BA vs BS Degree: What the Difference Means for College Planning

Every year, families and students planning for college encounter a question that looks more defining than it turns out to be. It tends to arrive sometime during junior year, framed as two fixed options: Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science? And because American higher education has a long tradition of assigning enormous weight to categorical distinctions – Ivy or non-Ivy, liberal arts college or research university, STEM or humanities – the BA vs. BS question gets absorbed into the same logic of prestige and stakes. It feels like a choice that will determine something consequential. 

This article examines what the BA and BS designations actually reflect, where the real structural differences lie, and what graduate schools and employers actually evaluate, because the label, it turns out, matters considerably less than the degree requirements behind it. 

What Is a Bachelor of Arts (BA)? 

A Bachelor of Arts (BA) is a four-year undergraduate degree awarded upon completion of a program of study in the humanities, social sciences, or fine arts, though the designation is not limited to those fields. The “arts” in the title derives from the classical liberal arts education, referring to a broad-based curriculum rather than a specific subject area. BA degrees are conferred by accredited colleges and universities upon fulfillment of the institution’s credit and coursework requirements for that program. 

What Is a Bachelor of Science (BS)? 

A Bachelor of Science (BS) is a four-year undergraduate degree typically awarded in fields oriented toward the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, or technology, though the designation extends to many other disciplines depending on the institution. The “science” in the title signals an emphasis on empirical and technical study, though, as with the BA, the label reflects institutional convention as much as subject matter. BS degrees are conferred upon fulfillment of the credit and coursework requirements for that program. 

BA vs BS Degree: What the Differences Are and When They Matter 

With those definitions in place, it is worth examining where the two degree types actually diverge at the curriculum level. The differences are real, but more specific than the broad “arts versus science” framing suggests. 

1. BA vs BS: The Structural Differences 

BA programs typically require more credits outside the major, drawing from distributional requirements across the humanities, social sciences, and arts, and commonly include a foreign language component. BS programs concentrate more credits within the major itself, with greater emphasis on quantitative methods, laboratory work, or technical coursework depending on the field. 

Category	BA	BS
Credit distribution	Broader, more outside the major	Concentrated within the major
Foreign language	Commonly required	Rarely required
Quantitative emphasis	Lower	Higher
Lab/technical coursework	Less common	More common
Elective flexibility	Greater	More limited

2. BA vs BS by Major 

The designation tracks reliably in fields with long-established disciplinary identities. Engineering, computer science, and chemistry have belonged to the BS category for generations; English, history, and philosophy to the BA. In those fields, the label is a byproduct of how the discipline developed institutionally, and it is consistent enough across institutions that families rarely encounter surprises. 

The harder cases are the fields where departmental tradition has never settled the question, and there are more of them than families typically expect. 

2.1 BA Majors 

• English 
• History 
• Philosophy 
• Foreign Languages 
• Art history 
• Sociology 
• Political Science 

2.2 BS Majors 

• Engineering 
• Computer Science 
• Nursing 
• Chemistry 
• Physics 
• Mathematics 

2.3 Offered as Both, Depending on the Institution 

• Psychology 
• Economics 
• Business 
• Communications 
• Biology 
• Environmental Science 

Psychology is the clearest illustration of why that third category deserves scrutiny. Across accredited universities, psychology appears as a BA at some institutions and a BS at others, with no governing standard determining which label applies. The curricular difference between the two may be substantive, a meaningfully higher quantitative load, additional laboratory requirements, a research thesis, or it may amount to a single statistics course. The degree title communicates none of that.  

When choosing a major, the curriculum’s actual requirements: what courses are mandated, what quantitative load is expected, what research or laboratory work is involved, will tell a student far more than the degree title ever could. 

Why the Same Major Can Be a BA at One School and a BS at Another 

When universities established their degree programs, individual departments made classification decisions based on their own curricular priorities, disciplinary traditions, and internal academic politics. No governing body standardized which fields belonged to which designation, and none exists today. The BA vs. BS label reflects where a program sits within a particular institution’s academic architecture, a decision made decades ago by a faculty committee, not a universal assessment of rigor or technical emphasis. 

The same principle applies at the graduate level, and McMillan Education’s own founder encountered it firsthand. 

“I have a doctorate degree in psychology. I started my degree in one university where I would have earned a PhD. I transferred to another university to complete my degree because I had more research opportunities and that university grants EdDs, not PhDs, for the same program and same degree outcomes.”

— Sarah McMillan, Founder, McMillan Education 

The BA vs. BS distinction at the undergraduate level works the same way. Two students graduating with the same major from different institutions may have followed nearly identical curricula despite holding different degree titles. What distinguished their programs was not the label; it was what the institution required them to study. 

Does a Science vs Arts Degree Matter to Graduate Schools and Employers? 

The clearest way to test how much the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science label matters is to look at the two audiences it is most often assumed to influence: graduate admissions committees and employers. 

1. Graduate Admissions 

Graduate and professional programs do not evaluate whether an applicant’s undergraduate degree was a BA or a BS. The Association of American Medical Colleges, for instance, requires “a four-year degree from an accredited institution” and lists specific medical school prerequisites in biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and English among its admissions criteria. The degree designation is not among them.  

What medical school admissions committees evaluate is the applicant’s GPA (weighted or unweighted), MCAT performance, research experience, clinical exposure, and the rigor of the courses completed. The same principle holds across law, business, and doctoral programs. 

This is worth stating plainly because the anxiety some attach to the BA vs. BS question often intensifies when graduate school is part of the plan. A student completing a BA in biology who has taken organic chemistry, biochemistry, and a year of physics has met the same prerequisite standard as a student completing a BS in biology at another institution. The admissions committee reading both transcripts will see the same preparation. The label will not factor into the decision. 

2. Employer Hiring 

The pattern on the employer side is consistent with graduate admissions, if not more pronounced. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports median earnings for bachelor’s degree holders as a single category. The BLS does not separate BA from BS because its classification system is organized by education level, not by degree designation. No major labor market dataset draws this distinction, which itself is informative. 

The hiring process itself is moving further in this direction. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Job Outlook 2026 survey, 70% of employers now use skills-based hiring for entry-level positions, up from 65% the previous year. What employers are evaluating is demonstrated competency, relevant experience, and the ability to articulate transferable skills. Whether the degree title reads “Bachelor of Arts” or “Bachelor of Science” is not a variable in that evaluation. 

What to Look at Instead of the Degree Label 

The BA vs. BS label describes a program’s orientation. It does not describe what a student will be required to master, what research experience the curriculum builds in, or whether the coursework will satisfy the prerequisites of a graduate program five years from now, particularly as recent trends in college admissions continue to reshape what colleges expect to see on a transcript.  

1. The Required Coursework Within the Major 

Most program pages list required courses without indicating how those requirements compare to the same major at other institutions. A psychology program requiring three statistics courses and a laboratory sequence is a materially different preparation from one requiring a single introductory statistics course, regardless of whether both are labeled BA or BS. The number of quantitative, laboratory, and research-methods courses built into the required curriculum, not the elective offerings, is the figure worth isolating when comparing programs in the same field. 

What to look for: how many of the required courses within the major are quantitative or laboratory-based, and whether those requirements are built into the core curriculum or only available as electives. 

2. Research and Capstone Requirements 

Degree program pages rarely foreground whether independent research is required or merely available. The distinction matters. A program that requires a senior thesis or a research methods sequence as a graduation condition produces a different academic record from one that offers it as an option most students do not take.  

For students planning for graduate schools, particularly those targeting doctoral programs at research universities, where admissions committees weight undergraduate research experience heavily, that difference is legible even when the degree titles are identical.  

What to look for: whether research, thesis, or capstone work appears in the list of graduation requirements, not in the list of available electives or honors tracks. 

3. Graduate and Professional School Prerequisites 

Graduate and professional programs publish their admissions requirements in detail, not just a degree, but specific coursework, research experience, and demonstrated competencies. Whether a BA or BS program covers those requirements is a question the degree title cannot answer. The curriculum can. 

A student planning for law school, for instance, should identify which program builds in the analytical writing, logic, and research coursework that undergraduate majors for law school admissions committees consistently value, regardless of whether that program is labeled a BA or a BS. 

What to look for: required courses within the major that directly develop the competencies your target graduate program expects, not electives that cover them as an afterthought. 

This level of alignment across institutions and degree designations is where planning complexity compounds quickly. It is the kind of analysis that benefits from institutional knowledge built over decades, and it is precisely what McMillan Education’s consultants work through with families every year.  

Speak With a College Admission Consultant 

McMillan Education has conducted this kind of institutional analysis for over seven decades. Our college planning consultants, many of them former admissions officers and educators, evaluate degree programs at the curriculum level, identify the specific coursework and research requirements that will serve a student’s post-graduation goals, and build a strategic college plan grounded in institutional knowledge rather than categorical assumptions. 

Families and students planning for college are encouraged to schedule a free consultation. 

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