"Many colleges ask you to choose a major as early as your senior year of high school, on your admissions application. Yet there’s a good chance you’ll change your mind. The Education Department says that about 30 percent of students switch majors at least once.
Students get plenty of advice about picking a major. It turns out, though, that most of it is from family and friends, according to a September Gallup survey. Only 11 percent had sought guidance from a high school counselor, and 28 percent from a college adviser. And most didn’t think that the advice was especially helpful. Maybe it’s because much of the conventional thinking about majors is wrong." …
I’m glad we’re finally seeing some articles counteracting the STEM frenzy that the college-bound population and their families seem to be in these days. There are other valuable majors and careers besides computer science and engineering.
Let’s not forget the more individual factor of being employable. If you are bright, reliable, hard working and play well with others, you can wind up being successful in a variety of fields, coming from a variety of colleges.
“I’m glad we’re finally seeing some articles counteracting the STEM frenzy that the college-bound population and their families seem to be in these days.”
As a former math major, I agree with you. For me math was a great major. It is not for everyone.
Good read. Thanks for sharing the article. I didn’t identify my major until Junior year in college, after I knew what was available to me and what my interests were.
this is a good read . but if you are talented enough then you should see the incline of industry to choose more specific majors out of your interests. for example if i live in atlanta i would be choosing my choices on basis of incline of internet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dmc-atlanta
As much as I want to believe that your major and name of college doesn’t matter compared to what you do with your education, I can’t get myself to put “undecided” on my application rather than a STEM related major. I definitely think this has to do with how I’ve been raised as well as thousands and thousands of articles bolstering computer science or engineering.
I’m with Cuban. A Philosophy primer shows you how to think and ask the right questions. We could use more philosophy and less 1/0 black/white ideology.
A Q abt majors in college apps… if i choose 2 majors on my common app and a college doesnt think i can get into either, do they then suggest an alternate or do they reject my app…?
@comom25 That is the case for many schools but not all. For those that do admit by major, STEM and other competitive programs are indeed harder to get into.
@PengsPhils so how do we know which do and which dont? or do we assume that becasue they ask for majors on app they do the remaining dont?
but most ask majors on apps dont they?
@comom25 It’s usually something you have to dig for. Many will specifically say, some will hide it. Asking for a major does not mean they admit by major. Usually, the schools with big differences in admit rates will be upfront with it.
A liberal arts college doesn’t require you to apply to a specific major, but at some of the really elite ones, it may be hard to do well in certain majors, such as economics or math. In that situation, though, the student might choose to switch to something less difficult for them.
Liberal arts majors aren’t going to be the ones designing the airplanes, robots, artificial intelligence devices and applications, computers, medical devices, bridges, buildings, drugs, et. al, of the future. That will always be the province of engineers and scientists. As I used to tell my students in the first year Electronic Circuit Analysis and Engineering Physics courses, engineers and scientists create the world. Robots will not replace creative engineering work, only tasks that can be reduced to a procedure or algorithm. Anything original in technology will always come from the human mind. All ABET accredited engineering schools already require a significant humanities and liberal arts component.
They can call my major (Geology) whatever they want (STEM, geoscience, earth science). It is my interest and it is not superior nor inferior to any other kind of field. I feel for those dealing with the fact that people judge them based upon the fact they are not “STEM”. Engineering is an interesting field, but hey, so is European Studies or History.