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In my last post, I wrote about choosing a college. This week, we'll look at how to choose a major before attending college (if the admissions paperwork requires you to declare one) and again (yes, again) once you're actually in college.
I think it's unfair to ask someone right out of high school to pick a major, and many colleges fortunately don't ask students to "declare" a major until their second or third year. But in order to get a sense of how many students might end up enrolling in courses required for the major in each department, many colleges and universities do ask students to (often unofficially, thank goodness) declare a major on their application form.
I'm running with the assumption that a student is attending, or will be attending, a college that makes it not too difficult to change majors up through the second year of college. During those two years, students frequently are completing the general education requirements most colleges mandate as part of a breadth requirement for an undergraduate degree. That said, changing a major--and graduating in four years--can get complicated quickly if you're at a large research university that has different "schools" or "colleges" for undergraduate majors--in which case if you applied to the School of Engineering and you want to transfer over to the College of Liberal Arts, you may run into some trouble with not having completed the correct gen ed requirements for that college.
These "gen ed" courses are an excellent way to shop for a major if you're unsure what you want to study during your junior and senior years. You never know what new parts of your brain might be triggered when you take that computer science course they didn't offer at your high school, or that British literature course that requires you to read in Middle English. So explore! If you know deep in your heart, for example, that you're going to be an English major, and there's no way you're ever going to major in the sciences because you failed intermediate algebra the second time you took it in high school (waves hand)--and thus you suspect you'll never make it through the calculus required for certain majors--you should still explore your options widely in the humanities and social sciences. Take that American studies course, any of many ethnic studies (e.g. Chicano, Asian-American) courses, philosophy, economics, history. You never know what might scratch an intellectual itch you didn't know you had.
If after taking your gen ed courses, you're still having trouble figuring out what most interests you, read your college's catalog to get a sense of what's out there. The catalog will provide descriptions of the courses required for each major. Laurie at avocado8 offers some very concrete tips on using the college catalog to narrow down your choice of a major.
My horizon-broadening advice aside, there are several schools of thought on how to go about choosing a major. Hannah Waters explores four of these in her post 4 Ways to Choose Your College Major. She recommends looking beyond the income potential of career fields affiliated with the major, choosing a major that really interests you as a way to keep you motivated through the 4+ years of your undergraduate education, "shadowing" people whose careers interest you, and talking to your college's career center. Not sure what kind of professional to shadow? Check out the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics's Occupational Outlook Handbook, which offers a wealth of information about the training and education required for hundreds of different types of jobs, as well as income potential, working environment, and job prospects.
There's also a good deal of contention between people who believe students should choose a career-oriented major and those who advocate for a liberal arts degree. There are some fields, such as brewing science or landscape architecture, that provide you with the hands-on skills you'll (theoretically) need to get a job in your desired field. That said, not all professors and programs are in touch with the latest developments in their fields. For example, design departments, and particularly graphic design programs, have recently been criticized for emphasizing HTML coding and Adobe Photoshop over, say, designing user interfaces in a Web 2.0 world. And remember, even having a very specialized degree--say, in viticulture or oenology--does not guarantee you even an entry-level job in your field.
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