Choosing the Right College Major Can Make or Break Your Career — Here’s How to Pick a Good One.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make for your career!

In today’s hyper competitive world, having a college degree is practically a necessity if you want to land a high paying job after graduating.

It seems as if everyone is going around flaunting their computer science and commerce degrees, applying for the competitive jobs in law, investment banking, software engineering.

Competitive, sought-after firms almost always expect you to have a college degree.

However, there’s a more individualized decision that you have to make when you enroll into college or university.

The college degree that you want to pursue.

Many people (including employers) in today’s world will tell you that what you study doesn’t matter all that much.

However, I’m here to tell you today that it definitely does, and choosing the right college major is potentially one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make in your life.

It can quite literally make or break your career in the future.

That’s why in this article, I’m going to give you tips and tricks on how you can pick the right major for you, to ensure you don’t end up regretting your decision later on in life!

Let’s make a start.

How Do I Pick the Right College Major?

Well, this can really be broken down into two main aspects or checkboxes that the college major you pick needs to satisfy.

Your college major needs to be:

• Something that you’ll enjoy studying and leads to career fields that you’ll enjoy
• A high-paying degree that you can expect to earn a reasonably high income from

Really, that’s all that your college major needs to satisfy.

Obviously, this is going to be very individual and subjective to different people, primarily because of the ‘enjoyable’ aspect of picking the right degree.

However, we can look at statistics to be able to determine which college majors are generally high-paying, and which are going to offer better returns on our investments.

Why else would we go to college, and spend four years and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt on?

The underlying reason is to earn a better income, and to open up bigger career opportunities than we otherwise would have.

Now, let’s break down how we can use these tips to pick the right college major.

Pick a Major That You’ll Enjoy Studying, and Working With

This is arguably the most important factor you have to consider when you’re deciding on the college major you want to study.

Is this something that you can see yourself enjoying studying and working in a career with?

Think about it.

If you’re going to go to university and study a major, you’re likely going to be, or at least planning to, work in a career field that’s related to that discipline.

So, if you pick something that you don’t find enjoyable, you’re going to end up miserable, both in your studies, and likely your work career (which is expected to be approximately 40–50 years long, by the way).

Now, if you’re not going to enjoy studying for the degree, at least make sure that you’ll enjoy the work you do with the degree after you graduate.

You could end up hating your university studies and degree so much that you’ll lose all your motivation, and this can translate into poor grades and overall performance in the field you end up pursuing.

You might end up failing some classes, barely scraping by, or not being able to find a job in the discipline you studied, all because you picked a college major that you didn’t enjoy.

Or, even worse, you might end up becoming successful and landing the bets job in that career field, and end up hating your life because you’re working 40, 50, or even 80 hours a week, doing something you don’t enjoy.

Don’t ever let yourself fall victim to being pressured into studying and doing something that you won’t enjoy, because having those tough conversations, letting people down, and saying ‘no’ are easier to do than dealing with a lifetime of regret.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to you, is for you to study a discipline that you don’t enjoy, work full time at a job you don’t enjoy, and end up living a life full of unhappiness and discontent.

If you’re thinking of studying engineering, law, or medicine, simply because your parents told you to (I know this is common in Asian households because this happened to me too), I strongly urge you to think about everything yourself.

Search online what working in those fields is going to be like.

Or, better yet, reach out to professionals who are already working in those fields, and see what it’s like.

Don’t be shy or think that you ‘cannot be bothered to do it’, because if you slip up and make the wrong choice, your future self is going to seriously regret the decision, and wish you’d gone out and done your research thoroughly.

I strongly urge you to find out what it’s like to work in each of the career fields you can see yourself a part of, and make an educated decision from there.

Know what the day to day work looks like, know what the lifestyle is like, and try to imagine yourself doing it full time for years.

Most universities will showcase some potential career paths that each degree can lead to, and those are a great way to explore your options.

Otherwise, career fairs, events, and online career advice websites are also great.

Make sure you can find a career path you ideally want to go down, or at least begin your career in, and then pick a college major that’s going to lead to that.

Of course, you can study for multiple degrees to keep your options open, but it’s going to still be important to get it right, as obviously, you can’t spend your whole life at university either.

You need to be firm with anyone who’s trying to pressure you into studying a specific discipline, and make sure that you, and only you, are the person making this decision.

It’s okay to say ‘no’, and it’s okay to put yourself first.

If you don’t, you’ll end up wishing you did later on in life anyways; except at that point, you won’t be able to go back.

Yes, get help from career advisors and the people you look up to.

But at the end of the day, you need to be the person to decide.

Pick a Major that Offers a High Income

Now, probably the less important factor to consider, but still something you definitely need to think about.

Is your major statistically likely to offer you a high income?

Aside from working in a career that you hate, another key reason that you might end up regretting your college major could be that it doesn’t actually help you generate any good income.

What’s the point spending four years of full time study in college, and racking up tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to get a degree that won’t offer you a good income in return?

There is no point.

You do not want to find yourself in a position where you’ve taken on a lot of debt, but earn too low of a salary to be able to pay it back.

To factor this in, we need to think about the following:

• Average salaries and total compensation for the industry
• Job security (how easy will it be for you to keep your job?)
• Job availability (how easy will it be for you to find a job after you graduate?)
• Statistics

Always make sure that the major you pick is going to offer you a reasonably good income, as you do not want to end up drowning in debt and not being able to afford the things you need/want in life due to having studied in a low-paying profession.

What Are the Lowest Paying College Majors?

Some notorious examples of low paying college majors include:

• Education
• Performing arts
• Social services
• Psychology
• Religious studies
• Gender studies
• Hospitality
• Foreign languages
• Anthropology

Now, some of those majors on there, I honestly don’t even know why anyone would ever want to study.

Gender studies?

Seriously?

Now, it’s not to say that you can’t study the degrees on the list above, it’s just that you have to be very sure it’s what you want to do in life, as the money likely isn’t going to be able to justify your decision for picking those majors/professions.

There are certainly going to be people who want to go into teaching because it’s a passion, and that’s completely okay.

There might be people who want to be counselors and psychologists, and that’s completely fine as well.

You just need to make sure if you pick a major that isn’t going to be high paying, that you can justify choosing that major and profession.

What About the Highest Paying College Majors?

Now, some of the highest paying college majors include:

• Finance
• Accounting
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Law
• Medicine
• Math

Really, it’s the STEM degrees, plus the two harder business majors of finance and accounting.

The Main Takeaway — Closing Thoughts

I guess really, what I’m saying is that if you’re going to go to college or university, and you care about making a lot of money (which, if you’re a reader of Grad Excel; you probably are), pick a major out of the highest paying ones, that you’ll enjoy working in.

Again, that’s:

• Finance
• Accounting
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Law
• Medicine
• Math

If money isn’t so important to you, that’s absolutely fine too, follow your heart and I wish nothing but the best for you.

Just, whatever you do, don’t study gender studies please.

Just don’t do it.

If you’d like to learn more about becoming the highest performing student you can be, I highly recommend checking out the rest of the Medium publication, Grad Excel.

Other than that, wishing you nothing but the best for your future studies and career endeavors!