At some point, while going to college or back to college or attending college, it will be time to choose a major. When should I pick my major? What are the best majors for me? What points should I consider in selecting a major? Is it more important to focus on the right school first? What if my school does not offer my area of interest? What if my school does not offer the major I want?

 

 

Some majors are designed to educate you for a specific career, while others are more open-ended. A good place to start assessing your career path is checking out some of the tools we have assembled. Explore Careers and industries online. If you are in school, they should have an Advising Center or Career Planning and Placement Center where they will be able to tell you about the careers for which different majors can prepare you.

Also, an Office of Alumni Affairs may be able to provide information on the fields in which recent graduates are working and may offer networking opportunities with former students who are still connected with the school through the Alumni network. Check out Facebook for links to groups associated with the school you are thinking about, or in which you are intending to enroll. You can learn a lot about the student body and campus life by exploring their social networking aspects. As you investigate schools, don't forget to use our Search Transfer Profiles and review the links promoted by schools to sites including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

As you explore your choices, don't be afraid to ask questions. Break down the challenge into stages of information collection, review, assessment and selection.

Check out the Self-Assessment Center on CollegeTransfer.Net to help reflect on what your strengths and weaknesses are, and how to match your interests with possible career and major choices. It is usually best to start with this step before jumping to conclusions. In our Self-Assessment Center, you can evaluate your Aptitudes, Skills, Interests, Personality and Value System. From here, you can investigate how certain majors and careers align with your strengths.

Review the Best Degrees by Salary, and then select Jobs by Major and Pay to drill down on the most popular college majors listed. How your degree will provide a return on your investment varies greatly by the type of institution you attend, your region and your major. Use the mySkills myFuture widget on the right side of this page to review jobs by title, salary ranges and educational levels required.

Your school's web site, or the web in general, are other resources that you can use. Research will give you an idea of the careers that are available to the different majors at your school. There are many industries and occupations to choose from. Check out the fastest growing industries, and the capacity for employment, which ranks the industries by job growth. What is the job market nationally and in your region for the occupations in which you are interested? In a growing economy, employment expands making it easier to land a job. On the other hand, in a stalled economy employment tends to weaken; thereby, sending many back to school for "re-tooling" which also widens the pool of qualified candidates making it tougher to land a job.

Your major is more than the sum of the courses you will take. Talk with professors about the focus of a major as opposed to the focus of particular courses in a major. Your classmates may teach you quite a bit as past experiences are shared during group projects or other conversations.

Be aware of your weaknesses. While changing a major is fine, it may result in unused credits. If you are a Computer Science major, but know that you have trouble with math, don't delay taking a required math course such as Calculus. If you find that it is too hard and you are forced to change your major, it would be a shame if you had already taken three semesters of Computer Science classes that now can't be used towards degree requirements for another major. Colleges and universities will often overburden General Electives restricting the opportunity to investigate course interests as they attempt to give you credit for prior course work.

If you are at a Community College, think about if you want to eventually transfer to a baccalaureate institution. If you do, many community colleges may offer degrees and majors that are specifically designed to help you transfer successfully. If you don't get one of these degrees, it is possible that when you transfer to the four-year institution you'll find that they don't accept all of your credits and you will wind up losing them.

If you select a major and then decide to change it, you're not alone. Studies indicate that anywhere from 50% to 75% of students change their major at least once before graduating. You can change your major at your present institution, or you can change it when switching colleges. In some circumstances, changing colleges means starting over. Switching majors is similar to college transfer. Changing majors across colleges or schools within the same University is as tough as changing majors from a different college to another. Sometimes the requirements and courses are so different, it is like changing institutions. Request "what if" degree reports validating how courses would count toward different majors. If you find that you must leave or want to leave the school, do the same thing with prospective target schools you are considering.