Im planning on majoring in environmental science. At the college im going to ,you can chose what specialty you want. I would like to know which one is best? Thank you.
The “best” specialty is the area of study that would most interest you. What are your options?
An interested/engaged student= successful student
My options are digital imaging, environmental biology, environmental chemistry, environmental economics, environmental public policy, mathematics and statistics, or remote sensing.
What motivated you to go into environmental science? That may suggest what to specialize in.
I like most of the options, is there a best option in terms of job marketability.
I searched the jobs website Indeed.com for each of the items (digital imaging, environmental biology, environmental chemistry, environmental economics, environmental public policy, mathematics, statistics, remote sensing) preceded by the words environmental science. Environmental science public policy, environmental science biology, and environmental science chemistry got decidedly more results than any of the other search phrases. They each got between 2000 and 3000 results. Digital imaging and remote sensing got the least: 28 and 148 results, respectively. I think it’s fair to suppose that public policy, biology and chemistry will better facilitate a career in this field.
Then, for each of these three leading areas, I looked at the first five results that had any relevance. In the case of public policy, 3 of the 5 were mostly about ensuring regulatory compliance; the remaining two were about helping to, in fact, make policy, and both of these naturally were in government. In the case of biology, field inspection and ensuring regulatory compliance were about equally dominant. In the case of chemistry, 4 of the 5 were laboratory analysis jobs.
I looked at the environmental science related courses at Rochester Institute of Technology, which, I conjecture (from your other posts), you plan to attend. Obviously, there’s a good store of chemistry and biology courses. I didn’t see much indication that specific environmental regulations are covered, though; the course with the best chance of that may be STSO-421 (Environmental Policy).
After writing the above I have found RIT’s descriptions of the options you refer to (https://digitalarchive.rit.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1850/18433/Undergrad_Bulletin.pdf?sequence=1), which they call immersions . It doesn’t seem that the courses in the biology immersion which are over and above what BS Environmental Science requires would be particularly useful in most of the jobs for which environmental science majors are sought. The chemistry immersion brings in a little more organic chemistry than the plain BS Environmental Science; beyond that its analytical courses are highly indicated for a laboratory worker but not much otherwise.
NOTE: I found that the environmental science public policy and environmental science biology jobs I looked at emphasized the ability to write (and speak) well.