Major in English

<p>I’m still involved in south India (have been for 33 years), and still write about it. [url=&lt;a href=“http://www.friendsoflafti.org%5DHome%5B/url”&gt;http://www.friendsoflafti.org]Home[/url</a>] and shantinik.blogspot.com</p>

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<p>If you think that you may like proofs of mathematical theorems and the like, junior and senior level math courses, and honors or “with theory” courses for freshman and sophomores (if offered), are likely to have more of that.</p>

<p>“With email the dominate form of corporate communications- one needs to know how to write a clear concise email…” </p>

<p>True. But being an English major may not help a lot there. For better or for worse, many corporate communications include more bullets/charts/etc than well developed paragraphs. </p>

<p>Back in the 1980s at my engineering school I took at “Technical Communications” concentration. It was a rare thing then (we were just learning how to use a student-developed word processsor), but perhaps it is more common now. </p>

<p>The TC minor was very useful and actually opened the door with the employer I still have now, 27 years later. I especially liked the “Business Writing” class, with an assignment for writing your own resume. Getting a B minus on your own resume really gets you in gear!</p>

<p>Mini, you rule. :)</p>

<p>[fellow English major]</p>

<p>I don’t think that college major should be so closely tied to future career, at least, for many people (the exception being the more vocational majors, such as engineering). With a degree in English, you can go to any grad school, including medical or law school. Your skills in writing, reading, analysis and communicating will apply to many jobs.</p>

<p>I think that volunteering, interning and working in various positions in various fields is the most helpful way to approach choosing a job, regardless of major. </p>

<p>Young people are taught to view the job market in neat categories, and that is misleading. The job market is more complicated and more varied than that, and your life path may involve some wandering at first. Most people have to do some entry level jobs as well.</p>

<p>Many non-profits need good writers, and fundraising, grant-writing, newsletters, or donor letters all require good writing. But that is just one of so many options out there.</p>

<p>Study what you love to study, and things will work out in the end. As freshman, you are doing what you should be doing: exploring your interests.</p>

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<p>That may have been true years or decades ago, when university education was less expensive and any bachelor’s degree was more distinctive in the labor market.</p>

<p>Today, a student cannot completely ignore job and career prospects, because graduating with a huge amount of student loan debt and no job is hardly a good place to be. In some of the university career center surveys that I have seen, some of the job title reported by graduates are low end retail jobs that could have been gotten without a bachelor’s degree – not a good place to be after graduating with student loan debt.</p>

<p>This does not mean that a student should not major in English, but that the student should know what s/he is going into, look for internships, aggressively look for jobs early in senior year, etc… Also, courses in additional subjects can help; the OP may want to consider whether Chinese or French would help in journalism or other writing involving places where those languages are used, as well as whether math can help with writing books or articles about math for the general public.</p>