What each one closes, and what it does not

Science with mathematics keeps the widest set of doors open on paper, which is why it is the default recommendation and why so many students sit in it unhappily. Commerce closes engineering and medicine and opens nothing that science closes on the business side. Arts and humanities close the professional entrance routes and open the widest range of undergraduate subjects of the three.

The important correction is that almost nothing is closed permanently. Lateral entry, bridge courses, postgraduate conversion and open universities all exist precisely because people change direction. What a stream costs you is not the destination but time and an extra step — which is a real cost, and a much smaller one than the fear suggests.