hello,
How do you guide your child to decide on his/her career path or college major ? Some kids know it from the day they were born what they will grow upto be. My son is into Math and Science. He isn’t much into engg. Good student straight A. Do you know of any online tools that help with career counseling ?
It’s really something that he’ll have to explore for himself when he’s at college. I’ve taken many online career / personality tests, and I’ve found them to give a pretty wide range of very different careers (like for me, mathematician, school counselor, internist). Maybe that would be helpful for exposing your son to things he’s never heard of, but for me, there were fields and careers that I was more interested in than the ones I matched to. ONET Online and ONET Interest Profiler are sites that I’ve found useful for just learning about many different careers.
As for majors, the only way I figured that out was by taking classes in the areas that I was interested in. I thought about class size, competitiveness for courses, how many courses I’d have to take as requirements that I didn’t like, lol. And then I chose the one that had the most of what I was looking for. But one’s major doesn’t lock him/her into only taking courses for that field.
Thank you very much. Appreciate your response
Some careers are more strongly associated with specific college majors or types of college majors than others.
It is the case that science (or engineering) careers tend to be more strongly associated with those types of majors, due to the specific knowledge, skills, and thinking involved. It is also the case that these types of majors need to have their prerequisites started early in college, since the prerequisites tend to be sequenced, though some early sequences can keep the door open for several such majors.
If he is into math and science, what kinds? I.e. is he more into math (and possibly things like statistics and computer science), the more heavily math-based sciences like physics, or the less heavily math-based sciences like biology?
Parents are often concerned about job and pay prospects associated with various majors. They should realize that not all science majors find good job and pay prospects (ask the biology majors who did not get into medical school or other professional school), and the economic and industry cycles can result in a much different job outlook four years from now. Also, some of the better paying jobs associated with some majors may not be that desirable in other respects (e.g. not all math and statistics majors want to work in finance, and not all geology majors want to work in mining, oil, and gas).
If the student tends to be frugal and careful with money, then his job and career options will be greater, because he will not be as constrained by needing a high pay level which may require him to take an otherwise-less-desirable job or not go into a desired career because the pay is too low to support how he lives.
Thank you @ucbalumnus
When most students graduated with a major different from their original intend, there must be something they found out during college.