<p>Actually, Organizational behavior is the stupidest major, I've decided.</p>
<p>Let me see- a room full of engineers at a dinner party, or a room with phycologists, artists, filmmakers, journalist</p>
<p>gosh, can't decide</p>
<p>Psychology is a great major/minor in tandom with a good minor - or even a double major - it is NOT just a pre-req for grad school - it applies in many facets of life - business - all fields in medicine - teaching - recreation - etc... - even car sales :D - what ever one wants to apply it to. It all depends on what you do with the knowledge - not so much just the application</p>
<p>ROFL CGM ;)</p>
<p>hmmm, let ME see, how does relating different majors/occupations being at a dinner party relate to this thread at all?</p>
<p>Ahem I'm a history major and I'll tell you that it's how you make the most of your major to keep it from being "useless." My school's History department really train their students to think, read, and write critically that they get jobs all over the place. Employers really value history majors because we've done some research with all kinds of sources and know how to figure out such problems. Good history students are also capable of handling HUGE projects independently unlike engineering which I believe/heard that it's mostly teamwork.</p>
<p>English is also wonderful- you're hired for your writing skills! As for literature, you can't go wrong with classic Brit lit like Shakespeare and Jane Austen (though I really detest her writing) because they're referenced in popular culture all over the place in English-speaking countries so it's a great thing to have that knowledge to impress your non-English major friends to know where that commerical line came from.</p>
<p>There are some useless majors IMHO in the fine arts but sometimes it's what students enjoy and their parents might just want them to go to college regardless of major. It's the degree that counts.</p>
<p>I don't know if Psych grad degrees are all that competitive. I mean, most uni's offer a grad program in Psych. And really, how many people really go into Psychology every year at the graduate level?</p>
<p>Most Clinical Psychology PhD programs and good PsyD programs have acceptance rates ranging from >1% to about 10%-15%, and applicants are expected to have extensive research experience and a reasearch match with a professor at the school.</p>
<p>There are always "professional" psych schools (i.e., Adler, Argosy, etc.), but with those you face two huge problem: debt and internship. 40k per year tuition for 5+ years is not good when most clinical psychologists make about 60k-80k per year. The bigger problem, though, is internship match rates. All clinical/counseling psych. students have to go through a predoctoral national internship match, which is run like a physician residency match (applicants submit applications to sites, hopefully get selected for interviews, and then are matched--or not--through a complicated ranking process). About 3/4 of applicants overall match per year, but some professional programs match only 20%-50% of appl,icants or lower. Most schools require an APA or APPIC internship for graduation and almost all states require one for licensure, following a post-doctoral year. Additionally, anyone who wants to work for any government position NEEDS an APA-accredited (not just APPIC) internship and candidates from APA-accredited internship sites will almost always get the job over non-accredited applicants. Some candidates from professional schools find themselves inlicensable, unemployable, and in massive debt when they fail to match into an internship, and even those that do match from professional programs still have to deal with huge debt in a field that isn't particularly high-paying.</p>
<p>what exactly would be the definition of 'useless' in regards to a major? if it's all about money then all you have to do is look at the lowest avg salary for each major a year after graduation. if it's useless as far as the person goes, then anything can be useless as long as the person doesn't make use of what s/he learned. if it's useless as far as society goes, then i guess whatever you can think of that you don't use much in everyday life, that's probably going to be the most useless.</p>
<p>i'm going to assume it's the last definition we're going by, and say history simply because what exactly is history going to be useful for in my dad to day life. yea, if you don't know your history you're doomed to repeat it, but i think with the general knowledge we have today most people just need to learn from their mistakes during their life time, not something that happened (500 yrs ago). and as it goes, history seems like the basis for a lot of those 'studies' classes. for example for religious studies you're going to have to learn a bunch of history on the religion(s) you're interested in. </p>
<p>i considered music, but i listen to music. can't say film, since i love tv and movies. psych can't be it, since that's something that anyone can need at any point of their life (most do too). medicine can't be it either since it helps cure. english majors can write good entertaining stuff. entertainment is good. law, creates rules for society. math is the basis for a lot of things (one which is used every day, money).</p>
<p>i disagree with whoever said outdoor leadership. i'm not in that major or don't know of anyone in that major, but anything that teaches you leadership skills i would consider to be useful. not everyone is good at leading. same goes for management. both are skills that once they are learned they can help shape your career. of course it's what you make of it though.</p>
<p>i wouldn't judge majors by money though since that's something that's changing every year based on demand. for example, doctors have pretty damn good paying salaries after they are done with their residency and that's because it's a field where demand is very high, and supply is low. btw add economics to something that isn't useless ;)</p>
<p>If you don't understand history, you don't understand the world. Simple enough.</p>
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If you don't understand history, you don't understand the world.
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That's something I can live with. All I really care about is my own personal environment. Or will history tell my why my car suddenly stops working, why one particular neighbor does not like me or why my boss refused to increase my salary?</p>
<p>I'm surprised no one responded to the guy who said math is a useless major. Forget "psychology is useless," the math comment is pure ignorance.</p>
<p>b@r!um,</p>
<p>That's your own choice. If you choose to be ignorant, that's perfectly fine.</p>
<p>that's a pretty weak argument. just because you don't know history doesn't make you an ignorant person. in everyday life you don't need history to get by. it's good to know history because it makes you that much more knowledgeable but history won't determine won't show you how to fix things, how to negotiate deals, how to speak in public, how to fill out your taxes, how use the internet, how to walk, eat, crap, how to dance, how to write, etc.</p>
<p>BP everything you mentioned has happened in the past - it is learned as the result of knowing something about it - thus history :D</p>
<p>i don't think that's the kind of history we're talking about though, at least not me. when you say history to me, i think about roman history, greek history, history regarding a country, things like that.</p>
<p>to fix something, yes someone had to come up with a solution to fix in the past so others could apply the solution in the future, but there's no need to know how america became a country in there. the same goes for the other things i listed. i mean when people learn a language in elementary school, the kids aren't sat down and told so this is how english became a language. they start reading and pronouncing words then writing. if they want to learn how a lot of words are formed they can obtain the hisory of words but that isn't necessary for basic communication in day to day activities for most people. knowing tax history, won't help you fill out your taxes. the history of public speaking won't teach you how to become a better a better public speaker or the skills required. knowing how the internet was formed isn't going to impede you from using the internet. and how history teaches a baby how to walk, eat, crap is beyond me.</p>
<p>well, liberal arts is supposed to help you gain a basic foundation on how to live life. it won't help you how to do a specific thing (change tires, fix things, whatever), but it gives you a foundation to learn how to do a specific thing. without english, you wouldn't be able to read, and learn other things. sure, you don't really need to get beyond that, but i also believe that the more specialized you are in something, the more you can understand the basics as well, which can help you read and learn <em>other</em> things better. </p>
<p>and without history, you wouldn't be able to understand what was done before, so you should not do again. it might seem vague and broad, but even if you learn how to do a specific thing, it's pretty simple. all you do is keep doing the same thing over and over again, until you get it. and even then, after a few years later of not doing it, you'll forget it, and will just have to read the manual again. but if you learn something broad, you'll gain the foundation and it'll stick with you longer. if you want to know how history helps anyone, people have said the better you know about history, the more you can know about the present. i think this came from teddy roosevelt. while knowing how to do something specific is important, knowing simply that also isn't very beneficial to your overall mind expansion. which again, if expanded, can teach you how to learn and do even more things.</p>
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b@r!um,</p>
<p>That's your own choice. If you choose to be ignorant, that's perfectly fine.
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<p>overly condescending passive-aggressive history nerd found</p>
<p>Most majors aren't very applicable to everyday life. I'm a bioengineering major, how is that useful on a day to day basis?</p>
<p>Jack4640,</p>
<p>I consider every one of the liberal arts disciplines to be necessary to live a knowledgeable life. The person who doesn't understand history, politics, literature, sciences, etc, is ignorant. Not in a horrible sense, but they're lacking a great deal of knowledge that is rather important for living an aware life as a person in the modern world.</p>
<p>
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I consider every one of the liberal arts disciplines to be necessary to live a knowledgeable life. The person who doesn't understand history, politics, literature, sciences, etc, is ignorant. Not in a horrible sense, but they're lacking a great deal of knowledge that is rather important for living an aware life as a person in the modern world.
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<p>But do you have to spend 4 years and $160,000 to understand history, politics, literature, sciences, etc.? I've always felt it was more of the role of high schools to give us the "liberal arts." Or at least that's the way it should be. </p>
<p>College should be about studying your passion, whether it'd be aerospace engineering or zoology. You have to admit though that some majors are more useful in the sense that they prepare you directly for a certain career. Most of the liberal arts don't do that, so living "an aware life as a person in the modern world" is great and all, but what happens when you can't find a job? And who's to say the "pre-professional" majors don't know enough about history and politics?</p>
<p>Basically my point is, do you have to study liberal arts in depth for four years and spend $160,000 in order to "live an aware life as a person in the modern world?" Or does your high school education set you up to learn such things on your own if you choose to do so?</p>