Abstract The purpose of this manuscript was to characterize and analyse both the differences and similarities of the results between the different careers in a public university in eastern Colombia, in the state tests Saber Pro 2017, in the modules quantitative reasoning and written communication, skills needed to evidence the level of scientific thinking, very useful for professionals in engineering and science, especially for professionals in mathematics and physics. In this research, a univariate descriptive analysis was carried out, followed by a principal component analysis. Engineering programs tend to perform better in quantitative reasoning and those of social sciences and education in written communication. These results indicate that graduates of engineering and science programs have a level of scientific thinking more related to the exact and natural sciences.