Webinar Transcript: College Majors—Why They Matter and How to Choose Them
Elton Lin
(This is a transcript of a webinar from June 2024, a recording of which you can find on our YouTube channel.)
Elton Lin: All right, everybody! Good to have everybody on board—let me also just adjust my screen a little bit here and get ready for this evening’s webinar.
If you don’t mind, I’m always excited to see who’s calling in and get a sense… last webinar that we did [on 2024 admissions trends] almost a month ago, we had people from all over the world, including Hong Kong… I believe there was South America, and some all across the East Coast.
So I’m here in the San Francisco Bay Area! Anthony is located in Boston today. So we are representing that cross-country effort tonight.
But excited to have everybody on! If you don’t mind going on the chat, let us know where you’re calling in from, just give us a city or a country or a place…
[Some webinar attendees share their locations, including Florida, California, Oregon, Georgia, and Michigan.]
Just to intro our time: I’m going to share some content about college majors. There’s a lot of new and important data to share—some of that is going to be rehashed from the trends webinar, if you were there—so there’s going to be some of that, plus a little bit more specific data to share.
I’m going to share a little bit about how college majors, at the beginning point of a very dynamic and changing job landscape—how college majors could potentially influence our choices for the forthcoming five to ten years. So excited to come on and share!
I’m going to bring on Anthony. I just want to introduce you to Anthony; Anthony’s our operations person, and he’s been awesome. You’ve seen him on previous webinars. He’s going to jump back in and—he’s certainly a familiar voice and face, so we’ll grab you back in later, and if there are questions of any form, go ahead and post them on the Q&A. Anthony will come back, and we’ll address all the questions near the end.
My intention is to actually try to keep the content session shorter and open up for more time for questions. And I know that a lot of you represent students with specific scenarios; happy to dig into it, happy to share as much as we can, give as much insight as we can, and then go from there.
All right, let’s get started! Let me do a quick intro of myself, just in case you don’t know me. My name is Elton Lin, I’m the CEO and founder of ILUMIN Education. I’ve been doing private college advising for—actually—more than 12 years now, and our students have been admitted to every top 50 university, including every Ivy League. We work with more than 300 students per year, submit more than 3,000 applications per year, so we see a fairly good cross-section of students. Our consulting director—president—is a former University of California admissions counselor, so we have a fair amount of visibility, have seen quite a bit, and happy to certainly share as much experience and insight and everything else as much as we can along the way!
Topics for tonight
- Why college majors matter
- Minor or double major to build balance:
- How intended majors impact admissions
- How intended majors impact careers
- Questions
Elton Lin: Just to give us a quick primer for where we’ll be going today… the topic is: why colleges majors matter, and do college majors matter? And they certainly do—and in respect to the admissions process, certainly more so now than ever before, you know, what you choose for your college major does matter.
Now, certainly it matters in different degrees, depending on which university you’re thinking about applying to, whether it be a Stanford or UC Berkeley or an Emory—whatever the case may be, the choice of your major matters. It may matter more in some cases, may matter less in some cases, but increasingly, it does matter.
I’m also going to spend a little bit of time talking about how your intended major could possibly impact your future career path. And I think especially for parents, having just gone through a good host of college list conversations with families, there’s always a lot of understandable anxiety about, “What does choosing a major mean right now? If I choose bio, does that mean I can’t choose data science? Or if I choose history, does that mean I can’t switch over to art or design, or whatever the case may be?”
So there’s a lot of fear, inhibition, about making some of these choices, and so: happy to get into some data presently about the job landscape, why it matters, and where we might be going with college majors.
College Major Matters: How majors impact admissions
Elton Lin: So let’s talk first about how college majors impact the admissions process. Some of this—again, if you were at our trends webinar, I did go over some of this content already…
Bachelor Degrees Conferred 2022
| Agriculture and natural resources | 40,675 | Health professions | 263,765 |
| Architecture and related services | 9,462 | Homeland security, law enforcement | 56,901 |
| Area, ethnic, cultural studies | 6,658 | Legal professions and studies | 4,444 |
| Biological and biomedical sciences | 131,462 | Mathematics and statistics | 26,212 |
| Business | 375,418 | Parks/rec, leisure, fitness, kinesiology | 52,776 |
| Communication, journalism | 86,043 | Philosophy and religious studies | 11,230 |
| Computer and information sciences | 108,503 | Physical sciences | 28,301 |
| Education | 89,410 | Psychology | 129,609 |
| Engineering | 123,017 | Public administration/social services | 33,429 |
| English language and literature | 33,429 | Social sciences and history | 151,109 |
| Family, consumer, human sciences | 20,630 | Theology and religious vocations | 6,394 |
| Foreign languages | 13,912 | Visual and performing arts | 90,241 |
Elton Lin: Just to give you a quick overview: this is an overview of 2022, and the total number of bachelor degrees conferred in 2022, depending on major categories. So if you just kind of skim around and take a look, obviously business is significant, computer and information sciences over 100 thousand, engineering over 123 [thousand], health professions, psychology, social sciences and history, still relatively significant—but if you look at the difference between 2012 and 2022, this is, in my opinion, way more telling.
So in 2012, you’re talking about the number of degrees conferred for bio, it’s 100k—in 2022, 131k. Not a humongous difference, in my opinion, but when you start looking at computer and information sciences, it has essentially doubled since 2012.
I think we can all kind of understand the growth of computer science, certainly, but you can see the growth in these top six, but also see the decline in the bottom three: social sciences and history, English language and literature, foreign languages. And you can see—automatically get the sense that with a higher demand in STEM, computer sciences, engineering, invariably that’s going to crimp the admissions—crimp the applicant pool, crimp the admissions rate, with regards to trying to get into the university that you’re targeting.
Top Majors Based on Salary
Computer science
Electrical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Chemical engineering
Industrial engineering
Information technology
Civil engineering
Statistics
Nursing
Management Info Systems
**Source: Glass Door
Most In-Demand Majors
Nursing
Computer science
Business
Accounting
Physical therapy
Math and statistics
Information science
Finance
Psychology
Marketing
**Source: Indeed
Elton Lin: So maybe just to kind of give you a glimpse of the most popular majors of 2023, based on Glass Door… you can kind of get a sense of where they are pointing at. Obviously computer science, dominated by engineering, and if you look at the Indeed survey, it certainly comes up nursing number one, which—I think nursing will continue to be a high demand career field for a long time. But they still have some of the other obvious ones, like computer science, and they include some of the other health practices, but it’s still computer science, math and statistics, some business and finance functions…
So when you start taking a look at the most popular majors that lead to the most popular jobs, you’re getting a sense of where everyone is moving towards.
What does this mean?
In-demand majors are more are more selective
Choice of major may make college a “reach”
Strong grades with many AP’s is not enough
Resumes need to support your interest in higher demand majors
Elton Lin: And so what does this mean? Obviously, the in-demand majors are going to be more selective. So if you put down your intended major as computer science, obviously that will make applying to that particular school more selective, more competitive.
Your major choice may make a college a reach as opposed to a target or safety… and I will get into some specific data. So, you know, certainly choosing a more selective major may make it more difficult to get in.
Strong grades with many APs is generally speaking not enough, because you’re talking about more students applying, generally speaking, more stronger students applying, so you’re going to get a lot of students who have strong grades and good test scores, and a lot of the differentiation will be in what you do outside of class.
So the fourth point being: resumes need to support your interest in higher demand majors, need to be more clear! So if you’re on the admissions side, and you’re thinking, “I only have a certain number of students, I have way more or a certain number of seats in a particular department, I have way more applicants than I really need… I really want to see whether a student is committed to really studying that particular area of study.” And so your resume becomes much more important in the review process.
Case Study - UC Santa Barbara
Overall acceptance rate: 26%
90 majors
~125,000 applicants (2022)
~10,000 (8%) applied to Computer Science
~8,000 of those 10,000 had 4.0 or higher UC GPA
~800 were accepted
Computer Science acceptance rate: 6.4%
Elton Lin: I can give you a specific study on UC Santa Barbara: overall acceptance rate around 26%. That probably flexed a little bit up and down, but: around 26%. Ninety majors at UC Santa Barbara, 125k applicants… 10,000 of those 125k applicants applied to computer science, 8,000 of the 10,000 had UC 4.0 GPA and up, and only 800 were admitted, which makes the effective acceptance rate for computer science at a 6.4%, when the rest of the university is still at a 26%.
And so this is where, again, applying into the more selective, impacted majors is going to make it a little bit more difficult. Maybe a quick glimpse into the UC CS admit rates…
CS Admit Rates — Univ of California
| Campus | CS |
|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | 2.9%-L&S EECS-4.5% |
| UC Davis | No data but <20% |
| UC Irvine | 5.8% |
| UCLA | 3.8% |
| UC Merced | 85% |
| UC Riverside | 36% |
| UC San Diego | No data but <10% |
| UC Santa Barbara | No data Historically 5-6% |
| UC Santa Cruz | 123,017 |
Note: Admissions Year 2022
UCSC and UCR CS admit rates have also gone down since 2022.
Elton Lin: This was two years ago, so this is 2022, and you can kind of get a glimpse that every—especially the top half of the UC CS admit rates—are all single digits! So essentially, if you’re talking about a UC Irvine for CS… getting into CS at UC Irvine is essentially like getting into an MIT or University of Pennsylvania or many other Ivy Leagues.
I often have found, over the course of the last five years, just a lot of frustration—especially being in California—a lot of students wanting to apply computer science, computer engineering into the UC system, [but] it’s becoming way more restrictive. There’s a lot of frustration. But it’s purely just because there’s just so many applicants! I’m not so much saying that people shouldn’t do computer science; I’m more so wanting to communicate what the dynamic is, the landscape is, as it relates to applying into these schools.
ENG Admit Rates — UCLA (2023)
Samueli School of Engineering
Overview by Major in Samueli School of Engineering
| Major | Applicants | Admit Rate | 25th % for Admits | 75th % for Admits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aerospace Engineering | 2,598 | 4.3% | 4.53 | 4.84 |
| Bioengineering | 2,684 | 6.3% | 4.58 | 4.84 |
| Chemical Engineering | 1,011 | 17% | 4.40 | 4.77 |
| Civil Engineering | 2,178 | 7.7% | 4.45 | 4.69 |
| Computer Engineering | 1,697 | 3.7% | 4.46 | 4.80 |
| Computer Science | 11,939 | 3.1% | 4.62 | 4.87 |
| Computer Science and Engineering | 3,682 | 3.2% | 4.60 | 4.85 |
| Electrical Engineering | 1,986 | 9.9% | 4.53 | 4.78 |
| Materials Engineering | 484 | 15% | 4.50 | 4.75 |
| Mechanical Engineering | 4,645 | 4.2% | 4.51 | 4.75 |
| Undeclared—Engineering and Applied Science | 2,515 | 4.7% | 4.46 | 4.80 |
Elton Lin: Let’s get even more specific with engineering schools.
This is the UCLA School of Engineering, and if you want to even break down specifically the admit rate for individual majors within engineering… talking about aerospace, bioengineering… civil engineering… even within the engineering school, there is a different admit rate!
And so you’re talking about, like, chemical engineering, which generally speaking has fewer applicants than computer science—if you just look at the total applicants as it relates to computer science… it’s 10% of the total number of applicants, of the total computer science pool. So obviously the admit rate will be a little bit more robust than a computer science, computer engineering…
And if you can see from here, chemical, materials engineering are certainly going to be a higher admit rate than the more higher demand majors within the engineering school.
So even as you think about this, there is even a little bit more differentiation. Now, not every school has this data; [for] UCLA, this data is public and [can be taken] off their site, but not every school has it up. But you can kind of get a sense of, genuinely speaking, what are the higher demand majors, even within engineering.
What do I do?
Consider other majors (or other routes)
Apply to more target and safety schools
Build a resume that clearly communicates the student’s interest in major
Elton Lin: So what do you do?
Number one: it’s good to certainly consider other majors and/or other routes. And I do feel like many students—not every student, but many students—at this stage, you’re not entirely sure what you want to do. It’s okay to consider other majors and what else might be a good fit.
And you may want to ask yourself the question: is it more important to be admitted for the major, or is it more important to be admitted to the school? And I often ask these parents, and a lot of parents say, “we need both,” but you know, you can’t have everything in life, as many of us know. So oftentimes you have to prioritize one or the other, so you know which one’s more important to you.
Number two: apply to more target and safety schools. We can get—this is another webinar altogether, but—it’s important to make sure that a large percentage, or a good number of the schools you’re applying to, are schools that you’re confident you’re going to be admitted to, and applying to more of them only benefits you, in most respects.
We can get into the dynamics of a lot of people applying to a lot of safety schools, but generally speaking, applying to more safety schools also provides an opportunity for more of those safety schools to provide merit aid and supplement the admissions package with some merit scholarship.
And so this is why I always tell families, I mean, you apply into the UC system, and if you’re applying to computer science—and let’s just say you got into UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, which are terrific schools, by the way—but if a private school, a school like a Baylor or a Loyola Marymount in California, if they were to give anywhere between 10 and 25k for you to go to those schools, would you consider it?
And I always feel like I’m not telling anybody that they need to go to any particular place, but I always like families and students to have the option. Having the option to go to a school with some kind of merit aid package can only happen if you apply to enough target and safety schools. So let me encourage you to do that!
And then, if you’re a younger 9th or 10th grade student: building a resume that clearly communicates the students interest in that particular major especially, if you're aiming at a more competitive major, is increasingly more important.
Alternative Majors
Computer Science: applied math, humanities major with CS minor, business analytics, cybersecurity, statistics, cognitive science
Biology: gerontology, biological anthropology, human/child development, nutrition/dietetics, public health, environmental science
Business: communications, public relations, economics, international relations/global studies, applied math/statistics
Note: Pre-med students do NOT need to be science majors. Consider other majors (or other routes)
Elton Lin: So let me just provide some alternative major options. Again, if you were in the trends webinar you would have seen this, but I'm not going to go into too much depth into this.
But just to kind of take a quick look: there are certainly applied math, cybersecurity, statistics… data science is becoming increasingly more popular… I really actually like cognitive science, because it is a fusion of psychology, linguistics, and computer science, and I think the interdisciplinary relationship between those three disciplines is super important for AI and any kind of crafting of machine learning algorithms. So I think it’s a great major.
I’m going to talk a lot about a humanities major with a CS minor later, so I’ll come back to that, but maybe some other options for biology, business… and maybe a clear note—I seem to say this statement a lot to a lot of families, but premed students do not need to be science majors. Students who are aiming towards applying to med school can be in any major. Med schools are very open to a diversity of students with different backgrounds, including different academic backgrounds, so they’re not just looking to fill med schools with a bunch of bio majors. So if you’re aiming towards that direction, be open to any major, and you just need some time to study for the MCAT.
Alternative Majors
Electrical/Mechanical Engineering: environmental, aerospace, materials, nuclear, industrial
Neuroscience + Psychology: sociology, anthropology, human ecology, urban studies, American/ethnic studies, linguistics
Less competitive majors: foreign languages, English, history, philosophy, comparative literature, classics, geology, geography
Elton Lin: Maybe some other alternative majors for other disciplines… more common ones, certainly less competitive majors: foreign languages, English, history, philosophy… there is, I think, an unfortunate trend of foreign language departments at universities closing, and I feel rather sad about that. I feel, especially in such an international, mobile community that we live in now, being students of different languages and cultures [is] super important.
So I feel sad that those departments are closing, but it’s reflective of the demand, so that’s a part of the issue here.
Alternative Majors
More colleges offering a CS x “other major” program
Most notable example: University of Illinois
Computer Science Programs
Computer Science: 7.5%
Computer Science + X Programs: 19.6%
Elton Lin: There are more colleges offering a CS x “other major” program, meaning a computer science plus other major. And the most notable example is University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. There, if you just apply into the computers science major in the School of Engineering, it’s around a 7.5% [admit rate]—actually, that’s two years ago, I think it’s probably gone down since then.
But they offer a computer science plus combo major with other programs, and that’s averaging at around a 19% admit rate, so when you think about where you want to apply to, I think applying into the combo programs at UIUC is a good deal.
Alternative Majors
CS X Majors at UIUC
College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Computer Science + Animal Sciences
Computer Science + Crop Sciences
College of Education
Computer Science + Education
The Grainger College of Engineering
Computer Science + Bioengineering
Computer Science + Physics
College of Fine and Applied Arts
Computer Science + Music
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Computer Science + Anthropology
Computer Science + Astronomy
Computer Science + Chemistry
Computer Science + Economics
Computer Science + Geography & Geographic Information Science
Computer Science + Linguistics
Computer Science + Philosophy
College of Media
Computer Science + Advertising
Elton Lin: Maybe some examples of what some of those combo majors look like… you can certainly take a look and do some exploration on the UIUC website and dive into that as well. You can imagine—I think a very underrated option here is Computer Science + Linguistics. Again, a lot of human-computer interaction design is really based on language processing, so I think the CS + Linguistics—super great combo, in my opinion. And not withstanding the Computer Science + Philosophy, which I will get into more later in this presentation.
When considering different majors…
Don’t randomly choose - admissions can detect majors that don’t match
Find a thread in your application to follow a major
Volunteering w/ climate change NGO + working at farmers market = environmental sciences
Tutoring at-risk students + volunteering at food bank = sociology
Community action + strong in sciences + loves art = urban design
Consider major + minor combinations
Major in philosophy + minor in computer science = artificial intelligence
Elton Lin: All right, when considering different majors, don’t randomly choose! I mean, you shouldn’t just choose a major because it’s easy to get into.
We have a former Rice admissions officer who is on our advisory team, and he was telling me that when they were reviewing applications, and there was an incongruence, meaning a student declared—you know, he got an [application] where it was very robotics, computer science club, STEM club research experience—and then that student declared French as their major, and it was just an automatic tip off that there was some incongruence between what the student chose to intend to study. And it was obvious that the student chose a major just to get into the school.
And so you can imagine, if you see it, it just becomes, “I don’t really trust you,” and there’s some sense of, “I don’t believe what you’re writing on this app is true.” So admission can detect majors that don’t match, so you can’t just choose randomly. You need to choose a major that does fit your profile and lines up with your storyline of where you’re going, what you’re really interested in.
And you should consider major + minor combinations, as I will get into a little bit more later.
Student Case Study
Student A: Computer Science
3.8 UW GPA, 1500 SAT, 11 APs
3 large leadership roles
2 award-winning science fair projects
1 internship
2 research summer programs
cUCB, UCLA, UCD, UCSD, UCSB, UCI, UCSC, UW, UM, BU, Purdue
Attending: Purdue
Elton Lin: Maybe to finish this section off, and share a little bit about a real quick student case study: we had a student—this was two or three years ago, probably two years ago—3.8 unweighted [GPA], 1500 on SAT, 11 APs, which is pretty strong. You can get a sense of their activities: three fairly significant leadership roles; had two science fair projects, one regional winner and then the state recognition; an internship; research summer programs.
And these were the results (yellow = waitlisted, red = rejected, and then green = admitted). So the student was admitted to Purdue. To be frank with you, studying computer science at Purdue is fantastic, so it’s a great place to do so, but certainly the student perhaps had more hopes of being admitted to more schools, and unfortunately it sort of it what it is.
Student Case Study
Student B: Environmental Science
3.7 UW GPA, 1480 SAT, 7 APs
2 small leadership roles
no relevant awards
1 internship
1 research summer program
Results
UCB, UCLA, UCD, UCSD, UCSB, UCI, UCSC, UW, UM, BU, Purdue
Attending: UC Berkeley
Elton Lin: Same year, environmental science, 3.7 unweighted [GPA]. Even if you just glance over the profile, you can get a sense that… the student is not as strong on paper, and so resume is maybe not as robust. Less rigor in the courses, with lower APs, but was admitted to Berkeley, Irvine, Santa Cruz, rejected from LA, Davis as well. But admitted to University of Washington, Boston University, and now attending UC Berkeley!
And so in this particular case now, again—I don’t want you to categorically say this is the experience at every university, because it’s not. It’s going to be different for each university setting. But increasingly… applying into the more impacted majors will impact the admissions result at many schools across [the] U.S.
I know there’s going to be questions, and I promise we’ll come to it when we get to the end.
College Major Matters: How majors impact careers
Elton Lin: Let’s jump into how majors impact careers.
Maybe if we can take a two second deep breath before we get into it… Anthony, should we jump into one question?
Anthony Su (he/him): Sure, let’s break it up a little.
Elton Lin: All right, let’s do one question—and I promise we’ll come to all the other questions we get.
Anthony Su: Let’s do this one, because I know a lot of people have questions about the transfer system, through community college as well, and I think a lot of people think that’s also a potential way to also get into a major that potentially is too hard as a freshman admit.
But yeah, basically, the question is: does transferring community college give a higher potential admit rate for the student? They didn’t mention it, but I think it’s good to talk about TAG, or Transfer Admission Guarantee, also.
Elton Lin: Yeah, yeah… even on our team, we have a specific transfer team that knows the ins and outs, the backwards and forwards, of the transfer process, so they could—they can do a webinar themselves. I think it would actually probably be a good one!
But just to maybe address it quickly: generally speaking, for schools that prioritize transfer students: the UC system does prioritize transfer students, USC does prioritize transfer students, there is a list on the internet of schools that do prioritize transfer students. Stanford does not prioritize transfer students… You can just base it on the number of transfer students they admit every year.
But for the schools that do prioritize transfer students, it is true that the pool is smaller for the amount of spaces. Without getting into a gigantic list of admit rates for specific majors… it is, almost across the board, easier to—the admit rates are higher almost across the board for many majors.
When considering transfer, I often tell students that it’s a good—if you’re not entirely sure, maybe your high school years were not as strong as you’d like—staying two years, staying at home and getting some better clarity on what you might want to study, finish your degree with…
I always find that a lot of our students who really struggle in high school, oftentimes the maturity switch does click once they get to community college, and many times, students do a lot better. If you end up getting… I think getting a 4.0 in community college is a lot easier than getting a 4.0 in high school, and so… considering the transfer option is a good way to go.
So definitely, especially with the UC system, it’s more advantageous, USC, it’s more advantageous, and it’s been increasingly more advantageous the last couple of years. There’s [been] a little bit of market recorrection in the past year. I think there’s more community college enrollment, so I think 2021-2022 was sort of the boom year for transfer students. There was the same amount of spaces at schools and not as many applicants, because community college enrollment was way down. Community college enrollment is almost back to normal, so it’s not as extreme as it was in 2021-2022, but it’s still easier than applying as a high school student.
All right, I'm going to jump into this next section, and we will definitely go into as many questions as we can.
So let me introduce this section first, how majors impact careers, by coming in with a quote.
Importance of Liberal Arts
“At one level, AI will require that even more people specialize in digital skills and data science. But skilling-up for an AI-powered world involves more than science, technology, engineering, and math. As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become even more important. Languages, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills that will be instrumental in the development and management of AI solutions.”
— Brad Smith, EVP of AI at Microsoft
Elton Lin: It's a little bit lengthy, but let me kind of break it down for us.
This is Brad Smith, actually President of Microsoft now, but at that time he was the EVP of AI for Microsoft. But he says, “At one level, AI will require that even more people specialize in digital skills and data science. But skilling-up for an AI-powered world involves more than science, technology, engineering, and math. As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become even more important. Languages, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills that will be instrumental in the development and management of AI solutions.”
And essentially, what—if the audience is reflective of a lot of the families that we work with here in the Silicon Valley, a lot of you are in tech companies. And the truth is that you’re already seeing it, where what is needed in the forthcoming AI restructuring—or AI revolution, however way that you might want to see it—are people who are able to understand how to facilitate the deployment of technology, more than people who are building the technology.
So that oftentimes requires critical thinking skills, philosophical skills, ethics-based skills, that aren’t always built into a technology, STEM-based, computer science, and engineering curriculum.
Essential Skills for the Future
Elton Lin: This is a research paper put out by Lightcast plus the Business of Higher Education Forum, which is their assessment of what are the most essential skills for the forthcoming future. And they based it almost entirely on job opening descriptions, basically took a look at the evolution of 10 years of job recs, job openings from Fortune 500 companies, looking at what employers are looking for in their hires. And they’ve come up with the essential skills, and it’s based—built—based on human skills, digital skills, and business skills.
If you kind of just scan through, you’re talking about—definitely, whether it’s programming software development, whether it’s business processes, communication—but the human skills also include communication, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, working with teams. And this is not—they’re not trying to make this guess into the future, this is based on what employers are looking for.
Essential Skills for the Future
Elton Lin: And as they looked at specific job openings, and they separated between job openings for senior, manager level jobs and compared it with all job openings, they found that the senior and manager level jobs required more skill sets that related to human- and business-related skills more than technical skills.
I think those of us who've been in any kind of corporate environment… we already know that oftentimes, the people who are progressing into senior management level jobs are people who are able to communicate, people who are able to work in teams, people who can cast a vision, people who are able to really bring people together—from the business perspective, really able to take technology and see how… whatever technology you’re working with is able to be leveraged for greater business gain.
So I think none of this is any surprise, but I think the emphasis on human- and business-related skills as you progress through your career here becomes way more important than the technical skill set. And it’s evidenced in this chart here.
Importance of Liberal Arts
“In 10 years, a liberal arts degree in philosophy will be worth more than a traditional programming degree.”
— Mark Cuban (2017)
Elton Lin: Just to kind of break this up a little bit: Mark Cuban, tech billionaire, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, saying that—hey, and this was his quote in 2017—“in 10 years, a liberal arts degree in philosophy will be worth more than a traditional programming degree.”
And this was, you know, fairly salacious in 2017, perhaps might still be salacious to you right now, but even as you think about it in 2024, it’s a little bit less ridiculous. And this reality of having the slow cooling of the computer science or the software development hiring pool, and the increased need for people who understand how to navigate an uncertain future, especially with AI, is going to be ever so important.
Facts About Liberal Arts Grads
Starting salaries for STEM majors coming out of college are 37% higher than any other major.
Elton Lin: I do want to maybe establish a couple obvious facts that I think everybody knows. The starting salaries for STEM majors coming out of college are 37% higher than any other major. Of course, we know that. And especially living in Silicon Valley, we certainly have a lot of parents who really want to encourage—heavily encourage, if you will—their kids to go into computer science. And a lot of the reason is because of this 37% higher starting salaries.
Facts About Liberal Arts Grads
After 10-years, liberal arts majors catch up:
Average Engineering Major Salaries
$124,45
Average Social Science Major Salaries
$131,154
Average All Majors
$111,870
Source: US Census Bureau (2017)
Elton Lin: But the data on 10-year salaries is not so conclusive. This is where, after 10 years, most liberal arts majors catch up in their average salary.
So an average salary across engineering disciplines: at around 125k range. But the average social science major is at 131k.
Even when I looked at this number, I found it to be—[like] “really!” And the reality is that a lot of—if you’re talking about a history or a political science major… where are those guys going? A lot of them are going [into] business development, some of them are going to sales, some of them are going into project management. They don’t necessarily need to be technical experts, but they’re able to go into—some of them are going to be attorneys—they are going into roles that are also very lucrative.
…I’ve heard plenty of, you know, “my son or daughter wants to study history,” and the parents saying, “what are you going to be, a history teacher?” And not to disparage any history teachers—I loved my history teacher when I was in high school—but there are more options other than teaching history.
Maybe to give you a couple of quick examples: a former CEO of HP was a history major, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs was an English major, right? This is where the mobility of somebody who studied the social sciences, who studies the humanities, is way less restrictive than you think.
So when you look at 10-year data, liberal arts majors definitely catch up.
Job Landscape Facts
37% technical job skills replaced every 5 years
30% drop in software job postings since 2020
3,900 jobs were eliminated in May 2023 by AI (primarily finance and tech)
Elton Lin: A couple other pieces of data: 37% of technical job skills, generally speaking, 37% of your technical skills are replaced every five years. It just becomes obsolete. …I remember learning Fortran in college. For those of you who are computer science people: who’s using Fortran these days, right? So there’s a 30% drop in software job postings since 2020, and alone in May of 2023, 3,900 jobs were eliminated by AI.
It’s kind of a changing landscape, without question.
Observations
- Need for coding skills ↓
- Consider technical + humanities major/minor combinations for longer term job viability
- Embrace your curiosities and begin with your strengths
Elton Lin: So maybe some observations…
Certainly, again, definitely those of you who are in tech, I think you’re recognizing the need for coding skills… going down, though technical fluency is still absolutely critical. Now, technical fluency is not the same as technical mastery. So being able to converse and understand the technical world is different than being an expert in building databases, right?
So I think this is where technical fluency [is] becoming more important than technical mastery, ability to learn fast [is] becoming more important than skill mastery, and then being able to balance human, business, and technical skills is ever so important for a forthcoming job landscape.
And then maybe the most important thing here is that there’s no one college and major that addresses all three.
Next Steps
- Embrace your interest in the humanities + arts
- Minor or double major to build balance:
- History + CS
- Graphic Design + Statistics
- Data Science + Philosophy
- Supplement with internships + certificates
Elton Lin: Maybe some next steps before we get into questions.
This is where I feel like—I mean, I’ve been doing college advising [for] more than 12 years, almost… 13 plus, now. We’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve talked with a lot of teens, and with a lot of parents. Certainly a lot of teens who have been interested in history, English, political science, any range of other things, and seeing—having to navigate this conversation of, “oh, you need to study computer science,” or “you need to study engineering,” or “you need to study biology,” or some form or another.
And this is sort of the period of time—I almost feel like it’s important for students to—if you’re interested in humanities, embrace it! It’s a good time to explore the humanities.
But my advice to every student is: consider double majoring or minoring in a discipline that is contrasting in nature to what you’re interested in. So if you’re going to start off as a history major, consider minoring in computer science. If you’re going to be majoring in graphic design, consider doing a minor in statistics. If you are majoring in data science, consider double majoring in philosophy.
And this is where you are building a multi-pronged skill set that will help you learn fast, have the skill sets and insight to navigate up the corporate ranks, and be able to navigate a very uncertain world that—you know, job markets and industries could change drastically, and they will change drastically in the next five or ten years. It’s going to be the people who will be able to navigate that well, who will have multiple skill sets, [who] will know how to think about the human aspects as well as the technical aspects.
So consider doing both in school. But in so doing, definitely, for those of you who are interested in humanities: embrace it.
And then lastly, in respects to your education: think about, again, supplementing your education with different types of internships and different certificates that you can—that could be easily inserted onto your resume. And then by the time you graduate, there is a diversity in your actual education, there’s internships that represent a reflection of different experiences, and there could be certificates that also signal to hiring people that you have the skill sets to be ready for the job on day one.
Summary
- Intended major may reduce admissions chances
- Consider technical + humanities major/minor combinations for longer term job viability
- Embrace your curiosities and begin with your strengths
Elton Lin: So as a quick summary before we get into questions: intended major may reduce admissions chances, consider technical plus humanities major and minor combinations for longer-term job viability.
But maybe my last encouragement to students, especially students who are not as attuned to computer science and engineering: embrace your curiosities, begin with your strengths. Begin there, and then find ways to build your direction based on those. Honor how you were built. Honor the passions that were built within you, and the skill sets that you were given, and where your genuine curiosities are going, and begin there.
Questions!
Thank You!
Elton Lin
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Elton Lin: All right! Excited to go into questions. Let me invite Anthony back in, and happy to talk as long as we can tonight.
Anthony Su: Sounds good.
Most of it’s going back to the first topic around major selection.
Elton Lin: All right, of course.
Anthony Su: But yeah, main question of just: how would you kind of research schools where schools that are easier to switch around with majors or experiment or kind of promote that as part of their curriculum, compared to places that might be a little bit more rigid?
Elton Lin: Yeah, you’re gonna have to—it’s gonna be on a case-by-case basis. You’re gonna certainly need to… my sense is that, before doing this massive search on which schools you can transfer majors in, begin by building a college list of schools that are good fit for you. Reduce that down to a manageable number, and then do some more in-depth research with those schools on which schools you can transfer majors in.
Historically, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo has been really poor with changing majors, especially into the most impacted majors. I think you can assume right now, with regards to the UC system, transferring into engineering and specifically computer science is going to be super challenging. But you contrast that with a school like Rice, where it’s still very much a liberal arts approach to the educational process, and changing majors is really easy.
So before we get into a massive list of which schools are easier to transfer in or not, figure out which schools are good fit, reduce that list down, and then do a little bit of digging. You can certainly reach out to the admissions office, you can read a little bit of Reddit—I don’t know if I encourage a big Reddit—like you’re going to live off everything that’s off Reddit, because I think a lot of it is questionable. However, you can certainly get into a little bit of Reddit to see what it is like on the ground.
Anthony Su: Sounds good.
And then a question around undeclared, of where that would fit into this area, as well as things like an undeclared engineering or an undeclared, like—undeclared specific to a department.
Elton Lin: Yeah. So the UC system is offering—and other schools are offering more and more of an undeclared engineering, which is…
It depends on a school-by-school basis. So in some cases an undeclared engineering means that you’re admitted within the engineering school, and then you being able to change majors within engineering is simple and just filing paperwork. And other schools where it is undeclared, and you’re thinking about engineering, and you’re just signaling to the admissions office to perhaps anticipate whether you might be one of these students who might be changing majors.
So you still need to reduce down the list of the schools that are good fit first, and then do some digging as far as whether that school offers an undeclared engineering.
But an undeclared in general, normally, is an undeclared student that’s reviewed—in a public school review process—reviewed under the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, so the larger college that houses the majority of majors. So you’re normally considered that sub-college’s student, and thereby if you’re changing majors within that sub-college, it’s not normally a big issue. So if you’re changing majors to bio—you know, most of the time, the College of Arts and Sciences, or the College of Letters and Sciences in the UC system, is housing econ, bio, history, and changing majors between those majors is not so difficult.
Anthony Su: I think relevant to—again, the question is, “how about 4+1 master’s programs?” And I’m going to tweak it a little… can you also comment about 3+2 programs, since I think that also fits into that idea of your interdisciplinary, or having two strong opposing subjects or different subjects?
Elton Lin: Oh, okay. Just to maybe give us a little bit of context, because I feel like the 4+1 B.S./M.S. is very dependent on the university. And you’re not—in most cases, not every case, but in most cases—you’re not applying to it as a high school student; you’re applying to it once you get to the college.
So Northeastern has quite—actually, quite a few universities have a 4+1 type program, like a computer science plus a master’s in data science, something like that.
…When I hear a 3-2 engineering program, I relate that to: most liberal arts colleges have what they call 3-2 engineering program, where a liberal arts college doesn’t have an engineering department, but—for example, I was just looking at this earlier for a student who’s interested in engineering, but really likes Occidental Colleges in Los Angeles. Occidental College has a 3-2 program where a student can finish their degree at Columbia or Caltech to finish their engineering degree.
It could be a really good deal: a student can go to a liberal arts college, and get a smaller private school attention, but still get the benefit of going to a premier engineering school. So applying into Columbia engineering, obviously more difficult than applying to Occidental, and you could potentially get both. So I think that’s the benefit of a 3-2.
Anthony Su: And then a question about earlier, when you were talking about, I think, the hypothetical of the student with a lot of CS activities that did not match up with the major that they were applying as: how would you recommend a student approach that if they are going into admissions season already with those activities? Like, how would that student try to shift their profile a little bit, or kind of pitch a different major at that point, do you think?
Elton Lin: This is my reflection on, I think, the past three years. We obviously get a lot of computer science. I do feel like we’ve seen more and more very robust resumes. I do feel like there’s a couple of things that admissions people pay very much attention to. I think if you’re a Computing Olympiad finalist… you’re a top 25 USACO performer. We’ve seen the overwhelming majority of those students get into MIT, you know? Or maybe another one: International Math Olympiad qualifier. You’re talking about the level of competitive achievement is very significant, and it’s hard to ignore that.
So assuming that’s not the case, we’ve seen just a lot of robust resumes, and oftentimes, I find that you just cannot—if you’re on the admissions side, maybe thinking, if you’re to put yourselves in their shoes… I’ll single out Gunn High School, because Anthony went to Gunn High School—
Anthony Su: [laughs]
Elton Lin: [laughs] But when I say Gunn High School, in Palo Alto: generally speaking, kind of a power high school with a lot of a certain demographic. But all the schools that are kind of similar to that: if you’re on the admissions side, you’re not going to—just because there’s an inordinate amount of strong CS applicants from that one school, you’re not going to admit all of them. You’re going to—you want to diversify the admits from different high schools in different regions.
So you can only admit so many strong students. If you’re a super strong CS student from Gunn High School, the truth is that there’s going to be a lot of super strong CS students from Gunn High School, and you just have to understand that that’s what you’re working up against. If you’re, certainly, applying from South Dakota, or even Humboldt County in Northern California, it’s a different pool, right?
So my thing is: you still need to do your best, obviously find ways to—whatever you’re building on a tech side, help more people, make more people’s lives better with whatever you’re building, think about that first. But then on the safety side, you need to apply to more safety schools and have more options.
Anthony Su: Got about 10 more minutes, so I’ll take a couple more questions, but definitely if you have any others, put them in the comments or the Q&A. I’ll definitely try to get to them.
I guess a question on the opposite end of—and so when we’re talking about 12th grade, maybe a younger student who’s saying, if you have no idea on a major and unsure about your passion, how would you recommend a student start with that?
Elton Lin: Yeah, that’s a great question. And here’s the thing: I always tell families—I think oftentimes families feel like their child is the only one who doesn’t know.
In my opinion, the majority of students don’t know what they want to study. And it’s okay! I think it’s unrealistic to expect a 17-year-old to have utmost clarity on their future. It’s just not realistic.
So my sense is that—one thing is to—you can certainly continue on to a four-year college, take the opportunity to really explore via your general education requirements, and take a diversity of classes and experiences. And I would find that students who go in undeclared—when they’re 18 and 19 and 20, they know that there’s pressure to declare, and they are intentionally exploring.
So I think it’s fair and okay to go into college with uncertainty about what you want to study, but you’re going to certainly explore it.
Another option is certainly to go to community college and save, to be frank with you, a lot of money, and do those same general education explorations in the community college setting, and then go from there. I think both options are fair.
But I also feel that if you do have an area of curiosity, it’s okay and good to begin there. I often find that when you think about—and I don’t hate, I’m not trying to just pick on computer science, it’s just one of those, it’s that time of the season—but certainly I found a fair amount of students who’ve gone through computer science, and it really wasn’t their curiosity, and they certainly maybe chose it because of job prospects or whatever, but just found their educational journey to be very demotivating.
And I think when you think about long-term energy and motivation, beginning with where you’re most curious, most cases, invests into your curiosity bank and your motivation, and sets you up to keep learning. Especially in the next five or ten years, you have to keep learning, you’re going to have to acquire new skills, and beginning where you’re most curious will continue to help you be a good learner for years to come.
So begin with where you’re curious, and then add stuff. That’s my suggestion.
Anthony Su: Some more questions about—these are getting a little bit more major-specific, but a question around management information systems as a potential alternative for CS, or I guess also just opening other potential alternatives for that direction. I think management infosystems would be that intersection between tech and business, on that circle that you had earlier.
Elton Lin: Yeah, I like MIS! This is where you have to do some research on where MIS exists inside the college, so at UC Berkeley… Another version of MIS at UC Berkeley is operations management, and that’s actually outside of Haas School of Business.
So MIS could be in the engineering school, and it could be in the business school, and if you’re in both of those brackets, both of those tend to be more competitive applicant pools. Operations management at UC Berkeley is in the College of Letters and Science, so that’s kind of maybe where you should look at it. The MIS equivalent at Carnegie Mellon, Anthony’s alma mater, is outside—it’s their own sort of interdisciplinary major and outside of the School of Computer Science, which is not where you want—if you’re wanting to get in, it’s not where you want to be part of that pool.
But I like the major, I like the interdisciplinary-type study of the program, where it exists at different schools, so yeah! Go for it.
Anthony Su: And then one last question: I think this is also centered around similar specifics of where the major resides in the department, but basically a question around chemistry and chemical engineering, when you were talking about admit rates, and how to kind of compare there, when you’re thinking about transferring either between chemistry or chemical engineering.
Elton lin: Yeah, so chemistry, in almost every case, is in the Arts and Sciences department, or Letters and Science in the UC system, and outside of the engineering school. And so if you want to transfer into chemical engineering from chemistry—as I just showed you on the UCLA chart, certainly chemical engineering is not going to be as dicey to transfer into as, perhaps, computer science.
But you’re still going to run into people wanting to get into the engineering school, and that in itself is going to be more difficult than, say, transferring from chemical engineering to chemistry.
I still kind of come back to what’s more important [to you]. Is it more important to be in the major, or is it more important to be in the school? And perhaps that’s the way to kind of determine which direction to go. If it’s more important to be part of the major, and you want to be in chemical engineering, then that’s really more important in that respect.
But yes, chemistry as a whole, I don’t know, because chemistry is difficult. I found chemistry to be difficult! And so perhaps it’s not seeing its day. Chemistry at UC Berkeley is still very difficult, but across many universities, it’s less applied for.
Anthony Su: Okay, we’ve gone through all the questions, so I think we can go get dinner on time.
Elton Lin: All right, that means Anthony gets to go have dinner at 11pm, and we will release him.
But I just want to say: thank you so much for joining us tonight.
I do feel like there’s a ton of different ways to go with this content… actually, this would be super helpful—if there’s a topic that you want us to dive into, you know, a 30-minute, hyper, lots of data, lots of time for discussion: go and post it on the chat right now… tell us what topics you would love to see a webinar in, have us do a deep dive into the data, and then provide some form for all of us to discuss.
If none, then we’re gonna find topics. We are going to do a premed webinar with one of my former students and his classmates who have been admitted to med school, who are applying to med schools across the United States, and so that one is coming up. I always enjoy talking with former students and seeing where they’re at. But there’s going to be more coming up.
But if you think about something in the middle of the night and you want to tell Anthony—and he wants to know. Anthony, would you mind putting your email into the chat? Anthony wants to know what you want to explore in a webinar setting, right, Anthony?
Anthony Su: Yeah, and so far these look good! The ones that people have posted in [the chat]... I see one about athletics, which I think is also important to think about… I hear a lot more families thinking about that long-term also, just when they’re working with students who are younger. Yeah, good follow-ups of thinking about social sciences and humanities majors as well. Topics that I’m curious about [too], you know!
Elton Lin: [laughs] Because Anthony wants to apply to college again.
Anthony Su: [laughs]
Elton Lin: All right. Always super enjoy this time with you all, and look forward to doing it again. Please go ahead and post. If you want to message Anthony, please do; if you want to set up a free consultation to dig in deeper in relation to your student’s background or profile, we can get into it and talk very specifically about your student’s college prep journey. So go ahead and scan the QR code [or click this link], and it’ll send a message to Anthony, and that’s what he wants.
All right! Good to have all of you. Good night, thank all of you for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.
Anthony Su: Thanks, everyone. Have a good one.