Major in the Right College Choices
Choosing a college major is one of the toughest decisions you’ll ever make.
It determines the type of career you’ll have, the salary you’ll make and how you’ll be spending your work days throughout your life. Do you want to work in an office or perhaps in a hospital? Do you like working with numbers or prefer to be creative? Is upward mobility important to you?
All of these questions, and more, must be asked.
How to choose the right major
Picking a major is just as important as picking a college.
In order to choose a major that’s best-suited for you, there are a few things to consider:
Know your interests – Make a list of all of your interests, hobbies, likes and dislikes. Think about how you spend your free time. Do you spend it socializing, problem solving, tackling projects or helping others? You’ll never work a day in your life if you love what you do. Do something you love and would be willing to do for free.
Know what you’re good at – If you’re bad at math, accounting may not be the route you want to take. If you’re good at helping others, a career in medicine may be for you. Combine your likes and passions with what you’re good at to help you determine your major.
Get experience – Talk to everyone you know in your field of interest and ask plenty of questions. Just because you like math doesn’t necessarily mean accounting is the path you should take. See if you can shadow someone for a day to get a feel for the ins and outs of the job. Learn as much as you can about the profession before deciding on a major. Deciding how to choose a college major you can live with is best done by talking to people and seeing what the field is really about.
How social media can help
Surprisingly, social media can actually play a positive role in helping you choose a major and a school.
You can connect with others who are majoring in your field of interest and see what they have to say about the program. You can read blog posts; follow the school on Twitter and ‘like’ their Facebook page to learn as much as you can.
To successfully utilize social media, the school needs to be able to connect with the students and engage in conversation. If a student has a question regarding a certain major or program, they should be able to ask over a social media platform and get a response within a few days.
Ideally, universities want their social media presence to be credible and positive. They want potential students to trust the information and feel they can refer to it for relevant information.
The Guardian and The Student Room found that even though most students use social media multiple times per day, they usually aren’t even aware that their college of choice uses social media. The challenge for universities is to be more informative on social media so prospective students will feel confident in using it.
Universities should have such a social presence that they can actually recruit students via social media.
They can Tweet about upcoming online courses, when to register for classes, upcoming sporting events and more. Social media should be where current and prospective students turn to find the latest information on their school and major.
Top majors
The Princeton Review found the most popular college majors that students are choosing.
The top five, beginning with number five, are education, biology, nursing, psychology and the number one college major today is business administration.
Given its rising popularity, you may one day see social media crack that list.
Photo credit: Forbes.com
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