Japanese Major

Kenshinsan
Sun, 27 May 2007 23:59:33 +0000

Hi, looking for advice please.

This has been on my mind for a bit. For the Fall 2007 semester I should be a Japanese major at Michigan State University (considering other places but this is 95% likely where I will be). The thing is that whenever I tell people this they’re like WHAT? I haven’t gotten a good reaction from that many people except maybe my friends. A lot feel that I am wasting my time and money majoring in this even though I have explained to them (from what I have read on here at least) that your major doesn’t really matter when you apply to med-school.

So I was wondering what do you think about this? Should I change my major? I feel college is probably my only chance in my life where I can study anything that I want and this is what interests me most at the moment so I decided to major in it.

Do you think that adcoms at med-school will consider it kind of a joke that I majored in Japanese? Would this increase or decrease my chances for admission at top med schools? How well do foreign language majors do in regards to med school admission? Do you think that they will consider it an easy way to get a high gpa because some may feel that anyone can get a 4.0 in a language major or will they realize it for its difficulty as Japanese is widely considered one of the hardest if not the hardest language in the world for a native English speaker to learn?

Some people are also worried about what my exit opportunities will be if I don’t get into med-school. While I know pretty much every exit opp. for a Japanese major and most involve teaching or sometimes business, none of them make a lot of money and for business you can usually only make money if you graduate from a very prestigious school. (Gotta pay off those loans somehow :)) Though I think it would a lot of fun to teach English in Japan it isn’t a career that you could do for the rest of your life, or raise a family on, or with great benefits as a teacher in the U.S gets, especially teaching as a foreigner.

So what do you think? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.