<p>In your opinion, what are the most marketable majors that don't require graduate school? If you're not a super math genius or the next J.K. Rowling, what could you study in college and legitimately make a living off of it?</p>
<p>Also... what jobs do you imagine would be the most prosperous (based on the major)?</p>
<p>I’d say the major that makes the most money without post-baccalaureate education is engineering, with chemical at the top. I’m not sure if that requires you be a “super math genius.”</p>
<p>I think being an officer in the military (which just requires a degree - not a specific major) pays pretty well, too.</p>
<p>Next: Computer Science, Accounting and Economics from some quick googling.</p>
<p>The best paying majors out of undergrad are the ones that most directly prepare you for a job. Those would be engineering, computer science, and accounting. If you go to a good school and do well you can make good money with any major, but in general, the ones I listed are the best with just an undergraduate degree. Chances are, if you want to move up in the chain wherever you work you will need a higher degree like an MS or MBA, but you don’t need to worry about that right now. These majors require you to be pretty good at math. Part of what helps you make the big bucks out of undergrad are your quantitative abilities.</p>
<p>Communication with a concentration in winning NCAA championships in basketball and football.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what a “super math genius” is but Chemical Engineering would require quite a bit of math (I have up to Calc III to take, I’m not a ChemEn major but I am Chemistry which is comparable except a few classes have engineering counterparts and my ultimate profession is far less lucrative.)</p>
<p>i hope this thread has no weight in anyone’s decision making. unless your passion is underwater basketweaving, you’re better off majoring in something you’re in love with than something that is marketable.</p>
<p>Market who you are, not your major.</p>
<p>For undergrad it’s definitely business and engineering.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Depends on the business degree. Accounting and finance majors do better than advertising and management majors.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It doesn’t take genius to do well in engineering. The mathematics are practical and not very abstract. You just need a command of the basics and a willingness to work hard.</p>
<p>
That’s great and all, but when you’re dropping 50 Gs a year to go to school its a good idea to have some idea what majors put their students in the best positions for jobs. There is a reason why on average engineering majors leave with better jobs than liberal arts majors. Whether it is a factor of the major itself or the type of students the major attracts, some majors have better job placement than others. If your goal is a PhD it’s a different story, but if you want to enter the real world with a job offer before you graduate, it’s generally better to have engineering or accounting as your major than sociology or anthropology.</p>
<p>*not trying to put down those majors, but most engineers I know have jobs by December while humanities majors and social science majors are still looking in June.</p>
<p>Well there are certain majors that probably aren’t going have many job offerings (philosophy, history, Eastern studies, etc , so yeah many humanity courses). But I agree with some of the above posts, don’t do a major just because you think it’s “good” or “safe”. Pick something that you love but realistically speaking can get you a job. Just because engineering majors supposedly get jobs right of college doesn’t mean you’ll be happy. Personally I’d be miserable but I just hate math. Life is too short to major in something you hate.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am majoring in something I truly love, but I will not quite agree with this. Mathematics as I’m studying it isn’t immediately useful in a job certainly, unless one is talking a research career at a university or something. I think life is a little longer than people think – much longer than the 4 years you’re in college. People can be passionate about things other than their careers and go after money so they can have a stable enough life to do what they want in their spare time. No use majoring in something fun and then doing dirty work to pay the bills, and having no time in the rest of one’s life, which one’s fortune-willing will be much, much longer than 30 years. </p>
<p>Also, not everyone “loves” an academic discipline enough that they’d want to major in something independent of how much money it will fetch them. These can be perfectly interesting people with passions that are not academic in nature. One can have passions and not pursue a career in them, and frankly most people just cannot pursue a career in what they are passionate about. Marketability of a major probably should be one of the biggest factors considered, unless an individual is absolutely certain that this factor is not important to them. </p>
<p>I would put engineering very high, for all the reasons people have stated. A good engineer is always necessary, even if a decent engineer has become more and more commoditized. But sorry folks, not many will pay you to write papers about Shakespeare or philosophize about life and language and all those great things – many more will pay you if you can build something that makes their life easier. </p>
<p>Majoring in something you love can be great if you’re not locked out of career opportunities of course. If you’re majoring in some humanities discipline and have plans to go to law school, that’s great. You may get the best end of many worlds, in the sense you may enjoy your 4 years doing something you hopefully enjoy, and then seek out a good career. </p>
<p>There is certainly a class of people whose goal is to have a good job out of undergrad, and may not care deeply which major they pursue + have pretty good math skills, and thus engineering might be a great fit even if they didn’t exactly dream their lives away about becoming great engineers.</p>