<p>Both of our kids kind of knew what they want to do for career, so they talked to a lot of people (our friends included) on what they should major in.</p>
<p>D1 wanted to go into finance. Our friends recommended math and econ rather than UG business or finance. </p>
<p>D2 wants to go to law school. D1’s best friend recommended philosophy or government at their school. She is also going to take few econ and finance courses, just in case.</p>
<p>Would D1 major in English if someone told her that it was the best major to get into finance? Probably not. Would D1 major in math even if it was the most sought after major for law? Probably not. </p>
<p>I am a big believer of liberal arts education. It really doesn’t matter what major, a student would need to take courses outside of their major to fulfill their core requirement.</p>
<p>With kids coming in with Associate’s degrees or near it from dual classes or AP, the core curriculum required once a kid actually gets to University has been drastically decreased in many cases.</p>
<p>If I had it to do over, with the “over 30 hours” rule, I may have changed the approach for D3 a little bit though. Instead of just automatically sitting for every AP test, we may have been very selective about which ones she would sit for based on her desired major. In fact, I think when we meet with the adviser at the university, we will ask if it would be in her best interest to sit for her Calculus AP test. I think it’s likely that it would NOT be to her advantage.</p>
<p>Would not worry at all about a HS junior not knowing what field they want to pursue. Indeed, I would be more worried if the they had a firm idea of their field without the benefit of exploring different things.</p>
<p>My D was certain that she wanted to dance professionally, but equally certain that she wanted challenging academics. We also came to understand that most dance majors offered at most colleges would not allow her to pursue a variety of academic interests, particularly if she sought a Performance major in dance. Finding a college that fit those parameters was our first challenge…she ended up choosing Barnard (it came down to a choice between Barnard and U Mich). </p>
<p>She figured out in her first semester at Barnard that she wanted to major in Neuroscience. She is currently pursuing her PhD in that field.</p>
<p>Sometimes we need to tread carefully when our kids listen closely to what we say. My S was fascinated with airplanes and other forms of manned flight and was reading books on the principles of aerodynamics by the time he entered high school and was sure he wanted to become an aerospace engineer. Then I foolishly mentioned to him that while aerospace engineering was certainly a good profession, there were some technical careers which appeared to have better job prospects for the future. He apparently took my words to heart and dropped the idea of aerospace engineering and started trying to sell himself on CS/Computer Engineering. He never did make the sale and for the first time he had no idea what he wanted to do for a career (it troubled me how much he was troubled by that as I had been fine at his age without any idea about a career). He loved history, but knew it would be extremely difficult to make a career out of it. He was very good in math, but never really loved it. However, now, as a HS junior, he appears to be falling in love with AP Chemistry and I am going to keep my mouth shut.</p>
<p>But what would Jack Kerouac say? Who will speak for the voice of the 60’s? </p>
<p>How many are with me in believing that it can take until 25 before people choose a career, and that that’s OK? Some people can even wait until they’re in their early 30’s, although it does get riskier.</p>
<p>I hope he realizes that making a career out of chemistry may be as hard as making a career out of history. But chemical engineering may be a similar subject with better career prospects.</p>
<p>Why? If she knows the material well, gets a 5 that the college accepts for advanced placement, and sees nothing she does not know on the college’s calculus final exams, then she can skip ahead to the next math course and not waste time and tuition being bored in a class she already knows. If she struggles for a 3 (or worse), that is also useful information…</p>
<p>^^ Yes, I know that chemistry by itself does not offer such great prospects. But he has mentioned chemical engineering and even med school and is a kid who pays attention to career prospects, so I am not too concerned about that.</p>
<p>Ucbalumnus, she will take calculus I at her engineering school regardless of how she does on the test. That is the standard recommendation of the school, it will help her gpa and should make her 1st semester not such a killer adjustment. The advisers there suggest you take “the last math class you have already taken.”. That is, unless their placement test says you should go lower.</p>
<p>High school AP is no where near college level courses. At D2’s school, it’s very hard to get placed out of freshmen writing seminar.<br>
I think it is very hard to spend 20s in finding one self nowadays. Young people need to be conscious of building their resumes in their 20s or they going find themselves to be behind their peers. </p>
<p>D1 is in finance now. She is learning a lot of skills while working. She may not be in finance all her life, but she’ll be able to take what she has learned to a new career if necessary. The days of jack of all trades and hoping employers would be able to figure out which one of your skill sets could be applicable is gone.</p>
<p>sorry I didn’t know how to make “quote” work. This is reply to a previous message:</p>
<p>collagedad–if he is interested in kinesiology he should investigate Athletic Training.</p>
<p>he wants to ultimately study physiology (and disease) at the molecular level. He clearly indicate he had no interest in becoming PE teacher or athletic trainer.</p>
<p>I’d like to know where those kids are living and on what while they are trying to find themselves at the age of 25 or 30. </p>
<p>Like Oldfort’s daughter is doing, I think that it is better to commit to something you are not sure of with the idea that you can always make money from it while you move on to the next thing. That is what I figured when I majored in my field. Luckily for me, it turned out to be the right match but I did not know that until I began working.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think the difference matters only if you’re in a school like UC Berkeley, where you have to actually reapply to another school within the University if you want to switch from say, English, to engineering. That’s one of the things that turned my daughter off about Cal. She doesn’t know what she wants to study and wants freedom to change majors if necessary, so she’s applying mostly to LACs.</p>
<p>To the OP, I don’t know very many 16/17 year olds who know what they want to study. I do know some who think they know, but in my own experience and that of just about everyone I know, people change their minds once they take that fantastic biology class or that dreadful lit class. The worst thing we can do to our kids (well, not THE worst, but the worst wrt this topic) is make them think they have to choose their careers now!</p>
<p>In the span of a single day, my 17 year old will say things like, “I think I’d like Hillary Clinton’s job” to “maybe I should consider being a pediatrician” to “do you think I’m good enough to have a career in music?” I know she will settle down and choose a major eventually (assuming she gets in somewhere!) and most likely, it will be something she’s never even mentioned.</p>
<p>JonLaw, don’t know what type of law you do but my friend who is a lawyer says that lawyers with engineering backgrounds can work in Patent law since they have the schooling to understand the specs of what they are reading. </p>
<p>So your detour to engineering school may serve you yet.</p>
<p>But what I see in these forums (and elsewhere) is the common belief that “STEM major automatically means good job prospects”, even though that is not true for biology and chemistry. Given how popular majoring in biology is, there may be a lot of biology graduates who find out too late that they should have been more aggressive at looking for internships and jobs earlier.</p>
<p>Majoring in engineering taught me that I have no interest in engineering, while attending law school taught me that I have no interest in law and that I don’t really enjoy being $120,000 in debt.</p>