Taking advantage of unique longitudinal data, we provide the first characterization of what college students believe at … of why students hold the initial beliefs about majors that they do. The data collection and analysis are based directly … that students enter school quite optimistic about obtaining a science degree, but that relatively few students end up …

best viewed as the end result of a learning process. We find that students enter college as open to a major in math or … science as to any other major group, but that a large number of students move away from math and science after realizing that … because students realize that their ability in math/science is lower than expected rather than because students realize that …