I know that people have asked this before, but the search results that come up when I look for an answer are always a handful of years old.
So the past couple of years I’ve been considering all sorts of non-STEM majors. After half-heartedly trying to settle with Political Science for the past few months as college apps draw near, I just ran into a random sociology major student on a UC San Diego tour a week ago, and she seemed pretty happy with what she was doing. So I’ve been doing some research on sociology since then, and I think I really like the idea of it. I think I’d like to be part of the government and help people and contribute to social change, minus the mess of politics and technicalities (imo) that Political Science could bring.
I brought it up to my mom. She knows I’m applying to UCs, and thinks I’ll get into the better ones, so she’s upset over the fact that I’m considering a major that she thinks that only lazy, “dumb” people choose and that doesn’t make money. She’d rather I be a doctor or lawyer or programmer or businessperson, but I’m too much of an art/English/history-type person to do any of that.
Should I apply to the UCs as a sociology major? Is it easy enough to get a good job? I’m not asking for a big paycheck in the end, though ofc I don’t want to be flat-out struggling, and job (along with housing, insurance, etc) security is always great. If I do go through with sociology, what are some beneficial minors? Tips in general? Thanks for any input.
You can be a doctor or a lawyer or a business person or even a programmer with a sociology major. Sociology is a pretty popular major for law school, and med school, law school, and business school don’t require any specific majors. Programming is a skill-based job; most people who go into it majored in computer science or engineering but there are lots of programmers who are self-taught or learned while majoring in something else.
The thing is, there’s no straight-line path to careers with a sociology major (as is the case with most liberal arts majors, including chemistry and physics and biology). You have to be a little more creative - it’s about finding something that you like, and about developing skills that can get you jobs. A sociology major can develop research and statistics skills and go into market or user experience research; or develop communication skills and go into PR or marketing/advertising; or become a technical writer; or go into social work or human services or public health; or go into HR; or even go into finance if they learned the right math skills. You could do a lot of stuff!
Many, many people have jobs that aren’t directly related to what they majored in in college.
I do want to point out one thing, though:
If you work in the government and/or in any field that agitates for social change you WILL deal with politics and technicalities regardless of what your undergraduate major is. And please don’t be fooled - sociology has LOTS of that. It’s basically the deep study of all the tangled social interactions, problems, and issues that being social creatures has wrought upon us. Some of that heavily overlaps with political science. Your undergraduate major doesn’t determine what your job deals with - your job does that. An lobbyist who was a poli sci major will deal with the same stuff as a lobbyist for the same company who was a sociology major.
@juillet Thank you for your response. My emotions and passions are pretty changeable (thanks to having really no clue what to do in life), so since I made that post a month ago, I think I’ve pretty much scrapped sociology as a major and have gone resolved again on political science as a major. My mom gave me some stuff to think about, and I’ve read other stuff online that compared the two majors, and it really seems like political science is the better one.
I was a poli sci major and went to law school. A close friend was a sociology major and is now a social worker. I make more money but she is a better person. In her career, she actually helps people on a day to day basis. I do, too, but it’s different, not as immediate. I also had friends in law school who were soc majors and a couple who had actually worked as social workers before going to law school.
Pick a major based on what you are interested in studying, not what you think is the best for a future career.
@techmom99 Thanks for the insight. Yeah, I’d like to help people, but I’m not sure in what way, whether it’s your route or your friend’s, so that’s something I really gotta figure out. But I’m guessing that poli sci can open more doors (and I’m guessing one can enter social work with a poli sci degree, in the case I want to have more of a hands-on career), so I might just end up with that.
I don’t necessarily think political science would open more doors; a similarly skilled sociology major could probably get the vast majority of the same jobs that a political science major could. Unemployment rates for recent sociology graduates is actually slightly lower than that of poli sci graduates, although the difference is not significant, and it disappears after 3-5 years out of college. The average recent poli sci graduate makes about the same as the average recent sociology graduate. (The gap does widen as you get more experience, in favor of political science majors. I would imagine that has more to do with career choice than the major itself - political science majors probably just desire career roles that are more lucrative than the ones sociology majors, on average, want.)
So I think the decision should be made based on interest. Nevertheless, it sounds like you are more interested in poli sci anyway!