9 How to Choose a Major
Introduction
Some students enter college knowing exactly what they want to major in. They may not only have their major planned out, but they may have an idea about next steps after graduation, further education, and even where exactly they want to work in the future. That’s great, but it is by no means typical.
What should a student do if they are not sure what to major in and don’t feel called to anything in particular? Or if they are interested in multiple majors? It’s helpful to revisit your reasons for applying to college in the first place. Were you hoping to get a higher earning job? Looking for a meaningful career? Or were you interested in learning for the sake of learning? Some combination of all of those?
Part of your FYS class may include exploring these questions. But it is also helpful to explore on your own, and these are questions that you may want to mull over during a long period of time.
Degree Maps
Understanding how to navigate your degree requirements is critical in exploring a major. A degree map is a tool that helps you plan your academic path and stay on track to graduate. Degree maps are organized by semester and year, providing a recommended course sequence for your major. Course requirements, prerequisites, program requirements, and transfer options are outlined in degree maps. Degree maps are geared towards full-time students, but they are still useful for part-time students, with the understanding that the timing is different.
To explore your major requirements, visit LaGuardia’s Degree Maps. Additionally, meeting with an advisor to discuss exploring different career paths and gain a clearer understanding of your academic plan is recommended. Visit LaGuardia’s Advising website to connect with an advisor.
Types of advisors you can connect with:
- Faculty mentor
- Professional advisor
- Peer advisor
Some programs may not offer degree maps on the website, but to find a specific program, visit LaGuardia’s Academics website.
Work styles in your future career
College is certainly not all about your future career. But if you’re unsure about what to major in, this may be a useful place to start thinking about what you like and don’t like. The federal Department of Labor has an online tool called O*NET (Occupational Information Network). Their Interest Profiler quiz helps you think about what general types of work you do and don’t like. For example, do you like to work with other people or independently? Do you like to work creatively or have a specific and concrete task at hand? Take the quiz and think about your results.
Exploring specific careers
Once you have the results of the quiz, look at what specific careers fit your work style. Let’s say you scored very highly in the “social” category. A few examples of careers that may fit that style would be teaching, social work, and mental health counseling. Next you’ll want to select one of those careers to explore. This does not lock you in to any specific career, it’s just a good exercise to explore that career, see what the job prospects are, and how much you might expect to make.
The Department of Labor has many useful tools. One of them is called the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Navigate to the below website:
Let’s take our example from above and say you scored highest on the social dimension. We will take a look at social work careers. By entering “social work” into the search bar we can see a wealth of useful information about the social work profession.
Most importantly, we can see the median salary of social workers, $58,380 per year. This means that half of all social workers make less than this, and the other half make more than this. This is higher than the median salary for all workers across all careers. Also, we can see the job outlook for social workers. The number of jobs in social work is expected to grow by 7% between 2023 and 2033, which is more job growth than the average across all professions. If we are considering a career in social work, this is all useful information to think about, and it might be helpful to make a pro and con list of all the information you find out about the career you are exploring through the Department of Labor website.
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