I finally managed to narrow down some of my majors. My main goal is to go to law school but have a back up plan if I don’t get in. I want something that I’ll love, give me a decent career with a bachelors and something that will save me from flipping burgers. Which majors should I definitely eliminate?
Possible double majors:
-marketing and (journalism or communications)
-political science and sociology
-sociology and marketing
-political science and marketing
-political science and (journalism or communications)
-sociology and (journalism or communications)
Possible minors:
-Statistics or business analytics
My interests are: creativity, presenting ideas, manipulation, creating project with people, writing. Scored well on AP Psychology, AP Comparative and AP Government. In Highschool, I wrote for a magazine, did theatre, loved debating in mock legislature, and advertised/made visuals for an event with many other people on social media.
It’s great to have a goal and to realize it’s important to have a back up plan for your goal if it doesn’t materialize. It sounds as though you’re still in high school or just graduated and are about to start college. Is this correct?
My initial reaction is to say slow down and explore. When you get to college, take a political science class, a sociology class, a statistics class, a marketing class, and a journalism or communications class, all of which should help fulfill distribution requirements (social sciences, probably a numeracy class, and maybe a humanities class). See what interests you and go from there.
Many professional fields care primarily that you HAVE a college degree and don’t care nearly as much about what that degree is in. They will want you to be able to think critically, analyze, synthesize, and write well. For law school majors that require lots of reading and writing are some of the best preparation, but you can major in anything.
Once you have some experience in some of the classes, that might well provide clarity. See if you can do the marketing for a student club or volunteer to do some comms work for a small community organization. Write for the student newspaper. Talk with the professors about what types of fields graduates with these majors have gone into. As you narrow in, you can also try and do some job shadowing and continue building experience.
But also make sure you’re open to other possibilities. Maybe you’ll take an anthropology class and decide that’s more interesting to you than poli sci or sociology. Or maybe you’ll figure out that you really like graphic design and go in that direction instead. There are many majors and many careers that you may not know anything about. Give yourself time to explore them and see where that leads you.
5 Likes
completely agree with @AustenNut: you need to take some classes and do some internships. All of your combinations have tremendous overlap, so there is a lot of room to play around. IRL the name of your major(s)/minor(s) is much less important than you probably think.
One thing to be aware of: the coin of the realm in both political science and journalism is internships, and although things are (very very slowly) changing, you can expect that they will be unpaid / barely paid at the beginning, and fiercely competitive to get. Get started on getting experience from Day 1: join the school paper, join a political campaign, whatever you can do. Keep moving the ball down the field, using one stint to get the next one. You should always have at least one on the go.
As for choosing classes, as @AustenNut suggested take the intro classes for everything you are interested in- but be aware that the sometimes the intro course is wildly different the major (for better or for worse!) so don’t rule a subject in or out on the basis of one class. Look ahead at the course descriptions for the major: do most of the required courses / course options make you think ‘ooh, that sounds interesting!’?
The main thing is: at each juncture, follow your truest interest in choosing. Have a little faith in yourself that you will discern a good path for you.
ps, ignored your title b/c there are no big differentiators for them in the areas you are interested - and there are many hybrid / cross-sectoral roles out there as well!
1 Like