<p>Hi all. DD recently decided she hated writing and politics--two things she has loved since 8th grade. Now we don't know what to do for a major-or college. Any advice on where to go to help her find something she loves, or find a way to go back to what she loved. She is a gifted writer. My thought is that it will pass, but we are visiting colleges in the spring and I'm not sure how we should handle this. Thanks.</p>
<p>She doesn’t necessarily need to have a target major to apply to most schools. She can go in as undecided. Then just look for generally strong schools rather than ones specializing in a specific major.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters much – provided that she’s still interested in subjects that fall within the spectrum of majors offered by liberal arts colleges (or by the liberal arts unit within a university).</p>
<p>But it might matter if she thinks that she might want a professionally oriented major, such as business or nursing. Not all colleges offer these majors. Liberal arts colleges are particularly unlikely to offer them (although there are exceptions).</p>
<p>So perhaps your spring visit list should be modified a bit to include more universities that offer a broad range of majors, including professional majors, and fewer liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>I agree with Erin’s Dad. Unless a student has a strong interest in something esoteric, it is better to pick a generally strong school than pick a school for a potential major. After all, HS kids have not had the opportunity to study most of the subjects they could major in; they may have a general interest, but it often turns out that the academic discipline itself is not appealing when the student actually gets into it. Most students change majors at least once. While it is not a good idea to go to a school that doesn’t have a potential major at all, or is really weak in it, it is at least as bad an idea to go somewhere only for a specific major.</p>
<p>You should be looking for reaches, matches, and safeties, in areas where she is willing to spend 4 years, and that you can afford with whatever merit or need-based aid she is likely to get.</p>
<p>If you give us some idea of her stats and the other factors, I’m sure we could suggest some places.</p>
<p>My D didn’t know what she wanted to major in when she was a junior (or even a senior) in high school. She knew what she didn’t like (history, english, political science, natural sciences, psychology, foreign language, etc., etc.), but didn’t have a passion for any subject she’d encountered at that point. She liked numbers, and math was her favorite class, but she didn’t see herself as a math major, either. This pretty much ruled out LACs for her, as H and I could see her happening into a business major. Fortunately, she wanted a large state flagship, so we didn’t worry too much about majors. Senior year she took AP Econ and decided she liked economics, so that, along with math, is her stated major. She’s doing her Econ major through the business school, not arts and sciences, at her school, and I’m not entirely convinced that she won’t switch to finance or something else. There’s no necessity to pick a major while you’re still in high school, but you do have to make sure that there’s no interest in a field that you can’t find at the types of colleges you’re looking at (like business or nursing or exercise science at most LACs). There are a lot of subjects offered in college that a student doesn’t encounter in high school, so there are interests and passions still waiting to be discovered. I wouldn’t let lack of a major frustrate you.</p>
<p>Of course, your D could have majored in Econ and Math at any decent LAC. 
But I think your decision-making process was sound.</p>
<p>It’s a normal part of the maturation process to be undecided about one’s future at such a young age. I don’t think most high school students have either the knowledge or the planning skills to make a good decision about a college major, and I’d hate to see any kid choose a college primarily on the basis of what she thought she wanted at age 16 or 17. I don’t know about you, but I was a dunce about an awful lot of things at that age! A very large percentage of college students change their majors after they’ve had a chance to take some classes in their original choice and explore classes in other areas. The opportunity to examine various fields is one of the great advantages of attending college. My D changed majors twice. Luckily she was attending a university that offered many options. There are plenty or things to worry about in the college application process, but uncertainty about a major is not one of them</p>
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<p>Of course, this can actually be a harder task, since the prospective schools need to be strong in the range of majors that the student may choose. I.e. a smaller set of schools will be academically suitable for a very undecided student than for a student who is almost certain to choose a specific major, or from a small list of related majors.</p>
<p>Most good schools are solid enough in a broad enough range to suit most kids. If she wants a vocational major, that’s a different matter. (And conversely, a vocationally-oriented school may well be weak in some of the classic liberal arts disciplines.) But it doesn’t sound as if that is the problem here.</p>
<p>She is a junior in high school, correct? When my daughter was in high school, she thought she would major in music- she ended up graduating as a psych major. Many students in college still don’t have a major until junior year. The average student changes his or her major three times. Only a few majors (engineering, nursing) require students to focus from freshman year. In other words, she’s perfectly normal. Just show her a range of colleges and encourage her to explore as a freshman- take general ed classes in a variety of areas. There’s also nothing wrong with her taking a gap year while she gets a better idea of who she is. and what she wants.</p>
<p>When the time comes to pick colleges to apply to – which is still half a year away – you might ask her to think of two or three subjects she might possibly want to major in. She probably won’t find this intimidating because it doesn’t require a commitment.</p>
<p>Then, she can look at the colleges she has been considering and make sure they all offer those majors. If her potential interests are business, economics, and psychology, for example, she would not want to choose a college that does not have an undergraduate business major.</p>
<p>Maybe have her look at interdisciplinary programs. For example, many colleges offer majors like public policy, political economy, American studies, etc., that include courses in political science, history, economics, philosophy, sociology, etc. If she doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed into a narrowly focused major, something like this might appeal to her.</p>
<p>A caveat: interdisciplinary programs vary widely in quality. It’s fashionable now for colleges to throw together a mishmash of courses from different departments, put together a curriculum chart, make a homepage, and call it a “program,” but there are problems of institutional ownership, mentoring, and responsibility. Most faculty have loyalty to and interest in their own departmental offerings and their own majors, and many “interdisciplinary” programs don’t even have chairs or dedicated faculty. The devil is in the details and you have to check them out.</p>
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<p>Thereby eliminating many if not most of the best schools in the nation from her list…when majoring in economics would probably achieve the same end in the business world. If not more.</p>
<p>Don’t worry at all. Most entering college freshmen are either undecided or change their major after starting. She will likely have breadth requirements to fill her first year so she can explore different fields that may lead to a major she hasn’t been exposed to in HS. By the time she applies to colleges next fall she should have an idea of broad fields- eg STEM, social sciences, humanities or business that most appeal to her. She may discover other social sciences than politics of interest. </p>
<p>She may never love writing but increased skills and not needing to be perfect can help her with this necessary evil (as a Chemistry major I had to write a paper for each of the two Honors general chemistry courses I took eons ago- manual typewriter as well!). Not everyone loves to or even enjoys writing. Perhaps that is why I got B’s instead of A’s in the placement test eligible Honors Lit courses back when (no AP to place out of things then) while a HS classmate who ended up in the same small section at flagship U became an English professor.</p>
<p>She may even change her mind again as she continues to grow/mature.</p>
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<p>Academically, economics is not really the same as business, though. Economics is about studying human behavior in economic situations, sometimes in a manner that is highly mathematically rigorous. Business is about applying economics, sociology, psychology, and statistics to business problems (there are also some business specific skills taught, like accounting). Some economics departments do have more “business” electives, particularly when there is no business major at the school.</p>
<p>You do not have to have a business degree to have a career in business, do you? Many people end up in business related careers without that particular degree.</p>
<p>That is true, but the point was that, in an academic sense, the economics and business majors are not the same, so a student who likes one may not necessarily like the other as much in school, even if s/he does a “business” career later.</p>