What are the best undergraduate majors for my kid?

Parents Forum
1

<p>I have constantly gotten questions regarding the best major for my kids. Since I am tired of answering the same question, let me give you my opinion.</p>

<p>Frankly, the answer is a function of four criteria:

  1. What type of school do they go to ( average university or high end, high cache named school)?</p>

<li>What is their eventual goal upon graduation</li>
<li>What subject matter is of most interest to them that they have a good aptitude for?</li>
<li>How strong in a major is the child’s school?</li>
</ol>

<p>First, if your kid is attending a school which doesn’t have the cache of an ivy school or top lac or top engineering school. and doesn’t want to go on to specialized professional programs like medicine, the best job oriented majors would be:</p>

<p>Accounting, anything in health care (nursing, occupational therepy, physical therapy etc.), criminology, and engineering, hard sciences, and computer oriented majors and digital arts , if your kid is artsy oriented.</p>

<p>If they are attending a top named school, any major would probably be ok but majors such as economics and/or english would be best for venture capital/wall street jobs. Other fields, I would focus on economics, accounting ( if available), engineering, hard science, health care, digital arts .</p>

<li><p>As to graduation goals, if they want to go into medicine, majoring in science such as biology might be best. Any major for Law school would be fine, but folks who major in philosophy and political science do tend to do better in law school. Accounting would also be a good major for those who want to go into tax law. Engineering and computer science would be best if your interest is in intellectual property. Likewise, if you want to be a professor of something, majoring in that as an undergrad would be useful. What I suggested is particularly true of you want to go into investment banking or wall street.</p></li>
<li><p>For many jobs and especially for the upper teir jobs, GPA is KING. Say that five times. Having a strong GPA ( 3.5+) may be as important or even more important than the major even among some of the more desireable majors such as accounting. Thus, your child’s aptitude needs to be factored in. thus, if there are several majors that are of interest to your kid, pick the one that he or she does best in.</p></li>
<li><p>Finally, if a school has a poor reputation in a subject or a sterling reputation in a major, this certainly has to be filtered in to the formula ,but, in my opinioin, is at the bottom of the list of importance.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Hope this all helps.</p>

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<p>I’m interested to know why you think Economics AND English are suitable for WS jobs.</p>

3

<p>The best major is the one they want, regardless of school attended.</p>

4

<p>Judging by the number of kids without jobs, taxguy certainly has a point. I’d have the discussion with my kid about what they expect after college. If it’s a well paying job, they do have to pay attention to employability.</p>

<p>We’ve had a discussion on the business major forum about the fact that many kids with weak business majors at average colleges end up in food service or retail sales.</p>

5

<p>Taxguy,
Thanks for the post! I know this is a subject we discuss with our children regularly. Neither child qualifies for a top tier LAC; DS attends a low-ranked state institution. We are constantly preaching attaining the highest GPA you can. We advise that if you want to select a major such as philosophy, try to go for a minor in a more applied discipline. DS has selected a major that combines biology and computers (bioinformatics) and has made the dean’s list the last few semesters, so we are hopeful that he will be employable when he graduates. But, in this economy, who knows?!</p>

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<p>I stand to be corrected on this by those with expertise on it, but looking at recent data on med school acceptances, majors in anthropology do better than those in biology. I think the key for premed is to choose what you enjoy most and can get a good GPA in, but take the required science courses regardless of major. So many premeds major in biology that its hard to make yourself stand out perhaps. </p>

<p>There is value in working backwards (look at occupations and required majors rather than majors and what they lead to). Look at the kind of occupations that interest you most (its hard to be very successful in something you really don’t enjoy it), and that actually have a future in terms of employability, and find the best educational paths to those occupations.</p>

7

<p>It’s “cachet.” Sorry.</p>