@mydaywasgreat : Emory is only a reach. I am just trying to find some schools that ARE NOT high reaches (like Ivies and super stats sensitive schools like VU, WUSTL, and a couple of others)!
Also, no major GUARANTEES you a job. I would argue that “genetics” (typically not a major) usually will not get you a job as typically biology majors/curricula are too generic to lead into useful employment. History can lead to law, and if you are into STEM, you can easily couple it with something the QTM curriculum at Emory (http://quantitative.emory.edu/for-undergraduate/index.html). They teach you math and computing skills to complement your social science major. This opens the doors to internships and more faculty being interested in you conducting research. This is actually more likely to lead to employment (consulting, government, etc) than a generic biology major. To make the biology major less generic and more employable without graduate school, you will basically have to go through QTM for it as well to get a training in computational or quantitative biology. To be employable you will need a significant internship or long lasting research experience otherwise. If you have this AND the quantitative training through QTM, you may be able to land a high paying job.
“Space”, well that virtually requires you to be a physics major. That road ain’t easy. If you go to any pretty selective institution (which includes those less selective than Emory) the students majoring in physics will have very good preparation so you will need to work hard to do decently and even harder to stand out in a way that sometimes catches the attention of professors or puts you in a position to conduct research in the field.
You have been likely sold this myth that undergraduate majors stand alone in terms of emplpyment or lackthereof. This is primarily only true with engineering, CS (and CS related) majors, and better undergraduate business programs (like Emory’s). If you are banking on being employable by simply taking some classes and getting a degree in a field, your options for majors will be severely restricted. Generally, you will have to really engage the discipline to make it employable right out of undergrad. So taking a bunch of easy/medium classes in a major with little internship or research experiences will not cut it. Experience is everything. And if you get high demand skills (like those provided through a track like QTM) that supplement your major, even seemingly low paying majors yield a very wide array of options (some being directly related to the major and some not and this is life. A major is just meant to be a way to use a discipline you think you will enjoy to build relevant skills for whatever career path. This is whether we talk grad. school/academia, industry, consulting, whatever. If your major doesn’t teach you to write well, do research, or crunch data, then it may be hard to get employment. Often students at selective schools make a lot out of "low paying’ fields by going to grad. or professional school, or priming themselves for other solidly paid options that are not directly related). Employers ultimately look for evidence of relevant skills more so than specific degrees or even grades for that matter.
You can literally major in what you want. It is how you build the skills in the major and then how you use those skills while in college to make yourself marketable for post-grad opps. So, yes, unfortunately a history major who just takes a bunch of low skill courses (low reading and writing load, no major papers) will have less credibility than a STEM major who did something similar (if only because at least the lazier STEM majors can claim they learned certain lab techniques). There are also many extracurricular activities that will build students’ profile.
You should also be careful with law and business. Law is in decline so you need to get a good enough academic, co-curricular, and EC profile to land at a top law school or at those just outside the elite with a decent scholarship. Also, I am sorry, I generally do not recommend doing undergraduate business programs unless it is needed for a specific field (like…accounting). There are many other pathways to various fields in business that do not involve majoring in it. You can instead major in whatever and take the maximum amount of business school courses allowed for an ECAS student.
To be honest, since you do not really know, I need to go look for some great public schools for you as they usually do well in several areas and perhaps may more easily allow for specialization (like the genetics thing). If they are not too selective, perhaps you would land in their honors program which could be great.