<p>I'm a high school senior, already accepted to UCB (Regents Scholarship Candidate), UCLA, and UCD, waiting on USC and Stanford. I have a somewhat broad question. I am incredibly torn as to which major to, not only pursue, but test the waters in. Being from a very low-income family, seeing starting salary numbers of Business majors at ~50K and liberal arts majors at ~30K, my dislike for math quickly dissipates.</p>
<p>I might want to go to graduate school, or even law school, but I am not even remotely sure of post-undergraduate plans at this time. </p>
<p>What is your advice, being parents who have gone through the process yourself, or having children who recently have, on picking majors based on true interests vs. earning potential?</p>
<p>At the extremes, either alternative is bad. </p>
<p>It is no fun to starve doing something you love.</p>
<p>It is also no fun to despise your well-paying job. </p>
<p>As a target, it is good, if not ideal, to have a job you love that pays at least enough for you to live on. </p>
<p>For example, if you love to teach, you can be a liberal arts major (or education major) and you can start at well above $30 thousand (for ten months) in New Jersey (where I live). And you can anticipate increases each year.</p>
<p>But if you can't stand teaching, then you will be miserable even if you are well-paid.</p>
<p>I've told both my sons whenever the subject of "how much does a (fill in blank with a profession) make?" comes up:</p>
<p>Do what you love. If you love it, you'll almost certainly do it well; if you do it well and love it, the $$ will take of themselves. (If you do it only or even primarily for the $$, you'll hate it and yourself in the long run).</p>
<p>the average person changes fields what 7 times in their life?
go to the school that is the best fit for you - study with the challenging profs and declare your major at end of soph year- you have a ways to go</p>
<p>Math will not necessarily be a big part of your day if you work in business. You might work in marketing, advertising, human resources or some other "non-math" area.</p>
<p>I agree with lkf. I was a middle eastern studies major undergrad, public policy major grad and also hate math. I ended up as a junk bond analyst through a fluke in an attempt to get something USAID would recognize as a skill so I could get a "real" job overseas. I ended up making a career of it because this job really isn't about math at all. I look at numbers other people produce and need a few basic spreadsheet skills, but my contribution is to look past the numbers and communicate my opinions about what is really going on. I view it as a public speaking/publishing job where I essentially get paid a lot to criticize. My mother never would have dreamed that talent as a teenager had career potential.</p>
<p>Except for some specialty fields, I don't think the undergrad major matters at all. You might as well study something you enjoy. A job will find you. Most people I know just sort of stumbled into what they are doing and as previous posters have pointed out, change course numerous times over the years.</p>
<p>Use your first year or two in college to build a broad base of knowledge: math, statistics, a basic economics class, writing, and a lab science or two. Big schools have math/science series for non-majors if you are worried about the competition.</p>
<p>Pick your major based on your interests and strengths. TheAnalyst is right--most liberal arts grads fall into a job after college and develop a career out of that. My husband studied Elizabethan poetry, started his career as a fraud investigator and is now a systems analyst. He is good at recognizing and describing patterns.</p>
<p>Figure out how to make money off doing what you love.</p>
<p>As someone who really loves science, I could have been a chemistry major and earned about $30k/year out of school. Instead, I majored in chemical engineering, which pays about $20k/year more. </p>
<p>English can be used to go into editing and publishing, which pay much better than teaching or journalism. </p>
<p>People who really hate the intuitive side of math and physics tend to like accounting - very much plug-&-chug. </p>
<p>As a law student, I would STRONGLY suggest that you not consider that as a way to make a good living. I'm at a "cheap" school, have no undergrad debt, and will graduate with $130,000 of loans. Do law if you love it, because there's very little financial aid and the cost is only going up. By the time you're ready for law school, many schools will cost $60,000-$70,000/year.</p>
<p>In my state (which is by no means a low rent district), a beginning assistant attorney general, requiring a law degree and two years of experience, pays $38k. For the last open position, they had 310 applicants.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks to everyone for their responses. To answer ADad's question, I'm interested in communications, maybe psychology, or poli sci. I'm pretty sure that starting salaries with those bachelor's degrees are not impressive, but does a graduate degree in those fields change that substantially?</p>
<p>Depends on what you are going into. Most psych majors have to get advanced degrees if they intend to remain in the field. Getting a masters and being a mental health counselor involves working mostly at non profit organizations where getting $30,000 is doing well. A psych major who gets a Masters in School Guidance (60 credits) working for the NYC Bd of ED starts at about $48,000. School psychologist (PhDs) start about $65,000. many in these professions subsidize their incomes by doing other work (private testing & evaluation, etc). Then as Aries stated, there is that student loan debt.</p>
<p>Clinical psychologist don't make a lot of money until they get a private practice, usually years after being in the field.</p>
<p>When you think about having over 40 years in the work force after graduating college, you will end up changing jobs a number of times because the entire concept of a job for life is dead. Do what you love and the money will follow.</p>
<p>I am in the psych field, with a graduate degree and 25 years experience, making a very nice living in a private practice. It takes years and years to develop a professional reptuation that allows you to do that, however, and everyone has to pay their dues in a school, hospital or clinic setting, where wages are definitively lower.</p>
<p>I still say atudy an area you love; the job will work out.</p>
<p>What do they say? Money follows passion (I think that's it). I don't think it works the other way ie, "Passion follows money" = not good! </p>
<p>Please do what you love, study something you enjoy and find interesting. If you graduate debt free you will be fine even with a low paying job. You can get more career and money focused about graduate school if you need to. That's sort of what I did - worked for a few years and then went for an MBA.</p>