How to go about choosing a major?

College Majors
1

I’m going to begin my junior year next month, and I want to start thinking about what I want to pursue. I’m not exactly sure what I want to do, but I would like something that focuses a lot on math/science/technology. Right now some of my options I have are:
-Computer Science
-Engineering (Biomedical mainly, but others as well)
-Medicine (I’m not sure about this one)

I’d like to know how some of you went about it on how to find what you want to pursue, and how you narrowed it down to a specific major.

2

I also had narrowed it down to a particular area - I knew I wanted a social sciences major, because I was interested in studying/thinking about how people interacted with each other. My next step was to leaf through the course catalog of the college I intended to attend. (You can pick the one from your favorite college, if you haven’t decided yet). My original top choice was political science, but this exercise helped me rule that out because the course descriptions bored me. However, I did get pretty excited about the available courses in sociology, so I chose that as my first major.

Then I took the first class - intro to sociology for majors. Although I liked it, I felt like it was missing something, so the following semester I took general psychology I. I loved it, and changed my major to psychology.

Careers were sort of a secondary consideration because the careers I was considering - law first, then high school guidance counseling - didn’t require a specific major. However, once I changed my major to psychology, a career actually emerged from my interest (doing research as a research psychologist). That’s why I often say that you don’t have to pick a career and then pick a major - sometimes, you can pick a major and then a career will come up.

So it’s an iterative process, but involves some investigation of what that major entails. Then it involves some experience with the classes - so I don’t think you can be very sure until you take classes.

You can’t major in medicine as an undergrad. However, many colleges do have health-related majors - like public health, health, medicine, and society, and other related majors. You might also be interested in a major like science & technology studies (or science & society, which is what it’s called at Wesleyan).