Choosing a college by choice of major…good or bad idea?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>There are plenty of threads on CC that ask for colleges according to a particular field of study. While this is certainly understandable, I think many readers could incorrectly conclude that one’s major is a key driver and link to post-graduate life. With some important exceptions, I would argue strongly that it is not.</p>

<p>How many times have we heard stories like the following?
1. A student wants to go to med school and chooses a college based on its biology/chemistry rep or application/matriculation data related to medical schools. Then the student starts college and after a semester or two, realizes that medicine is not for him/her after all. Uh-oh!
2. A student wants to study business and thinks that a business degree will advantage him/her in the interview process and get him/her a job with highly-desired employer ABC Inc. Rarely is this the case as most employers are looking for smart students whom they plan to train and develop for effective work in their company/industry. The employers can’t teach you “smart” but they can teach you what you need to succeed in their industry. Most couldn’t give a fig what your major was.<br>
3. A student hears about some Nobel prize-winning faculty member and thinks it would be neat and prestigious to go to the college where this academic god teaches. But then when the student arrives at the campus, he/she learns that the prof either doesn’t teach undergrads or teaches undergrads in a massive lecture environment or actually can’t teach worth a damn resulting in a lousy classroom experience and you end up doing most of your learning in a smaller session with some TA who can’t speak English.</p>

<p>We’ve all heard these stories and more. Those in the real working world mostly understand that the college major selection frequently has little to no bearing on work opportunities and even less on career prospects. Whether a student went to Princeton and studied widgets or went to Penn State and studied widgets is not material once one enters the workplace. </p>

<p>Finally, let me concede that there are exceptions, eg, in the technical fields as one can’t wake up as a college junior and decide that he/she wants to be an engineer. Or if one wants a career in academia, then the choice of undergraduate and the faculty relationships you develop there can have a very consequential impact on your graduate school applications. I’m sure there are other examples that others will cite, but I contend that such stories are limited in number and in application to real life situations. </p>

<p>The numbers say that 70% or more of USA college students end up working in a field outside of their field of study. So, don’t get overly obsessed with this in your college search. Of course, consider it but do so in the context of evaluating the overall college experience, inside and outside of the classroom.</p>

2

<p>The strength of one’s intended major should at least be a factor to strongly consider. My son selected a school based more on the reputation of the school rather than the strength of his intended major. The school turned out to be a great fit but his major is being eliminated. He’ll still be able to graduate but the Dean already left and I suspect that the department isn’t getting the same support, financial and otherwise, that it once did.</p>

3

<p>Generally I agree with Hawkette. I read, I think it was in Harvard Schmarvard by Matthews, that only 15% of students end up majoring in what they thought they would when they entered college. In my son’s case we picked a school that was strong in his intended major, but, also stellar in many other fields as well.</p>

4

<p>I break it down like this:</p>

<p>There are two types of “college degrees”. First, there’s the degree you get just to have a college degree. These come from undergraduate fields like art history, literature, communications, political science, and (arguably) business. In these fields, companies basically use college degrees as an indicator of perseverance and ability. They don’t care what you learned in art history class, so long as you demonstrated the ability to learn.</p>

<p>In these sorts of majors, you want a college with the best overall reputation, since it’s the perceived difficulty of the school and not the major that impacts future hiring decisions.</p>

<p>One the other hand, there are college degrees that are designed to actually teach you a usable competency that you are expected to be able to apply after college. For example, engineering, statistics, architecture, the sciences, etc. Companies hiring an engineer won’t “teach you everything you need to know”. They’ll train you on specifics in their industry, but they expect that you know general engineering concepts.</p>

<p>In these sorts of majors, you want a college with a strong reputation in your field, as that’s how companies determine where to recruit. Georgia Tech engineering grads make more than Princeton engineering grads and have more job offers on average, even though Princeton is considered to be an overall better school.</p>