Identifying Potential Majors

Whether you’ve got your top majors picked out or you’re still struggling to find a single major that excites you, now’s a good time to do some brainstorming.

One common approach to brainstorming is to look at a long list of majors. Unfortunately, seeing the names of majors doesn’t help you understand what they actually entail. By relying on a list to discover new majors, you end up judging them based on how familiar you are with them and how cool their names sound. Consulting lists can be a fine way to pick a name for your new goldfish, but it’s inadequate for deciding how you’ll invest four years of your life.

So, let’s try a different approach to brainstorming majors. If you’ve settled on either career prep or self-improvement, read only that section. Otherwise, read both.

Finding Career Prep Majors

Here are two options for you to try:

Option 1

To start, identify the career factors you want most. Are you looking for a high salary, a stable 9-to-5, a fast-growing industry, or something else entirely? Whatever it is that most resonates with you, try Googling it with the word “careers”. This should lead you to jobs that match your priorities. For each job, research the optimal degree path to become qualified. (The easiest way to do this is to search for “major for” plus the name of the job.) If the qualifications seem do-able, add it to your list. For each major you add, make sure to jot down its corresponding career and what key factor makes it appealing. Don’t worry about trying to compare the majors you find; we’ll talk about how to do that on the next page. Your goal now is just to brainstorm good options.

As an example, let’s say that I am particularly interested in trying to land a stable career. (Maybe my parents were both laid off from separate industries during the 2008 recession, so stability was ingrained into me as a top priority.) Searching for “stable careers”, I was able to find lots of potential job options. One of them—database administrator—caught my interest, so I did a follow-up search for “major for database administrator”. The results told me that the most relevant majors would be information technology and computer science. Both of these are feasible undergraduate degrees, so I added them to my list.

From there, I would repeat the process for other jobs that were considered to be “stable careers” until I had a reasonable list of majors to consider. If I had identified multiple factors that mattered to me, I would repeat the entire process for the other factors.

That’s all there is to it. Get searching!

Option 2

Alternatively, you could always try asking an adult. *gasp* I know it sounds crazy, but adults have years of working experience and an affinity for reading newspaper articles about trendy new jobs. You can use their experience/knowledge to jump-start your brainstorming process, as long as you’re aware of the limitations of relying on any one person as your source of ideas. If your parents aren’t the right people for this type of discussion, try distant family members, neighbors, or the teacher that has showed enough interest in your future to ask about your college plans. At best, you’ll end up with a winning option. (This happened to my wife when her aunt told her she’d be good at nursing.) At worst, you’ll have to talk to an old person for a while. If that sounds unbearable, stick with option 1.

Finding Self-Improvement Majors

Things are a little bit trickier if you’re pursuing self-improvement. As we previously discussed, the amount you’ll learn is dependent on how interested you are in the subject matter. Thus, the key is to find majors that will hold your interest for the duration of your studies. We’ll use a five-step process to get there.

Step 1: Identify Your Interests

First, identify some of your interests. What do you like to think and talk about? What subject matter excites you enough that you’re willing to read past the first paragraph of its Wikipedia article? When you look up from your computer and realize you just spent hours diving deeper and deeper into the “YouTube wormhole”, what was the overarching theme/topic of the videos? Do you find yourself fascinated by any of your classes, your hobbies, or books you’ve read? Make a list of everything that comes to mind. We’ll save the evaluation for a later step, so feel free to include anything and everything that catches your fancy.

Step 2: Identify Why They Interest You

For each of your interests, try to figure out why you’re interested in it. What is it about this topic/idea that excites you? This step is crucial, since you’ll get better results if you understand the underlying factors that are driving each of your interests. Eliminate any interests that are driven by vain desires (such as the pursuit of prestige or fame), since those won’t help you on the self-improvement path. If some of your interests seem similar to each other, lump them together as a group. If you’ve got more than 5-10 interests/groups, try to eliminate the ones you care least about, as long as doing so won’t cause your list to be missing any of your top interests.

Step 3: Find Majors That Satisfy Your Interests

For each interest/group, find majors that would satisfy it. This can mean different things in different contexts: Sometimes, satisfying an interest is as simple as pursuing the closest-matching major. Other times, you may need to find out-of-the-box solutions like double majors, custom majors, etc. And, on occasion, it may not be possible at all. Some interests just don’t have enough depth (or prestige) to be considered worthy of academic study, and that’s OK. Ultimately, your goal is to find majors that will allow you to indulge in your interests, not just fulfill the instructions of this five-step process.

So, how exactly do you find matching majors? Start by identifying the closest-matching major, but don’t stop there. Use what you learned in step 2 (why you’re interested in it) to dig deeper and find majors that satisfy in different ways. If you’re struggling, search for “subjects similar to ____” or “fields related to ____”, filling in the blanks with the interests and majors you’ve already identified. You may have to consider related fields or even interdisciplinary sub-fields which bridge the gap between conventional fields. (For example, an interest in DNA may immediately lead you to biology, but you should also consider biophysics, since it would allow you to study DNA with a different toolset and might be a better fit for how your mind works.) Move on to step 4 when you’ve got multiple potential majors for each of your interests.

Step 4: Compare Majors to Find the Best for Each Interest

For each interest, compare the majors that could satisfy it. Try to find out what makes the majors different from each other, especially differences that matter to you. Google can help here too; try using a search template like “____ vs. ____”. This should lead you to comparisons of the majors, often with lists of advantages and disadvantages. Use what you learn to figure out which major is the best fit for each your interests, and set aside any that don’t make the cut.

Step 5: Test Them Out

For the potential majors that have made it this far, it’s time to put them to the test:

• Try to find the best books on the subject (ideally written for laypeople) and read one of them
• Watch TED talks given by the leaders of the field
• Search around to find the most exciting things happening in the field in the last few years

The goal is to see how strong your interest really is. Aim to go deep in your research, as this will help you get past the glitter and into the meat of the subject. It’s one thing to think something sounds interesting, but it’s a whole other thing to maintain that interest through four years of study. Eliminate any options that can’t hold your interest.

Example

Let’s use a hypothetical example to make this process clearer. Maybe you’ve always loved buildings, and your parents grew tired of stopping so you could take pictures of cool buildings when you were visiting a new city. Upon reflection, you decide it’s the design of the buildings that holds your attention (and not just your obsession with big, shiny things). Add architecture to your list of majors to consider, but don’t stop there. A Google search for “fields similar to architecture” turns up civil engineering. With more searching, you learn architecture involves a lot of artistic design, whereas civil engineering involves more math calculations. These are over-generalizations, but they can provide useful guidance: If you dread the thought of having to put pen to paper in an artistic endeavor, consider eliminating architecture. If you could never see yourself geeking out in complex mathematical calculations, maybe skip civil engineering. Continue this process to find and evaluate more related majors, such as interior design or urban planning. You can only evaluate the majors you’ve identified as options, so don’t skimp. Finally, decide which major best captures your interest in building design, then start reading/watching/learning about it. Repeat this whole process for your other interests.

Self-Improvement Recap

So, let’s recap. Identify your interests, then try to understand why they interest you. Use what you learn to assemble a list of majors for each interest, then compare the options within each list to uncover which is the best fit. Finally, put each potential major to the test to make sure it will hold your attention for years to come. You should end up with a handful of majors worth considering, one per interest.

Next up, we’ll discuss how to compare the majors you’ve identified.

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