Read Time – 3 minutes
Many people ask us, how to choose the ideal college major. There is no one way of making this all-important selection. Each person’s motives, goals, interests are different. That said, here are some things to consider when making this decision:
Here is what I would avoid:
- Do not pick a major that is SUPER hard for because you think it will land you a job. If you do poorly in your studies this will actually have the inverse effect and likely hinder your chances of landing that first job, getting into graduate school and/or in securing scholarships.
- Do not pick a major that historically fails (weeds out) the bottom performers since this will add undue pressure on you, and likely will jeopardize your long-term academic performance.
- Do not pick a major because you are 50/50 on whether you will pursue it in the future and only doing it to satisfy your parent’s desires (i.e. medical school).
- Select a major that aligns with what you did in high school so it shows that you are moving in the direction of your interests (e.g. if you took quite a few AP science classes in high school then it makes little sense to then select Sociology as a major when applying to college since this will seem like you are trying to get in from the backdoor as an easier, less impacted major).
- Select a major where you are naturally inclined to excel, which matches your passions, character, experiences, and goals. To this end, you should consider maybe taking Gallups’s CliftonStrengths Finder to help you figure out what are your strengths.
- Select a major where you can get a high GPA especially if you are not sure what you want to do or if you are considering non-science graduate schools (i.e. law, education, business grad school that may weigh GPA higher than your college major). Obviously, if you are interested in engineering, medical school, accounting, science/research etc related fields then you will need to major in those speciality fields.
