7 Myths About Choosing College Majors
Elton Lin
There’s something anxiety-producing and distressing about being asked about your grades, your dream college, your college application list—but what’s often equally dreaded at family gatherings is being asked about your intended major. It’s the bane of the indecisive, and the stress is only amplified by all the talk of a major’s sheer importance, making choosing a major possibly even more stressful than applying to college itself! The truth is, however, that most of the talk surrounding choosing a college major is a mass of rumors and misconceptions. Below are seven myths about choosing college majors that are sure to keep the pressure at bay!
You have to know your major before you start preparing for college. A common myth is that students have to decide on their college major long before college applications (or even senior year) so that they can craft their high school extracurriculars, classes, and the like according to that major, and thus produce a more convincing college application. However, while having a consistent application is certainly a good thing, the focus should primarily be the student’s interests and passions, whether that correlates to a specific major or not! People also seem to think that being undecided on your college applications will severely lower your chances of acceptance, but in truth, many college students are undeclared majors (especially so in Stanford’s student body—50% of its undergraduates were undeclared in 2019) as some schools allow students to wait as late as the end of their sophomore year to declare their major! So much of the pressure to decide a major early is unfounded.
You’re stuck with the major you choose, no take backs. Yes, majors have requirements that you have to fulfill, so changing yours after taking classes might seem like a bleak waste of your time. But though it may require some extra elbow grease to fulfill the additional requirements of that new major, students are in no way confined to the first major they choose. Often, you’ll find that some of the classes you’ve already taken can be used to fulfill credits for your new major (or at the very least, general education units). A report by the U.S. Department of Education indicates that 33% of undergraduates in four-year colleges trying to get a BA decide the major they’ve chosen isn’t for them and change it accordingly. And this is within three years, meaning some of these students change their minds pretty late into their college careers! Your college major is definitely not set in stone.
Everything you study in college will be confined to your major. Some colleges have a core curriculum or general education requirements (i.e. Harvard and UPenn), ensuring that you learn outside of your major during your time there. And if you’re pursuing one major (or even two), it’s likely that you’ll fulfill all your requirements with some course units to spare, meaning that you can explore other interests in addition to your major. Even within the majors themselves, there are often elective credits students must take, which can be fulfilled with a variety of interesting classes.
Your major pre-determines your career. This is probably one of the more far-reaching myths. The truth is that graduate school degrees are often necessary for specific careers like law, medicine, social work, etc. Undergraduate majors have a much more flexible relationship with future careers. In fact, a study using information from the U.S. Bureau of the Census shows that only 27.3% of working college graduates have a job that actually straightforwardly “matches” their major.
Liberal arts majors either don’t get jobs or make low salaries. No and no. Liberal arts majors often get the brunt of the jibes and mocking during dinner conversations, but employers look for people with a variety of strengths, not just an intensive knowledge of engineering theory. Although many may consider liberal arts as humanities and arts subjects, the true definition of liberal arts also encompasses social sciences and natural sciences. People tend to make fun of the so-called “social skills” that liberal arts majors gain during their time in college, but according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, those “social skills” are in high demand—demand that’s been and being rewarded with high pay and job opportunities! These jobs cover a wide spectrum, from writing jobs (journalism, editing) to human-oriented ones (sociology, public relations) to even scientific careers (psychology, archaeology).
If you want to make money, a STEM major is the only way to go. As indicated previously, other majors can be your money tree. But what’s even more overlooked is the fact that a STEM major doesn’t guarantee you’ll be raking in the cash! STEM encompasses a huge range of studies—it’s an acronym for four general fields that then branch off into a myriad of other specific disciplines—and so STEM also covers all kinds of careers, from (yes) the six-digit salaries to the complete opposite. Even more specific labels such as physicists, engineers, and biologists are still very general terms, covering a wide range of positions and wages.
The more majors (and minors) you have, the better. So many people maintain the idea that more majors means more marketability (count the M’s). What really ends up happening is that students get overwhelmed by the increased workload or confine themselves to taking classes solely within their majors or minors, leaving them unable to explore other interests and activities that would make them more well-rounded and happy (and maybe provide more marketability than the additional major). Don’t get the wrong idea—pursuing more than one major is great! There are plenty of good reasons to do so, especially if you’re super interested in all those subjects and you believe you can handle the extra work, but trying to make your résumé more impressive definitely isn’t one of them.
Choosing a major is definitely a big decision, but it’s not as powerful of a decision as it may seem. Choosing a major is full of flexibility and opportunity! Find a major that aligns with your interests or your goals, and feel free to change that major if the growth you undergo during your college career sets your mind on a different path.