I’m having a really hard decision choosing between my dream school and my dream major. My dream school is Flagler College in St. Augustine. I’ve wanted to go here since 7th grade and there’s no downside to me, other than the fact that it doesn’t have my intended major. My dream major is Zoology which I can accomplish at FSU. I’ve been accepted to both and I don’t really have a problem with FSU but I feel like I’d regret my decision either way. Do I choose my dream school or should I go to the school with my intended major?
A parent’s view here…what is your passion, and what career are you intending to pursue out of college? If you attend FSU, what major will you study, and how will that FSU major get you closer to your intended career?
Are you planning to go to grad school, and if so, does your major need to be Zoology, or can your FSU undergrad degree still get you ino the grad school program you want?
Are finances a consideration? Is one school more of a stretch for your family’s budget than the other? Distance from home, quality of dorm rooms, ability to do research or get an internship, acceptance into Honors Program…are any of these factors important to you in your decision?
What is it about Flagler that you like so much?
What is it about FSU that you don’t like?
Have you visited both campuses? If so, can you go back to both of them again and do more in depth visits? Talk to upperclassmen, meet with professors, sit in on classes, arrange to stay overnight in the dorms? Sit in cafeteria/coffee shop and watch the students. Can you picture yourself being friends with the types of kids you see?
Why not look for another school that has zoology?
In my opinion, majors are more important than individual schools. The former will most likely provide a framework for the rest of your life, while the importance of the latter will diminish significantly 4-6 years after enrollment.
What do you plan to do with zoology? what would you major in at Flagler?
If this is for pre-vet, then you need to also consider that many start out as pre-vet and then then change to something else.
What are your parents saying? Is Flagler affordable?
Looking just narrowly at school vs. major, I would suggest that the school is much more important than the availability of a major, when that major is a specialized area of a broader major (Biology). First, a very large percentage of students end up changing majors. Second, there are no jobs or position in zoology without an advanced degree - you will have to go to grad school for at least a masters. Third, a solid background in biology will be required by most reputable grad programs as a foundation for zoology. Go look at the admissions requirements for good grad programs in Zoology. And who knows what you’ll discover as your build your base? Could be that you take a course in…marine biology? botany? environmental science? that changes your life and your career goals. Lastly, most schools offer solid bio majors so its not hard to find one that will meet all the other criteria that you probably have such as fit, affordability, realistic for your grades/test scores, etc…
Flagler’s offerings in biological science, and the natural sciences in general, are poor compared to FSU. If you were interested in Humanities or Social Sciences, it might be a different story, but if you plan on sticking with Zoology / Biology / Biological Science / Natural Science, then FSU is the clear winner in academic options.
The two schools are very different in terms of size/culture. Those factors could be all-important to you, but your comment, “…I don’t really have a problem with FSU…” tells me otherwise.
You suggested that there’s no downside to Flagler other than the course offerings, and there’s no downside to FSU other than it’s not your “dream school”. So unless Flagler is much less costly than FSU, my vote is for FSU. The added academic offerings of FSU are real, tangible things that will likely make a difference in your career, whereas the “dreaminess” of Flagler seems a bit nebulous and unimportant, at least in the way you’ve expressed it.
I had my heart on a school forever, because I had a relationship to many people at the school, it was a football school, etc. I had all these reasons, but I changed my mine end of freshman year because of the major I wanted and I wanted a smaller school. So I would go with the major, it’s what you make out if not the name on the school.
I personally have the opposite opinion. The set of things at a college - the students/your classmates, the professors, the resources, the library, the residence halls, the surrounding area, the study spaces, etc. - can have an influence that persists, directly or indirectly, into your career. Very specific arts & sciences majors don’t necessarily matter, and their importance will diminish over time. But the connections, the career services, the internships, the research experiences, the people you meet, the professors who teach you, the library resources you have - those things can have very real impact on your development as a student and the choices you make.
Unless you want to get a PhD in zoology and study animals, I see no career benefit to majoring in zoology at FSU as opposed to majoring in biology at Flagler. And even if you did want to get a PhD in zoology, I would imagine that the majority of students who do that major in biology or something else because most colleges do not offer zoology majors. However, if you know that you want to major in the biological sciences for sure than Flagler’s not a good choice, because they don’t have any offerings in that area (or in most of the natural sciences).
The other thing is that majors - even dream majors - are fleeting and nebulous choices because high school students rarely have much experience in the field before going to college. In my senior year before college, I had ideas for several majors but eventually settled on political science, because I wanted to go to law school. Then I flipped through the course catalog for political science and decided that all of the course offerings sounded dreadfully boring. An even better example is my husband, who’d wanted to be an astronaut since he was three years old and decided on being an aerospace engineering major in middle school. He didn’t do great in his engineering classes. However, he DID volunteer in an elementary school, fell in love with teaching and promptly changed his major to math education. (He’s since changed it again, to mathematics/statistics, after having a more intensive teaching experience and deciding that he wants to work in education but not actually teaching.)
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The flip side, though, is that most college students end up liking/becoming attached to the college they attended if they have no strong feelings one way or another (and sometimes even if they did). My younger sister-in-law is a freshman this year. She really, really wanted to attend one of our state flagships and major in athletic training there, and she got really attached to the school when she visited. She didn’t get in, and ended up going to another regional public university that does not have that major. She loves her new university and I doubt she’ll transfer, as was her original plan.
So even if you decide that the major is more important and go to Florida State, chances are that you’ll grow to like it there - you’ll form a social circle, get involved in stuff, and take classes that you really love because it’s your dream. Even if you do change your major, I’m betting that you still won’t regret going to Florida State.
The other minor thing is that the resources and things I spoke about in the first paragraph actually might be better at Florida State than Flagler, because of the size and money FSU has.
You go to college to get the education you desire. If Flagler doesn’t have that, then you simply can’t go there. Yes, students often change their mind about majors, but you can’t go into a college with a desired major when they don’t have it. Often what changes the mind of a student is that they took some classes in another discipline that changed their mind, or they took classes in THAT major and discovered they hated it. You can’t do the latter if it doesn’t have that major! So, if you change your mind about a course of study that Flagler has, go there. If not, FSU or another school is your choice.