<p>I remember applying to college and not knowing what the hell 90% of the listed majors were about. How do people know what majors are about? No one in high school told me anything. Shallow personality tests and career fairs never helped either. How do people know what they want to do in college? A lot of people have general interests and ideas of what they would like to do but advanced work in a subject is often radically different than the introductory work. Lots of people have misconceptions about common majors like… anthropology, english, engineering, computer science (even ap computer science is so different from what computer science actually is), etc… And how do people know about all the specific bizarre majors like geosystems engineering and hydrology? golf course management? Sure people find out about majors on their own but is it really enough? Should high school/secondary schools give students more direction going into college? Although at many schools you don’t even have to declare a major until sophomore year and you can easily switch majors, each major has a different required course set so wouldn’t more money and time be wasted having to fulfill new major requirements? I see statistics of ~80% kids unsure about their major as freshmen in US colleges and 50-60% of students switching majors at least once… up to three times. If high schools better prepared kids for specialisation… maybe these statistics would decrease? </p>
<p>I’m just theorizing all this after realizing that many majors aren’t what I thought they were and it took coming to college to finally find out. Maybe my high school just sucked at preparing students for college…</p>