Your college years have the potential to be some of the most exciting. It is a time where learning new things is an event that happens almost daily, and the range of different people you meet will affect and change your life, forever. However, college, for many, also represents the first steps of independent adulthood that will put you on the path of which you will live the rest of your entire life. No pressure, or anything. The key to having a successful college experience that aptly prepares you to live life happily and successfully is to pick the right major. Although there is no specific science that will help you accomplish this, there are many things to consider when it comes to picking your major…
Find something you are passionate about
The most important part of picking a college major is to choose something that you can imagine yourself doing for the rest of your life. This will either be the easiest or most challenging part of the process, depending on if you already know how you would like to spend the rest of your life. For many college students, this will require plenty of soul searching. While not every college major may be feasible for every student, the ideal is that the topics you study in college should light a fire in your soul that gets you out of bed, every morning. Settling for less now will mean settling for less for your entire life.
Some career paths require more schooling
One important aspect of picking a major is to decide exactly how long you want to be pursuing your higher education. Many students will be perfectly satisfied with simply getting their bachelor’s degree. Indeed, for many majors, this will be all that is necessary to improve your chances of success. However, certain fields of study will yield more prosperous and fulfilling results if you take the extra couple of years to get an advanced degree. Medical and legal degrees are some of the most common ones that will require grad school. If you aren’t looking to spend any more time in school than you have to, then these career paths might not be right for you.
Look at the market and opportunities presented
The major that you choose to study in college will have a profound impact on the rest of your life. Because of this, it is important to try to look at the world around you and get a better idea of how you hope to fit into it. Nobody wants to graduate college with a major that is already obsolete. Pick a major that you know will keep you busy throughout your life, because you’ll be able to find work with it. This is why so many technological fields are so popular nowadays. There is so much exciting work being done to change the workforce, forever, from increased connectivity in financial markets to advanced simulations to improve industrial jobs (like this amazing piece of technology here).
Certain schools are better at certain majors
This may seem obvious, but different schools offer different levels of quality for different majors. This means that your search for a major may also be deeply impacted simply by the school that you are attending. Perhaps you already had a good idea of what you wanted your major to be, and you chose a school accordingly. However, if you have not done this, you may want to look and see how beneficial the major you are interested in is at your current school, because it may affect your decision.
Think about where you want to live
The work that you are doing in your life is only one aspect of living. There is so much more that the world has to offer than work (although life seems a lot more fulfilling when one’s work is, as well). One particular thing to consider is where you would like to spend your working years, before you retire, because this can be greatly affected by the field that you choose to study. For example, a marine biologist is far less likely to find work in Omaha, Nebraska than Santa Monica, California. There are large and small geographical advantages attached to every profession. Some of these, like the example with marine biologists, are quite obvious. Others are much smaller, like how some states are simply friendlier to open up your own business in (Utah is particularly friendly, lately, as shown in this useful article here).