I have no idea what to major in, and not enough time to decide

College Majors
1

Hello! I am a rising freshman going to the University of Florida. I have probably made a million posts about this, but my mind literally changes every day and I’ve just accepted that I have absolutely no idea what I want to major in or have a career in. I’m making this post in order to possibly figure out. I’m going to list somethings about me and what may sway my major decision, and you could give me suggestions based on what I say? The reason I am so confused is because there seem to only be 2 extremes on the spectrum: the “follow your passion, do what you love” school of thought and the “you’re worthless unless you do STEM” school of thought. Hopefully, this thread can provide some form of middle ground. Thank you!

Currently, I am registered as a Political Science major. I think that this would probably be my strongest subject, having experience abroad, being in a government family, and excelling in my history/economics courses. However, while reading another thread on this site, someone brought up a good point: You can join politics with any major, but a political science major may limit you in other fields (mainly the private sector)

So, a few things about me academically:

  • I am very good at history, government, and English
  • I am pretty good at economics, but needed to work at it a little more than the classes I mentioned before (which I am of course willing to do)
  • I actually enjoyed chemistry and biology, I just had a harder time retaining the material than I would’ve liked
  • I HATED physics
  • I was pretty good at math until I got to calculus.

As for my career:

  • I’d like to live in a big city (or close to one)
  • I’d prefer to have room for career growth
  • I’m willing to get a Masters, but would like some work experience beforehand

If you have any ideas on majors, please let me know! And if you are super invested (which I would very much appreciate), you can look at the offered majors at UF: https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/Pages/majors.aspx
(which is by no means necessary, but would be thoroughly appreciated).

Thank you SO much! You are a life saver! I really need to know because I completed all my general education requirements through IB/AP credits, and would like to get started with my major right away!

2

Your loves/competencies:

1a. History
1b. English
1c. Political Science

  1. You could combine all three in a Journalism degree: journalists have to know how to write; it helps to write informed pieces if you have a good handle on history; and many front-page news items revolve around politics.
  2. Marketing (and its creative soul, Advertising) requires a lot of sociological, economic, psychological, political and historical knowledge -- these things are necessary to define and understand the target market. And you need to be able to write well enough to provide tight ad copy, legible marketing plans, etc.
  3. Business Administration is Marketing plus the other main business areas: Accounting, Econ, Finance, International Business, Organizational Behavior, Operations Management, Strategic Management, and Business Law. A BBA is the most well-rounded business degree.
  4. Econ

The Math required to complete an Econ or BBA degree might be more than you want – there will be some Calc. If you feel like taking on that challenge, consider 6 and 7; if not, don’t.

Do what you enjoy.

3

@prezbucky

Thank you so much for your input!

To be quite honest, (no offense to any journalism majors), journalism seems to me like a waste of time/degree. With the internet, anybody can be a “journalist,” and it is about as practical as political science.

I would really have no problem with political science, but like journalism, history and English, it isn’t practical unless I get my JD (which I probably will not do).

I will definitely look into business/marketing/economics, but for economics and marketing, do I run into the same problem as with Poli Sci and journalism? The lack of any marketable skills? I was talking to someone about these majors and they said for economics to be useful, you need a graduate degree, and for marketing “anybody can market, you don’t need a degree for it.”

Thanks again!

4

There is a Book of Majors published by CollegeBoard that lists majors and the types of jobs available. My suggestion is to go through that with post it notes in hand – one color for “Looks great!” and one for “Might work”. When you are done, see if the clusters of them help you at all. Then pick your top 2-3. In college try to take a couple classes in each of those areas your first few semesters. Go to the career office to see what kind of jobs those majors are getting. Maybe see if you can get an internship related to one (sometimes hard so early, though). That should position you to pick a major by 2nd semester sophomore year.

5

I was a Journalism major, with a concentration in Advertising, at UW-Madison. I’ve never been a journalist professionally, but the ability to write is really helpful. Also, journalists become skilled researchers, which also comes in handy in the office. So regardless of whether you actually filled one of the traditional journalistic roles – reporter, editor, broadcast journalist, or PR or advertising pro – or just worked some random office job, a Journalism degree would be far from worthless.

As for Marketing, I’m afraid your friend may have been confusing marketing management with sales. Marketing design and management itself – the planning, research, execution, and reporting – gets pretty technical. The Four P’s – Product, Price, Place, Promotion – are the topical tip of a somewhat deep iceberg.

6

The best thing is for you to get out there. Do you have family members and friends you can shadow? Do you have friends in different majors you can talk to? Have you tried talking to your professors?

Try Volunteer work, internships, shadowing, informational interviewing!

There are lots of great people on here who can give you great advice, but they don’t really know you. Your parents, friends, and you know you. And theres so many jobs out there, many you’ve probably never heard of. Get of there and find out what you enjoy.

And as for the STEM comment, yes STEM is important and can be lucrative. But what would STEM be without liberal arts? What would liberal arts be without STEM?

If Politics is your goal, see what major pathways lead into what you want to do. What did your major influences undergrad in? And theres always options in double majoring or a minor!

Don’t feel time crunched! Its typical to change your major a lot, and picking the wrong one for the wrong reasons will not help!

7

History and English lend themselves to teaching, although it is certainly a minority of these graduates that go on to do that. Political science lends itself to becoming a lawyer, paralegal or legislative aide, but it is a definite minority of political science graduates that go into those occupations (according to surveys at Students Review dot com, http://www.payscale.com/index/US/Degree/B and http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/).

Basically these majors set one up for ‘agnostic’ jobs (meaning jobs where applicants with any major are considered). The occupations of the first 10 respondents listed at Students Review with a political science degree (with or without graduate work) are: database administrator, webmaster, legislative specialist, defense analyst, educational advisor, head coach, vice president, lawyer, pilot and consultant.

Identification of skills to acquire in college, rather than major, may be what you should focus on. Perhaps look at http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm and try to determine occupations interesting to you that fit you and also are expected to have abundant openings in the years ahead. Look at the descriptions of jobs being advertised on jobs sites and find out what specific knowledge sets and skills are called for. Then endeavor to obtain said knowledge sets and skills, whether they are part of your major or not. (It may be that a change of major will make it easier.)

For example, let us suppose you’re interested in being market research analyst. I looked at a few advertised openings and found that proficiency with Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint were very often, and statistics knowledge often, sought. So if you wanted to enter that occupation, you should learn Excel and Powerpoint - by whatever means - and should take statistics courses.

A search of ‘college degree entry level’ on the jobs website Indeed.com I did today got 13,224 results. The first five results were for account manager, sales, financial representative, entry-level management, and management/sales trainee, suggesting that generally business is the biggest area of agnostic jobs. I suppose if you major in business, you may not enjoy your undergraduate time as much as if you major in political science, but you will be more ahead in the relevant competencies in the work world you are likely to enter.