By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
On this 125th anniversary of The Baylor Lariat, it seems fitting to take a look at the complementary, ever-marketed arsenal of over 125 majors Baylor has to offer. From chemistry to aviation sciences to social work, there’s something for everyone — provided you want to learn.
As diverse as Baylor’s offerings are, though, the academic makeup of the student body is not exactly the intellectual rainbow that the triple-digit number suggests. The palette is probably better described as dozens of thin strips with slightly different shades, sprinkled among a few very wide bands of dominant colors.
In fact, Baylor’s top three majors, excluding the 1,600 corporate stem cells under the “pre-business” designation, account for about 20% of Baylor’s 14,183 undergraduates. Biology, health science studies and nursing combine to make up 2,924 of those, according to the Office of Institutional Research’s fall 2025 report. Add in 689 finance majors and 547 communications majors, and the top five make up nearly 30% of the undergraduate population.
What’s more, the top two majors (and even the top three to a slightly lesser extent) are quite similar. Biology and health science studies, while distinguished by their locations in separate colleges and different coursework emphases, are both represented significantly by pre-med students. For Plano senior Will Parks, the similarities are definitely there.
“The other science classes I take are certainly more biology and physiology,” Parks said. “If I had to pick [a most similar major], bio would certainly be near or at the top.”
Even in a 900-person major that’s a cousin to a department of 1,100, Parks still sees the value in smaller majors.
“I think you’re always going to have some majors that are more prominent than others,” Parks said. “But I think it’s cool that we have 120-plus majors, because I think it gives a lot of different individuals an opportunity to pursue what they enjoy.”
But when the top handful of disciplines make up a third of the class, a lot of those “less prominent” majors can shrink to the size of a nuclear family — or smaller. The Office of Institutional Research reports 11 majors with four or fewer students enrolled.
One of those tight-knit majors is piano pedagogy; Fort Worth senior Rachel Jageman is one of the four people enrolled. Jageman — who comes from a family of Baylor alumni, including 1955 Baylor Lariat Editor Howard Legate Jr. — confirmed the size to back up the university’s report.
“I only know three others,” she said.
Part of the reason piano pedagogy is so small is because of its niche focus: piano education outside the school system.
“Piano pedagogy is for specifically teaching piano students, whether in a private studio or a community studio or group lessons,” Jageman said.
It’s also predominantly a graduate program at most universities, Jageman said, which keeps undergraduate enrollment small nationwide. But despite the size, the little department stays connected.
“We interact with piano performance majors all the time,” she said. “We’re in studio classes with piano performance majors, and there are church music majors who concentrate in piano. So I don’t feel like we’re isolated, even though it’s a major with only four people.”
But whether it’s one student or one thousand, Jageman said as long as there’s interest, a subject should be studied.
“There are lots of subjects that are really deserving of study, and not everyone is going to be interested in everything, but it’s nice to have a space for the few people that might be interested in,” she said.
