Curiosity. How did you guys pick out your major. How far in it are you? And are you happy with your choice?
I’ve always known I wanted to study either English or Political Science in college – my interest in political theory and statistical methods in politics became a lot more focused towards the end of high school, so I decided on Poli Sci over English.
I’ve only taken a few classes in my major but I’ve really enjoyed them. I’m happy with my choice – the only concern I have is the employability of it (…it doesn’t really help that my minor is Religious Studies) but I’m hoping that relevant internship experience in my field will sort of remedy that.
I plan on attending law school in the future (something which also has questionable employment prospects…) – but overall, I don’t have any regrets. All of my schooling is covered by scholarships, so I’m not paying for classes nor accruing any debt, so I feel less of a burden/less pressure.
For all of my life I had planned on doing political science, studying for the LSAT from freshman/sophomore year, and earning a high gpa to get in a top law school. Then, 5 days before applying to the college I’m going to, I thought to myself “why?”
I spent the entire day “finding” myself and I came to the realization that it just isn’t my thing. I decided on computer science not because of how much they make (although the salary they earn after college was a bonus), but because I truly love computers, creating things on the computer, and coding is fascinating to me.
I did a dual degree in Arts and Humanities and anthroplogy. I picked Arts and Humanities because it was a residential college within a large university so I got better housing lol. Anthro had always been interesting to me.
I loved my majors and am thrilled with the skills I learned from them. I went on to grad school in public health and realised that was not the right path for me. Now I’m in a PhD program that is very connected to my undergrad majors. So I clearly still find something appealing about them 
I’m a math and computer science major.
I just finished my freshman year, but I have senior standing (93 credit hours) because I took university classes full-time during my senior year of high school. I’ve taken two computer science classes and fourteen math classes, including every required class other than complex analysis.
It’s hard to explain why math appeals to me, but I guess it’s because I feel really happy after I’ve solved a math problem. I like puzzles, but I don’t like lab equipment or empirical data. Math is beautiful because all you need is your mind.
I didn’t have a strong opinion about math until my sophomore year of high school, when I took plane geometry and honors Algebra II. The teacher had a strategy where he gave us worksheets full of problems and let us try to solve them on our own before he taught any lessons about the concepts behind them.
Everyone else complained, but I always got really excited about these worksheets. I went home and stayed up late doing the problems, and every day I presented a bunch of my solutions in class. :-B Whenever my classmates didn’t understand something, I explained it to them. The teacher saw that I was advanced, so he gave me a graphing calculator and two calculus textbooks and said I could study from those or other math books during his class.
By the end of my junior year, I had tested out of my school’s pre-calculus and calculus classes. I took the AP Calculus BC exam, which allowed me to take six higher-level university classes in my senior year. At that point, I couldn’t imagine not majoring in math.
I want to get a Ph.D. in math, but I probably won’t become a professor because it’s too competitive. I need a lot of backup plans, and this was the motivation for my double major in computer science. I’ve enjoyed my computer science classes because the kind of thinking required isn’t very different from the thinking required in mathematics. My ability to write proofs has often helped me with programming, and my (limited) knowledge of programming has helped me with MATLAB-based assignments in my applied math classes.
When I took my first programming class, I worried that I was “selling out.” I don’t feel like that anymore because I’ve realized that math and computer science complement each other. Exposure to both fields will help you get jobs in either one.
I want to triple major with philosophy, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to fit the classes into my schedule when there are so many other electives I want to take. 
I’m an Applied Mathematics and Statistics major.
Well, that was the result of much blood, sweat, and tears. Haha, just kidding; no blood. But seriously, it’s been a long and circuitous journey.
I originally applied as a Cognitive Science major. Then the summer before my freshman year, I had an existential crisis, and was struggling to decide between Cognitive Science, Public Health, Applied Math, and Computer Science. So I took some classes in all of those areas (except Cognitive Science) my freshman fall. My public health class bored me to death, and I liked programming but didn’t have the patience to do all the trials and debugging. I loved my Applied Math courses, so I hung onto that.
Then, over winter break, I took a Cognitive Science course and realized almost immediately that Cognitive Science was not for me. However, I was still interested in the brain, particularly mental illness. So I decided to look at Behavioral Biology, which is closer to the psychology end of the spectrum than Cognitive Science. At the end of my freshman year, I had decided to major in Behavioral Biology and minor in Applied Math. That lasted about a year, and then I had another crisis. Several things had disillusioned me about my major. Even though it was small, it shared many courses with Neuroscience and Psychology majors, which are huge. So there was a lot of fighting for courses happening. I also felt kind of alienated from the faculty. And finally, I took an Abnormal Psych course, which was like the reason why I became a Behavioral Bio major. And… It wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be.
So I spent the last three months thinking, “Is it too late to change my major again at this point?” “Should I just stick with the easier major, rather than pursuing something harder?” (I’m pre-med, and many upperclassmen advised me to stick with a major that I could get a high GPA in). But I realized that I couldn’t be happy continuing with Behavioral Bio, and I didn’t want to get a degree that would only remind me that I took the easy way out. So now Applied Math is my primary major.
Welp, technically, it’s been about a month since I decided. So I have never actually been an Applied Math major at my school. But with AP credits and fulfilling the minor requirements, I’m about halfway through the major. I think I’ll just be able to fit the rest in.
Well, I think I have, not a disorder per se, but some kind of pathological anxiety. That’s mostly why I’ve been so indecisive for the past two years. And it’s a little nerve-wracking to think, will I change my mind again (because I was so sure about Behavioral Bio)? Will it be too hard? But mostly, I’m excited. Applied Math has been the one thing I’ve consistently loved since Day 1, and I love the faculty and my Applied Math colleagues. Better late than never, right?
In 6th grade my class did a unit on viruses and bacteria . . . I was hooked! I studied microbiology and biology in college (just added the bio major because I figured “why not?!”). I graduated 3 years ago and have worked as a lab technician in a cancer genetics lab. I am going to start a PhD program this fall in human molecular genetics at my top choice university. Knowing what I know now, I probably would have majored in genetics, but my major hasn’t hindered me from accomplishing what I want to do.
I’m a CS and math double major, music minor. I want to go into cryptography, most likely cryptanalysis.
My path to my majors was kind of interesting. Ever since I can remember, I’d always wanted to be a vet. I was seriously obsessed with medicine and animals. I watched all kinds of medical shows as a kid and still know way more about medicine than many of the “pre-meds” at my university (part of it is also because my mom’s a doc). However, freshman year bio at my high school we had to do a frog dissection and I couldn’t stomach it, so I knew right there that being a vet was not for me. Since I was a little kid, I’ve always excelled at and loved math. When I went to the bookstore with my parents all my childhood, my parents would say ok, you can pick out a book. Most kids, especially around age 4-7, would pick out picture books, right? Nope, I’d pick out math workbooks. So when I realized that being a vet wasn’t for me, math was the obvious choice. That summer, I took computer science at my high school. I absolutely loved it and was great at it. It just made sense, like math. The next two years (sophomore and junior year) I actually dabbled in circuitry and electronics (took both analog and digital courses), which I loved, but ultimately senior year came back to computer science. I didn’t discover I loved cryptography so much until second semester senior year when I took a course at my high school. That one semester, it just clicked that that was what I was meant to do. It also reinforced my choices for my majors, since cryptanalysis involves both CS and math.
I’m about to start my sophomore year of college and I’d say I’m about 1/3 through the math and CS majors. I am happy with those two majors. Most of my qualms are more constraints of the school I chose. I’d love to pursue my love of circuitry, but my university doesn’t have any electronics courses. I also wish that I could do a music major with a focus in composition and theory and not a minor but with the way our schedules are set up and the course rotations, I don’t think I can fit a couple of the required courses for that and still take the relevant electives to my career path in addition to the math and CS core courses.
Originally I was an East Asian Studies major, but then I switched to Japanese. I’d wanted to double major in both, bu there was a time conflict for two classes that I was required to take for both majors (and both classes were only held in that one quarter at similar time slots), so I decided to switch to Japanese because I decided that since I was already doing a Japan track for EAS, and I didn’t really want to take a required lower div course for the EAS major, I might as well just switch to Japanese because then that would mean I’m practically done with the major.
I liked Math and Science better than history and English…and my Dad was an Electrical Engineer so I thought that Engineering sounded good and Electrical was very general type Engineering …graduated with EE degree and I still work as an engineer
I’m majoring in Technical Writing. TW is pretty much communicating technical or scientific information to non-experts. The major includes English classes, document design, web design, computer science, etc.
For a while, I wanted to major in chemistry. Then I took AP chemistry and that idea was out. I knew by sophomore year what college I might want to go to, and I finalized that by the middle of junior year. The college I go to is one of the few with a (rather little-known) major in Technical Writing. When I heard about the major (I think my mom was the first to tell me about it), I immediately was drawn to it. Did a bit more research and I knew it was what I wanted to do. There’s a lot of flexibility in terms of where I could work after graduation, and since companies (especially software companies) are looking for technical writers and there are very few designated TW programs, I feel like I’ll be at something of an advantage. Sadly, the courses fill up with upperclassmen pretty quickly so I’ve been unable to take the core courses yet.
I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do and architecture sounded cool and like something I would be good at so I majored in that and I couldn’t be happier with my decision.
I’m a musical theatre major, and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I always knew that I wanted to pursue my passion; at least I never had to take AP classes in high school! (Well, I took AP US history my sophomore year. Once I realized that with my intended major, those credits wouldn’t even matter/transfer to college, I decided to ditch the stress. I’ll stick to drama, music, and dance. :)) )
I was a psychology major in college.
I knew I wanted to work with people in some capacity - serving the public good in some way, although I interpreted that broadly. I started out thinking I was going to be a political science major and go to law school, but I flipped through my college’s course catalog and the political science classes bored me. I settled on sociology, and started by taking the Intro to Sociology for Majors course at my college, but was unsatisfied with it. It didn’t seem “scientific” enough to me, whatever that means. So I decided to try a psychology class in my second semester (again, the first class in a two-class Intro to Psychology for Majors sequence). I really loved it, so I decided to settle on psychology as a major.
I graduated from college 7 years ago, so that’s how far I am into it, lol. I finished my psychology major by taking a few extra classes and writing a thesis. I originally intended to go to grad school to become a high school guidance counselor, because I loved giving high school students advice about college (lol). But I got a research assistantship in my sophomore year and was hooked on research, so I decided to pursue a career as a researcher. A mental health fellowship I did in college, combined with some summer research programs, led me to 1) concentrating on public and mental health research and 2) specializing in advanced statistical methods. I got a PhD from a public health psychology program, and started a postdoctoral position doing research in drug abuse.
Along the way, I got…bored isn’t the right word, but I wanted to change careers, so I started applying to research positions in marketing, entertainment, and media - which is another area I was always interested in, even before and during college (I had entertained the possibility of being a marketing/advertising major, but only one of the colleges I applied to had it and I ended up not going there, and in college I had explored internships and jobs in advertising and marketing, although I never took one). Psychology is very easily applied to marketing, and many of the job ads I looked at asked for psychology (or sociology or anthropology) majors in addition to marketing majors. Well, I landed one doing user research at a video games studio, and I start at the end of August.
Am I happy with my choice? Yes. I never regretted majoring in psychology. Even when I started looking for jobs and played with going into data science or statistics, I never regretted it. Psychology is my passion - I love thinking about how people behave, and honestly, all of the data science and statistics jobs in the fields I was interested in are geared towards figuring out how people think, feel, and behave so they can sell them stuff, lol. I do plan on taking more class in programming and machine learning to keep my skills sharp, because I want to stay in tech and do more with stats, because I love stats. But I love it in the service of answering questions about human behavior, not for its own sake. So if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change that I was a psychology major, but I would’ve added a minor in computer science and taken some additional classes in math.
It took me six years too late to finally figure out my major. By late, I just mean I feel like I’m now moving at such a slow pace through community college, and I’m about to be in my mid 20’s now. I’m very happy with my choice though, it’s what’s motivating me to stick it through, and not give up because of how much time I have wasted. I suppose if I didn’t take all this time, I’d be unhappy in another major that I wasn’t passionate about, or at a job I didn’t care about.