A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour reveals that students with lower grades are more likely to earn degrees in academic fields where they belong to the majority group. Using data from two U.S. Department of Education studies, researchers found that representation in different majors varies significantly by gender and sexual orientation. For example, women make up about 25% of undergraduate engineering degrees and 18% of computer science degrees, while men are a small minority in nursing and education. In fields traditionally dominated by men, such as physics, engineering, computer science, business, and economics, straight cisgender men with lower-than-average high school grades and test scores were overrepresented compared to straight cisgender women with similar academic performance. This gap shrank significantly among top-performing students. LGBTQ+ men were also found to be underrepresented in these male-majority fields. In female-majority fields, the study found less clear evidence of overrepresentation for straight cisgender women. However, some models suggested that LGBTQ+ women were more likely to be overrepresented in these fields among the highest-achieving students. This implies that LGBTQ+ women may need stronger academic credentials to gain a foothold in fields that are otherwise considered welcoming. The study used two large national datasets: the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, which tracked 6,340 students’ academic and demographic information, and the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study of 2016, which included data from 12,950 students who earned bachelor’s degrees. Across both datasets, researchers found that representation gaps favored the historically dominant group in each major among students with lower pre-college grades. These gaps narrowed among the highest-achieving students, possibly due to social norms and institutional environments that favor a field's traditional demographic majority. However, the study cannot prove direct causation, as it is based on correlations. LGBTQ+ students were underrepresented in male-majority fields such as engineering, computer science, and business, as well as in nursing and other health fields. This study is one of the first to use nationally representative data to examine how LGBTQ+ students choose college majors across all disciplines, not just STEM fields. Researchers suggest that these patterns indicate a missed opportunity, as talented students may be avoiding or not entering fields where they could excel and contribute, influenced by factors unrelated to their academic abilities or interests.