Among learners seeking higher secondary education, science (42%) and humanities (40%) appeared as the most favored choices in the past decade, rising from 31 percent in 2012, while commerce stagnated at 14 percent during the same time. Vocational streams also witnessed a marginal growth from 2 percent to 3 percent from 2012 to 2022. The plurality of Scheduled castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) students took art programmes, while more boys headed for science and commerce, and girls outnumbered boys in arts streams.

A study by the Ministry of Education revealed this information as the Centre, through PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis), is attempting to normalize assessment among diverse education boards. Nationally, though the numbers are skewed towards science, the allocation is not even across various boards. Banning Manipur, the state education boards in the North East region, hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, Haryana, and West Bengal have the most heightened percentage of students seeking their higher secondary education in the humanities stream and have the lowest number admitted in the science stream.

On the other end of the range are the states from the southern region, with 76 percent of students from Andhra Pradesh registered in science, the highest, followed by Manipur with 69 percent and Telangana with 65 percent. Amid these vast variations are two states - Goa & Karnataka - where the distribution of students is nearly similar in main streams. In Goa, 26 percent of students belong to the arts stream, 31 percent to commerce, and 28 percent to science. In the Scheduled Caste category, 37 percent of students' choice is science, while 48 percent selected arts and 11 percent are seeking commerce, and 4 percent others.