Getting Ready

 Help That College-Bound Student Find a Major

By Fritz Grupe

After students are accepted to college, the next question should be about what they will major in? Failure to find the right answer to this question has many financial implications.

Students who find themselves at sea as to a choice of major may well drop out because their studies don’t seem to be going anywhere. There are some counselors and advisors who feel that students can take time, as they need to figure out the answer to the question of a major and benefit from the search process. These people are not going to pay your bills.

Lots of students, the estimates range up to 80 percent of all incoming first-year students, are uncertain as to their major. Generally, students report that the most trusted source of advice they receive is from their parents. The student has to make the decision, but as a parent you can help your children make up their minds. Let’s look at several types of “undecideds” and how you can help if your child falls into one of these categories.  

The Naïve. Some students think that they know what career they would like, but careers and majors are not the same things. Perhaps they can’t see how to make the transition from the career they want to a major that will get them there. Maybe they simply don’t know what majors are available. There are majors like geography and anthropology that many students will never even consider unless they accidentally happen on a course in one of those fields. Help them by looking at the catalog of their college’s offerings and make sure your child knows something about each field. Often students reject fields because “that’s nothing but...” For example, they eliminate a computer-oriented major because “its nothing but sitting in front of a computer,” failing to realize that they can do technical writing and training that requires less computer programming than many other professions whose names don’t suggest computers. Do what you can to see that your student explores majors enough to understand whether it is something he or she would like to do.

A classic case of a naïve student who used MyMajors.com sent in this request for assistance to our Web site, MyMajors. “This is Sam and I took the MyMajors.com test. I don't want to go into education, as it suggested. I want to work with babies, and go to school for 4 years or less. I am planning on taking summer classes. I want to make a lot of money, like $50,000 or more, and I don’t want to work holidays or weekends. Is there anything available? I don’t know what to major in. Please e-mail me soon.”

The Indecisives. Some students find that selecting a major is only one of the problems they waffle on. They have trouble making any significant decisions. Indecisiveness appears to be somewhat more socially acceptable than it once was. Some students may be overwhelmed with the amount of data they have available to them and no experiential base on which to make a decision. Try to initiate a narrowing down process. There is time, but delays can set back progress toward the degree. Give the student confidence that he or she can make a decision and that a wrong choice is not irreversible. Sometimes indecision is based on a fear that you, the parent, will not approve of a choice or will react negatively if the student has to change course, costing you money.

There are some students who, quite properly are definitely undecided. They have given careful thought to lots of majors and still haven’t come to a decision. They want to let things work themselves out after they arrive on campus. This is certainly all right, but only if they have mapped out a conscious plan on how to make a decision. Figure out with the student how to gain exposure to courses of study with which he or she may never have had contact – sociology, nutrition or archaeology. Your student can then plan to talk to faculty and students in those fields for advice. Generally, their schedules allow flexibility in the selection of electives and required courses, so the “experimentation” can be completed early.

The Clueless. Some students not only have no idea of what they should study, but they are also not as concerned as they should be. Others lack the motivation to work at finding a major and are thinking more about college as a place to party and socialize than as a place to study and learn. If this is your child, you have a big task in front of you to inform and educate. Find a motivating force to get the child focused on the need to find a major. Make sure he or she understands the problems inherent in waiting too long.

The Web site www.MyMajors.com is a useful resource specifically designed to interview students and to recommend majors that appear to be good ones based on the student’s high school experience and personal values. It recommends six majors for the student to consider, offers information about the major and the kinds of jobs they lead to, and provides many helpful links to resources that can inform a student’s understanding of what it takes to succeed in a particular major. University advisors and career planning counselors can provide individualized support and assistance by drawing on instruments like the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory to describe a student in ways that can then be used to determine what majors might make sense to them.

So, think about the type of student you are sending off to college next fall. Help that student to make a good decision, and, oh, by the way, save you a lot of money. In today’s money, for tuition alone, a fifth year of college at a private institution will cost you $29,541 and at a public institution, $13,833. And that is in today’s money.

Fritz Grupe is president of MyMajors.com, an online site that specifically offers high school students several major choices before a college.