<p>Here are two sides of the coin:</p>
<p>1) Majors don’t necessarily lead perfectly to careers. Many positions leave the major area of study open for applicants. I have friends who were English and history majors that are now working for top firms (or at least, were before the recession - I haven’t talked to many of them since college, so I don’t know if they were still working there. But these were top firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and PricewaterhouseCoopers). A lot of people take a college degree as evidence of a willingness and ability to learn, and most of the job training will be on the job.</p>
<p>2) I’m almost 3 years out of college, and I kind of wish I hadn’t majored in psychology. Although I’m currently in graduate school for it, I’m burned out and I wish I had picked a major that didn’t require graduate school. And honestly, our job market is hungry for the sciences, so I can see your son’s forethought in thinking about majoring in something practical. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I might’ve majored in mathematics or engineering and minored in psychology. Even if I had still come to a PhD program, I at least could branch into the very in-demand fields of organizational psychology or engineering/human factors psychology, or into epidemiology or biostatistics (I’m currently in a hybrid public health and psychology program). My math background is a big plus in understanding the statistics and quantitative analysis that I’ve done, and I wish I had not dropped the math minor I began with.</p>
<p>So honestly, I don’t blame your son for looking at employability when it comes to picking a major. Physical science majors, engineering majors and to a certain extent natural science majors have more flexibility when it comes to jobs AND there are a lot of scholarships that are open exclusively for those pursuing those fields.</p>
<p>When I was in college, I took a very well-rounded schedule - calculus and calculus-based physics right alongside AP English and history courses. First of all, I just loved everything - I loved calculus almost as much as I loved the English classes. But more importantly, I had no idea what I wanted to do and I didn’t want to rule anything out. I was ahead of many of the engineering and some of the math majors in my math and science sequence when I entered college (I would’ve started from calculus II; I knew some math majors that were starting with precal).</p>
<p>So my advice would be to keep a well-rounded schedule - take upper-level math classes and English/social science classes.</p>