Sunday, September 9, 2012

Tips for Choosing Your Major in College

The college major you pick will determine your future salary, whether you need to attend graduate school, your tuition rate and the general ease or difficulty level of the post-graduation job hunt. While this can seem like an enormous task to the average 18-year-old college freshman, a few tips can make picking your major seem less daunting.

First, be honest about your academic strengths. Although engineering is a great field, if high school level math and science leave you struggling, you might not want to pick engineering or other fields which rely so strongly on mathematical and scientific principles.

Secondly, don't be afraid to spend a semester or two being undecided. Being undecided allows you to take a variety of courses in multiple fields. After all, college campuses offer a much greater academic variety than your high school did.

While you're undecided, take as many different courses in as many different fields as you can. While pursuing your bachelor's degree, chances are good that you will need to have general education requirements, and the classes you take in order to figure out what you want to major in can eventually fulfil these requirements.

Additionally, take advantage of your college's career development office. One of the primary roles of this office is to help students figure out what they want to major in, and far too few students take advantage of this aspect of their college life. Maybe you're not sure what your strengths are, or maybe you're not sure what you can do with a bachelor of communication. Your college's career development office can help you figure out the answer to both of these questions.

Finally, consider how much competition you want to have after graduation. Fields such as journalism generally face pretty stiff competition in the job market. In contrast, someone with a bachelor of health sciences will enter a field with severe shortages, and will generally find more opportunities for employment. While both majors can offer happy careers to the right people, job availability is an important factor when picking a major.

Ultimately, choosing a major is so difficult for so many people because it requires them to be honest about their strengths and their weaknesses, and because it forces people to look ahead and try to plan what they want for the future. While intimidating, these are the essential keys to picking the right major.


----------------------------------------------------
Jim Cantrell is a lifestyle blogger who blogs on a wide variety of topics including geekery, technology and education. His style of writing is ecclectic and varied. If you want to know more about college education, visit http://www.bond.edu.au/degrees-and-courses/index.htm and read about our fields of study that can help you achieve a successful career.


EasyPublish this article: http://submityourarticle.com/articles/easypublish.php?art_id=289048

No comments:

Post a Comment