Can't Decide on a Major. Interests all over the place

College Majors
#1

Hi everyone! I’m a rising sophomore at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and I really can’t seem to settle on a major because my interests are literally all over the place. I originally planned on double majoring in Public Health and Economics, but I feel like that isn’t really hitting to where I want to go in life. I like Public Health because of the epedemiology aspect. I like Economics because of my interest in business. However, in terms of business my interest is more towards the management end than analytics. Although, I think having analytical skills are extremely important. I also have strong interest in technology and have considered a major in IT or Computer Science. The only thing that scares me a bit is all the math involved in Comp sci. I’m also a personal trainer and have considered a major in Exercise Science, but I’m not sure how much that degree would benefit me in order to expand my career options. First semester, I took an urban planning class and loved it. I really enjoyed the design aspect of it and the problem solving skills involved. Recently, I came across the major in Industrial Engineering and as far as I can see, it seems like it can combine my interests in business, technology, and design. However, it would probably take me more than four years to finish since I am a rising sophomore.

As a career, I’ve also seen myself in a management role eventually. I think the idea of being a project manager is extremely fascinating. I just have no idea in what field I’d want to dedicate myself to. I’m also really fond of the idea of combining technology and design in order to benefit society, but I really don’t know where I am going with that.

Generally my interests are in business, technology, health science, and design. I’m not sure how to combine these interests into one area and am looking for some guidance on what direction I should focus in/how I can combine these areas. I’m open to any suggested courses of study as well. Thank you!

#2

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm and the students review dot com website’s unemployment by major page show it harder to get jobs in exercise science (just about the weakest of all health fields), certain design fields and urban planning than in business or information science. I would suggest doing business and taking IT courses. Look at the actual courses in different business programs to see what you like. Look at the specifics of IT courses to avoid those with a lot of higher math.

#3

Part of this decision hinges on realizing that everyone has many interests. Me, personally, I was (and am!) interested in health, computer science, statistics, history, psychology, and sociology, and a little bit of law/politics too. However, you can’t combine all of your varied interests into a career - not all at once, anyway - and you can’t combine them all into a single major. (I managed to hit most of them in two careers, but I still haven’t really integrated history and law into that. Maybe the third one, lol!)

Once you realize that, your job is to select the interests that you’d most like to study in college for four years and maybe turn into a career. For some people, that involves picking whichever of their interests are most lucrative career-wise (either for money or becausse that’s what they want to study). For others, that’s just the thing that they most want to take classes in for four years - that’s how I picked my major (psychology), without really thinking exactly how I was going to parlay it into a career. That worked itself out later.

I will say that my sister has a major in exercise science and she has been struggling to find full-time employment in her field; she graduated in December of 2014. Of course, you can major in exercise science and go do something else - it’s difficult to find in-field employment. Your major doesn’t sentence you to a certain career - I just finished reading a thread on a diferent forum about a whole bunch of people several years out of college who are working in fields they never imagined in college. I’m included in that; my career is actually related to my undergraduate major, but this isn’t what I planned on doing when I started college, or even when I selected my major!

Also, [information systems actually has one of the highest unemployment rates](https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/9t0p5tm0qhejyy8t8hub) as a major, although that may be rebounding. IT is a great field, but you don’t have to major in IS to get into it. My point isn’t that you shouldn’t major in business or IT, but selecting something because of current unemployment rates isn’t necessarily a good idea. First of all, you have no way of knowing what they’ll be like in the next 3-5 years - law and real estate seemed like really good propositions in 2005 when I was a sophomore year in college! Second of all, just because something is lucrative doesn’t mean you’d be good at it. I’d be a lousy engineer.