what major to go for?

FutureProf
Fri, 18 Aug 2006 23:37:28 +0000

Hi, new member here. I have a dilemma and I’m hoping someone can give me some advice.

I want to be a college professor, just totally fell in love with the idea when I started visiting schools. I’ve started researching it as a career and know I’ll need to get my PhD. But of course I have to start in undergrad. Problem is, I am interested in several majors and when researching masters and PhD programs, I saw that most of them required a bachelors in the same major. The ones I’m interested in are American history (especially colonial history), cultural anthropology, sociology (either race relations or generational studies), English lit and French. I am a total Francophile and want to study and maybe live in France, and would also really be interested in combining cultural anthropology with a French major.

Those aren’t mutually exclusive, but I’m wondering at what point in college do I really need to decide which one to focus on, and how do I really find schools that are really good in more than one of those areas? I want to avoid having to transfer schools if possible. There are tons of schools with all of those as majors, and I know that the College of William & Mary is supposed to be very strong in colonial American history (naturally!), but I haven’t found rankings on schools for majors that aren’t business, education, etc. Where can I dig deep for that kind of info? If I use the standard college search engines just looking at those majors, I get a TON of results.

btw if anyone personally knows of strong schools in those areas, I would love to know. I am not decided on geographic area so much yet, although I’d probably prefer East or West coast rather than middle America. I’m more a city/suburban person than rural for sure.

THANK YOU to anyone who can help!!!