I am really having a hard time deciding my major for undergrad. I know for most people it doesn’t really matter what your undergraduate major is but for me it is really important to know just for stability. I definitely know I would like to work with kids in my career choice (but not as a teacher) and I didn’t know if anyone had any undergrad majors in mind.
I am interested in Developmental Child Psychology, but I don’t want that to be too specific a major;therefore, hindering me in terms of flexibility in my future aspirations. So I compiled a couple majors and I was wondering if anyone could give me a little more information if you have experience in or with these fields in terms of jobs and/or your career path.
The majors are as listed:
Developmental child psychology
General psychology
Social work
Human development and family services
Any information about the applicability of these majors would be helpful, if it helps in terms of my educational aspirations I would like to pursue a PhD or PsyD in Psych and (maybe) double major in Law/Psych in the future. So any feedback regarding which major may be the best fit would be great!
If you want to get a PhD in psychology, then you should major in psychology. A major in general psychology is probably best (it exposes you to a broad range of subfields and give you preparation to enter any one of them), but there’s nothing wrong with a major in dev child psych if you are fairly certain you want to do therapy with children.
Social work was going to be my secondary suggestion. I think social work is a terrific and flexible career field for someone interested in working with children; you can do clinical social work (counseling therapy) with a master’s degree (an MSW), or you can work in schools or hospitals or other settings with children doing non-clinical work. If you want to, you can later get a PhD in social work and continue as a clinician, work as a community social worker, and/or teach social work as a professor.
HDFS is a good major, too. Lots of HDFS students go onto careers in social work and community outreach with families and children, and with the right coursework you can still get a PhD in psychology (although majoring in it is best). With your career aspirations I think I might pick one of the other two majors and then minor in HDFS or just take a bunch of classes in it.
@GNJones17 Psych is an excellent major. At my undergrad, all of my psych friends seemed to be among the happiest on campus, and it probably wasn’t a coincidence.
If you happen to be interested in the bottom-up aspects of brain and behavior in addition to the top-down psych perspective, I might also recommend you take a look at neuroscience/neurobio. While most modern psych programs teach at least the fundamentals of neurobiology, you may find that knowing in more detail the physical substrates of affect, cognition, etc. may confer a very different and useful perspective grounded in a concrete understanding of how the nervous system works. This may be especially useful depending on what career you end up pursuing.
But I’m a bit biased since that’s what I majored in myself.
