There is no need to decide on your college major while in 10th grade. Continue to take a well rounded base college prep curriculum in high school, adding electives and advanced courses as you have interest in them, so that you will be prepared for any college major direction you choose.
Possible decision time points:
- 12th grade: When applying to colleges, some colleges require applying to a division (arts & sciences, engineering, agriculture, etc.) or a specific major, and it may require a high GPA or another admission process to change into a more popular one after enrolling. If you are undecided, you may want to prefer a college where all of your possible majors are less competitive or non-competitive to enter after enrolling.
- college frosh year: Some majors require taking a sequence of prerequisite courses starting from the first semester, so do not delay starting those courses for any and all of your majors of interest if you go in undecided.
- college soph year: At this time, you can see the administrative deadline to declare a major approaching, so you need to be getting ready to do that.
- college junior year: At this time, colleges usually expect you to have declared a major or be declaring one.
As far as jobs and careers go, some are major-related or major-specific (or at least related to specific course work or equivalent independent learning). Some require or are greatly helped by professional credentialing or licensing (e.g. nursing, accounting, civil engineering, actuarial, school teacher), so a relevant major may be required (especially if the prerequisite for licensing is a subject-accredited bachelor’s degree) or highly helpful.
But other jobs and careers are more major-agnostic, though they may prefer or require a bachelor’s degree to enter those pathways. For these types of jobs and careers, many majors can be done, but building strength in various desired skills like reading, communication, math/statistics, humanistic understanding, logical thinking, and behavioral understanding will be helpful. But be aware that there can be considerable competition for some of these jobs and careers, since anyone with a bachelor’s degree may apply for them.