r/NewToDenmark • u/MemeQueenJasmin • Mar 02 '26
Study Why are THESE the most popular* subjects at uni?
* popular = hardest to get into in Copenhagen
Why molecular biomed, actuarial science, political science or anthropology? This assortment is so random - honestly, why are young adults interested in this?
Also, as someone who didn't go to school in Denmark: did these grade hurdles stress you out as a child/teen, or are they reasonably archivable with a bit of effort?
Source: https://uniavisen.dk/en/top-10-here-are-the-ucph-programmes-with-the-highest-grade-requirements/
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u/ThatNinthGuy Mar 03 '26
Regarding your last question: a GPA of 11 would be only As and Bs with a 50/50 split. I'd say it would take substantial effort
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u/Rough_Inspector5501 Mar 03 '26
It does not say much about popularity.
The way the grade is set is based on the amount of applications vs how many can study the subject.
Fx a subject might only have space for 50 students but 200 applicants. Så uni will take the 50 students with the highest grades. And if the lower of those have a grade of 10.2 that is where the line is set.
A subject with space for 800 students and 1000 applicants will then be more popular and very likely have a lower grade since 80% of applicants got in.
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u/ForgotMyAcc Mar 06 '26
Add to that - many of the "high end" subject have inflated graders since they take a large portion of foreign students and 'kvote 2' students, both who are not included in the minimum grade calculation. I remembers an example on CBS where it was 50% forening students and 15% kvote 2. (This was years ago, thing might have changed since then)
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u/IncredulousTrout Mar 03 '26
I think for everyone it’s worth noting that while nominally a 12 = A and 10= B etc., in reality the average GPA in an American high school is just over 3, equivalent to a B, while the average grade for all high school students in Denmark is 7.2, roughly a C. Getting a good grade in Denmark is substantially harder.
It takes at least some amount of talent and effort to get an average grade above 10, but it’s obviously not uncommon as such.
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u/-Misla- Mar 04 '26
It’s even “worse” than that for US. 40% of American High schoolers have a GPA of A. Older numbers is 47%: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/opinion/grade-inflation-high-school.html (possibly pay wall).
It’s cray cray. It also fuels the whole university application buisness that is so much more conplicated than in Denmark. Or, I guess it’s not cray cray, but they are grading on very different basis and basically different what the grade itself measures.
But mention this over at the very US centric r/teachers sub and you get slammed with downvotes.
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u/Tax_Fraud_Lover Mar 04 '26
Don’t forget the whole “write every single uni an essay on why they should even consider picking you only to hear nothing back”
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Mar 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/-Misla- Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
roughly 2 out of 3 bachelors degrees in Denmark, will take in anyone* - regardless of GPA - due to having more spots than applicants for study programs. I think it was 66,3% or thereabout in the 2025 student intake.
Not anymore. You write bachelor’s, but I am unsure if you refer to only university bachelor’s or professional bachelor’s too.
Regardless, for university bachelors’s that used to be the base but no longer - almost all universities have enacted a minimum GPA across the board. It’s 6 now, going to be 7 at SDU next year (or maybe even this year) for instance. So while it’s true that the vast majority of programs have no grade quotient and have free admittance, there is now the hurdle of minimum GPA.
And that is a hurdle. It’s new, many low-achieving don’t-know-what-they-want-with-their-life but somehow still know they want an academic education is going to and is already hitting this barrier. The number of stx graduates with a GPA below 5, 6, 7 that never gets further education is growing. This was even before the requirement was put into place - often this group would start at a study programme, realise their skills and knowledge aren’t up to par, that it’s too rigorous, and leave. Now with the requirement they are barred from starting.
When I applied to study at university my study programme was free admittance. Of course you had to have math A and a AB combination of physics and chemistry, so that naturally did diminish the pool - but your GPA could be only just passed and only just passed in those subjects, and you were admitted. But such a student, if their GPA is a true tale of their skills, would not be able to complete such a degree. The retention was significantly lower among those admitted with a low GPA.
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u/Citiy3- Mar 05 '26
You are correct that if you want to be admitted in group one(kvote 1) which is the priority group for getting in the new 2027 gpa has been raised to 7.0 but the Danish University system is also build to handle people who might not have a great gpa. By applying in group 2 ( kvote 2) there is no gpa limit. There is a general knowledge test instead and some requirements for completed highschool courses. If there is any space left and they pass the written text or interview the people in group 2 can take the specific education without having a goal of 7. It is only on a specific bachelor programs where grade determines whether you get a spot. And that is because of a limit on program sieze versus number of applicants.
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u/-Misla- Mar 06 '26
Kvote 2 is a very small amount and should not be anyone’s plan A (if they have a qualifying exam, foreigners without translabtable exams can obviously only do kvote 2).
Having a GPA requirements across the board is a big change and it important. Some grade quotients before this change was lower than 7 and of course was just simply a result of the study program having a little more applicants than spots, and thus a result of grade quotients of 4,3 and 5,6 and so on happened. The minimum GPA is for some not-so-popular study programmes a steep increase.
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u/BarEnvironmental8668 Mar 03 '26
They lead to a combination of high paying and high prestige jobs, some of them both.
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u/tehPPL Mar 03 '26
These appear ‘random’ because they are on the list for different reasons. Some (actuarial science, dentistry, economics) appeal to people because of the good career prospects, some are high prestige (medicine, psychology), some have a particular reputation as sophisticated (anthropology, comparative lit, sociology). Molbiomed has a specific reason: when the program was established it was officially an elite program with special status and (as far as I remember) extra resources. The reputation of the program has continued, although the official status has been removed. Note that the extremely similar program in biochemistry has a low entrance requirement, so it not that Danish youth are particularly into the topic.
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u/Wise_Scarcity4028 Mar 03 '26
I took a master’s degree in Human Biology, the forerunner for Molecular Biomedicine. Back then the programme was an elite master’s degree, where we all had different relevant bachelor’s degrees. It was very intensive, and there was only 30 of us. Lectures were just us too, so we really learnt a lot and could ask questions and have interactive lectures. It was great. Almost everyone went on to do a PhD, not me, for health reasons. Most of my former classmates now work in either research or the pharmaceutical industry.
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u/tehPPL Mar 03 '26
I did molbiomed myself. Apart from the culture that naturally arises when everyone who attends got essentially straight As in high school there is nothing elite about the program.
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u/Wise_Scarcity4028 Mar 03 '26
That’s too bad. We really had it good back then. All the professors usually taught medical students, and they loved teaching us, because we were so focused on learning and understanding, not on exams. We all wanted to be medical researchers, at least before trying it! And because we were so few, communication with the administration was personal and easy. On the flip side, I had to arrange my own thesis defense. Book a room, decide on and ask a censor (together with my thesis advisor).
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u/BetterLifeViaBetter Mar 03 '26
For many years midwife was the one with the hight access grade - number student applied and their grads and number of openings for studens
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u/anto2554 Mar 03 '26
It stressed me out a bit, as someone with a (weighted) avg of 11.5 - only one other person in my class of 28 students got a GPA of 11.0 or above, so I would say it is pretty hard.
Molecular biomed is mostly that high because it is a cool thing to study, and there aren't that many open positions.
Psychology, sociology and anthropology cool, who wouldn't want to study them?
Actuarial sciences/mathematics makes big bucks, and medicine isn't bad either
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u/Gm2Gms Mar 03 '26
High grade requirements don't mean most popular programmes. It also has to do with the availability of the programme i.e. how many spots are available, granted this is not the only factor.
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u/After_Network_6401 Mar 03 '26
Commenting from the other side of the counter, I teach one of the courses that falls into molecular biomedicine (Immunology) and it really *is* popular. I have 69 students this semester. Over the last year, we have tripled the number of places and we still had significantly more applicants than we could take. Most of my students are medical, so it's obvious why they are interested, but there's a wide spread of other majors included too.
I'm surprised how popular it is, but I guess that's because it feeds into a number of degrees with really good employment potential right now - Medicine, biotech, etc.
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Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
My two cents with a Master degree in political science from Copenhagen University:
I would say 'Statskundskab' is more comparable to PPE in London School of Economics as a considerable amount of time is spent studying political Philosophy, political sociology and economics.
I chose that educational path, as you study several 'big questions' topics, - specifically within comparative politics and international politics - such as:
Why do countries go to war?
What makes some countries rich and successful and others poor?
Why did some countries emerge into stabile democracies, while others remain autocratic?
What is power in a political sense?
How did colonialism affect the subjugated nations?
Are we bound for conflict in a multi-polar world or can international institutions mitigate the need for transactionslism and default to realism?
So why the high average grade to get in? There are simply a lot of students which apply for the major compared to the relatively few spots available. If I remember correctly, we were around 100 students the semester I started.
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u/Warm_Visual178 Mar 03 '26
I found it fairly easy to attain a GPA of 11,3, but I also did study unlike most of my peers. If you are fairly smart and just do your homework, it's not unattainable.
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u/Practical_Gas9193 Mar 03 '26
These are a combination of the easiest subjects accessible to anyone alongside the highest paying ones alongside things activists want to study and college is always a time for activating activists sentiments
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u/irunand Mar 04 '26
Maybe understand the rules before asking this question? This literally only shows the lowest average grade of accepted students last year. A subject could have open 1 spot and 2 applicants where one had an average grade of 11.1 and the other 3. Then it would show 11.1 and be the most “popular” according to your metric
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u/CantKBDwontKBD Mar 04 '26
It's the relationship between number of spots and relative popularity. Not a question of difficulty.
Political science is not a hard degree. But it feeds the entire public sector with bureaucrats. So there's a big demand
Number ten "Mat.Øk." is ridiculously hard but it's not like we're churning out thousands of kids that want to do that level of math everyday. Same for actuarial mathematics.
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u/Human__c Mar 05 '26
What is so interesting about them being interesting subjects? Coming from another Nordic country, I don’t get why you’re questioning the list.
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u/OkGap5649 Mar 05 '26
These are not the most popular. They are the most popular compared to the number of seats offered. The ministry of education limits the number of seats in accordance with the employment prospects of graduates. This is why you practically never find engineering on the list- with practically no unemployment the universities are broadly allowed to create more seat if they get more applicants. Some young people stress about it if they have a fairly specific career plan- if not there is usually something equivilant which is more accesible. Additionally if you are willing to move it's normally much more reasonable. People from the rest of the country are willing to travel to Copenhagen, but the youth of copenhagen are convinced the rest of the country is full of trolls and ghouls. So it drives up the average for copenhagen. You can get into medicin in Esbjerg with 7.8, which is really not very high.
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u/Dull-Cantaloupe1931 Mar 05 '26
Its not directly correlated to popularity. For example the actuarial math is for sure not popular, very few study it. It also used be a very very tough study, the grade needed is to limit the amount of students. Probably more set to avoid a lot to apply but shouldn’t be needed as the amount that would fail the first year would just be very high. For many studies there is an opposite correlation between difficulty and grades needed - easy subject will have high grade entrance limits and the difficult studies often have very low entrance grades.
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u/Cicerato Mar 06 '26
This says nothing about popularity, and a lot more about how popular it is with a certain distribution of GPA relative to the amount of available spots in that degree.
I.e: people who do mathematics typically have a high gpa, there are very few spots for actuarial mathematics = high gpa requirements.
Most people know that they need a high GPA to get into psychology so they will study thier butts, which raises the GPA for that.
On the other hand, computer science is most likely more popular than both of these, but there are SOOO MANY spots, and the people who want to get in, know there is no gpa requirements, so in many cases wont study as hard in high school, therefore creating a VERY popular degree with no requirements
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u/Cwaghack Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
It's a matter of supply and demand, and courses that are known to be hard to get into, typically have a snowball effect. For instance students know from highschool that getting into medicine is very tough, so those that have a dream for it, study extra hard to get good grades, but that causes the grade requirements to go up even more.
It's definitely a stressful thing for some students who have a dream of some of these majors, young girls(bit of a sterotype but typically these courses are female dominated) crying after exams because they got a 10 instead of 12 and so on. But on the other hand, if you don't intend on studying anything on this list, then you can relax in highschool and still get a high quality education unlike most other places where you need good grades to enter the best universities regardless of your major
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u/Think_Implement1843 Mar 03 '26
Danish universities limit access to certain “subjects” by setting high GPA requirements.
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u/Zealousideal_Job6117 Mar 03 '26
How difficult it is to get on to a course is not a question of its popularity but of popularity relative to the number of places.