not trying to say STEM subjects are not intellectually stimulating. They just test a much narrower set of skills, whilst those who are good at them seem to dismiss other subjects as easy and a waste of time.
(edited 8 years ago)

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Brb grabbing popcorn
I think I agree. With subjects like physics and maths, you can just teach yourself until you know it but with subjects like art, you do need some kind of talent. Arts are more subjective too.

I found my art and design A-level much harder and more demanding than my maths and physics ones.
Not necessarily in terms of content (I'm an arts grad) but they can be in terms of marking. Art and Philosophy, for example, can be highly subjective so if the professor marking your papers has totally opposite opinions/views then it can be tricky since answers aren't as black and white as Chemistry, for example.

But on the content side, STEM students mostly just memorize. Arts subjects aren't about regurgitating facts, you have to think independently.

*Awaits barrage of abuse*
(edited 8 years ago)
Certainly non-STEM subjects give people a great set of skills and certainly non-STEM students are often better in subjects outside of STEM, but what I believe is you don't need (or it is a bad investment) to go and study a non-STEM subject at university. What you are in fact doing is paying fees that subsidise those studying STEM subjects.

Should I want to learn a bit about history, another language, or poetry, I feel I don't need to be at university to do so. I would however need to be at university to do medicine or chemistry say.
Original post by spurs9393
This forum seems to be filled with people who believe that any subject other than STEM ones are ridiculous and a waste of time.

However, none of them realise it is much harder to succeed in arts subjects, simply because of the sheer amount of information, imagination and writing skills required. STEM requires no other than maths and a bit of memory.

The cleverest arts students will almost always be more than competent in, for example, maths. However it is not often you see STEM students excel in another subject; say history. The amount of times I've seen the A Level combination Maths, Further Maths, Physics & Chemistry is unbelievable.

I'm not trying to say STEM subjects are not intellectually stimulating. They just test a much narrower set of skills, whilst those who are good at them seem to dismiss other subjects as easy and a waste of time.


I do arts subjects and no, it is not harder to succeed in arts subjcts, sorry thats delusional.
Reply 7
Original post by Monsieur M
I think I agree. With subjects like physics and maths, you can just teach yourself until you know it but with subjects like art, you do need some kind of talent. Arts are more subjective too.

I found my art and design A-level much harder and more demanding than my maths and physics ones.


Exactly. With enough effort and dedication, most people can reach a decent level of maths etc. The same cannot be said for subjects such as languages


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Reply 8
Original post by driftawaay
I do arts subjects and no, it is not harder to succeed in arts subjcts, sorry thats delusional.


Why do you say that?


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Original post by spurs9393
Why do you say that?


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Because everyone knows media is about 20x easier than Medicine, I dont need to give an explanation.
Reply 10
Original post by driftawaay
Because everyone knows media is about 20x easier than Medicine, I dont need to give an explanation.


I think media is a bit of an extreme example.

What about law and medicine?


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Original post by spurs9393
I think media is a bit of an extreme example.

What about law and medicine?


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Still way easier...
I study a degree in both and personally find the STEM subject harder, but that's probably because I've always been better at the arts/humanities. However, I agree about the volume of work for the arts, and it's not always as straight forward to do well as it's not a right or wrong answer.

Both have difficult and simple aspects.

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Reply 13
Original post by driftawaay
Still way easier...


Again, why do you say that?


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Original post by driftawaay
Still way easier...


You've not studied both, so you can't really make that judgement

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I say it depends on what type of learning engages you better. I cruised to a B at Advanced Higher History with very little effort, yet got hit with a D in Chemistry after piling in more work than I care to remember. Don't get me wrong, I want to go on to do History at Uni, but the rote 'remember theses facts and regurgitate them' style of STEM subjects makes them more difficult than the 'Form and argue an opinion' method of the Arts in my opinion.
You can't really compare them. People that are good at STEM subjects might not be good at arts subjects, and vice-versa. Intelligent people tend to be good at both.

Original post by driftawaay
Still way easier...

In UCL in 2013:
Law LLB students graduating with firsts: 22%
Medical students graduating with firsts: 36%

Obviously, I understand that this is a single university during a single year. However, I think saying that medicine is "way easier" than law at a top university is simply false.

Source: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/srs/statistics/tables/s/1213
(edited 8 years ago)
Reply 17
In my experience those who excel at English/history/languages will also do well in maths and sciences, at least at a lower level (eg GCSE). But there are tonnes of people who are amazing at maths but nothing else


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Memorising content is like tracing another drawing. It takes something more to understand or be creative.
Reply 19
Original post by Ed's Balls
Memorising content is like tracing another drawing. It takes something more to understand or be creative.


My point exactly!


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