What should I major in? Choosing a college major 101

With all this back to school hype, I just wanted to talk about another very important part of adulthood, which is going to a university or studying at college, or some sort of higher education.

In modern-day America, it seems like everybody and their mom is going to college and majoring in something, getting some kind of degree, whether it’s an AA degree, Bachelor’s Master’s, you name it.

We really never know exactly what to major in. When you graduate high school and you go straight into college, that’s like going from being 18 to the young adulthood of your twenties – 21, 23. You really don’t have your life figured out by then at all. I mean, 18. You’re technically still a teenager, and you’re supposed to make a decision that is going to impact the rest of your life.

That’s just not realistic. When you really think about it, at 18, you haven’t really known all of your preferences, your likes, your dislikes, your talents, your strengths, your weaknesses, and you kind of really need to know yourself well enough to make those decisions.

And not only know yourself in the present, but know yourself in the future – who you’re going to be. That’s almost impossible to know.

When I graduated high school, long, long ago, I also had a hard time deciding what I should major in.

I kind of just was pressured by society, and I remember thinking, “Well, these majors make the most money, because if I do the major that I really like, I won’t make any money, and money is important for being an adult and a self-sufficient, independent, financially stable human being.”

And that’s why you go to school, right? To get a degree and be an adult and pay your bills and go to work. (Well, probably not in that order.)

What I majored in was just basically marketing, and when I got out into the work field, there were no specific positions for that.

Why? Because employers weren’t looking for majors; they were looking for skills.

I understand that at that age, you don’t make the best decisions, but there’s always ways to find out what your own interests are and what your own skills are, because even your parents can’t tell you that. No one can tell you that. No one knows you more than you – or at least, shouldn’t.

I just want to share with you what I wish somebody had told me, or what I wish I could tell myself all the way back then, to listen to and make a better decision in.

Because I mean, yeah, you can always change your path down the road, but if you really make a well-informed decision at this point in your life, it could benefit you for the rest of your life.

Some majors will earn you so much more right after just completing the undergrad that it’s worth a second look.

According to Cheatsheet.com, they cited this Georgetown University study where they compared some of the undergrad majors.

Basically, the highest paying majors, many of which were engineering or in the pharmaceutical field, would earn an average of $3.4 million more over the lifetime of the graduate than some of the lower-paying degrees.

That’s a big difference. If you told me that I could’ve picked this one or this one, and this one major earns me $3.4 million more than the other one, I think I would’ve made a better decision.

Some of the popular majors don’t have a terrible salary, like the English Language and Literature major is apparently the 10th most popular undergraduate degree. The median salary for a Bachelor’s is $53,000, which is not bad.

Now for the most popular major – drumroll! It is Business Management and Administration. Surprise! Were you surprised? I wasn’t surprised.

Maybe it’s because of where I live, but going to school in Miami, every other person I knew was studying Business Administration and was getting an MBA.

It looks like the median pay is not so bad. They’re earning $62,000 a year, supposedly. I’m sure that’s not starting out, but the median pay does say that.

Then after they complete an MBA – that’s a Master’s in Business Administration, which can take about 2 years – the pay does go up to $81,000 a year.

But even the article says the degree is so popular that you should “expect steep competition in the waiting job search.” Yeah, I’m not surprised.

I remember graduating, and every other status on Facebook would be like, “Just graduated! Got my MBA from so-and-so school. Yay!” It was like, 150 likes. “Congratulations! Oh my God, you’re set for life! Woohoo!”

Next thing you know, that person’s looking for jobs and going to interviews just like you are – you might even see them in the same waiting room – and they still can’t find a job. They’re still on the job hunt.

I think speaking to some of my friends, their logic was “Well, I got an MBA, so I should be able to get a better, higher-paying position.” And then some guy comes in with some basic coding experience or maybe does some kind of project management, and that person gets the job.

Because again, when every other person has the same degree that you have, who do you think your employer is going to choose? You, or that guy over there who has 10 years’ experience managing teams of 50 people under him?

That’s just the reality. That’s what it is. It’s gotten so competitive nowadays that, as I said, everybody and their mom has some kind of degree, especially an MBA. So don’t think that because everyone is doing it, that’s a good reason to do it, because often enough, that's a good reason not to do it.

With that said, here’s my advice. This is the way that I wish I had gone about it. You have to sort of reverse engineer this thing.

So, first, think about the job environment that you want. For me, that was definitely the most important. Over the years, I’ve noticed that I’ve learned things about myself. I like working this way and not that way. Like, if you like working in teams or you prefer working alone, you’re better working alone, you need to focus, etc.

I would say if you don’t know what your preferences are – because I certainly didn’t – I wish I had almost taken some time off and not gone directly to the school, but tried different internships, different jobs. Even entry-level, working at Starbucks, I don’t know.

Really, really take the time to find out where you do your best work at, where you feel the most comfortable at, where you think you could spend most of your days at, because this isn’t like school. When you get a job, you don’t get a choice.

I’m sorry, but that’s the best way I can put it, because that’s the decision that you’re making. You can always change jobs, but when your bills depend on it, and the food on the table and all of that depends on you having a job, it really takes a long time to go out, quit, and find another one.

When you’re in school, you kind of have all this time and no pressure. You can drop one class, decide you’re going to be a philosophy major, and then just go and do a pre-law, and no one’s going to punish you for it.

I think that’s what happened to me for a long time. Not that I didn’t like my field; I didn’t like the environments that I was finding. I was looking for a very specific kind of job in marketing, and that’s the only thing that worked for me.

But other than that, I counted almost every second of every minute of the day until I left, because I could not stand it. And I knew I had to stay there because I had become independent. I’d moved out, I needed to pay my bills, I needed to pay rent.

But it was awful. It was almost like mental abuse, because it can lead to depression, it can lead to so many things that just aren’t healthy and aren’t good for you.

Going back to my original point, not to get so depressing and dark, try different jobs. Do different internships. On Craigslist, they always have this section under “Gigs.” There’s unpaid or paid, and you can type in “internship” and you’ll be able to find a bunch of things in your area that are local to you where you can try out, like “Oh hey, I think I want to be a nurse. Let me volunteer.”

That’s another thing. You can volunteer at hospitals, at so many different centers near you that you learn, okay, do I like to work with the elderly? Or maybe I have a thing for kids with special needs? It’s a really good vocation, really good career.

So let’s say that you took a semester off and you decided to try all kinds of different things. Well, maybe you really liked working with animals, but you’re allergic. You’re allergic to cats, you’re allergic to dogs. You can’t really do it. It’s impossible. Or your employer says, “I’m sorry, this just isn’t working out. We tried, and you’re just not the person for us.”

If that keeps happening to you, this is probably not your area. So unfortunately, you also have to find where your talents shine. Not just where you love to work at, but where you consistently see that you’re getting better and better and there’s success, there’s an improvement there, and there’s potential. That can be a realistic job option for you.

So once you figure out the job that you love and that you’re good at, the next step would be to try and find out what to study to get that job.

You can go about this in different ways. You can go to your advisor. You can google it. I think that’s the best way, probably. Or even ask people who have that job currently, if you know anybody, and find out, “What did you study? How did you get hired? What’s the realistic best way to land this job?”

Because at the end of the day, the people who are advisors are just people, just like you and me, and they found that job. They’ve never had all the jobs, so they’re not going to know an industry-specific job.

I would talk to somebody in the industry, reach out, connect on LinkedIn or whatever it may be, slide into their DMs, and then just ask, “Hey listen, could I just get some coffee with you? I hope you don’t mind. I really am doing research for school, and it’s for a school project where I need to find out what I should major in.” Doesn’t matter. It’s true, technically.

And you can ask them, “How did you get your job? Was it really difficult? Did you need a letter of recommendation? Did you need a special certification? Did you need an internship?”

Or sometimes – it’s sad, but it’s really about who you know. For some very specific – and I would mention education here – you need to know somebody at a school that will recommend you and vouch for you.

But other industries, like my industry, marketing, I really just looked up a job. I used to look up jobs all the time, apply, go to the interview, get the job. It’s that easy.

You do have to figure out what the job pays on average. There’s a lot of sites that will do this. Glassdoor I think is one of them. You can find out what the average salary is and see if that’s something you could live on.

Because I don’t mind, I’m not judging anybody for having their creature comforts and wanting to have a massage every now and then, a nice hot tub. But if you want to work as a musician or, I don’t know, a lower-paying job, realistically you’re not going to be able to live that life.

So figure out if the salary works for you for the kind of life that you want to have, because you might not think it’s important now – and I really didn’t back then. I really didn’t. But when you start, like I said, paying your own bills and kind of “adulting,” you realize, holy crap, I can’t just be traveling all the time or be on the road all day or live without my Starbucks and my coffee.

That was a big deal for me, not being able to buy my special caramel macchiato or whatever once a day. I had to maybe reduce it to once a week or something. Figure out if that salary works for you.

Also, the location, because not all jobs are available everywhere. Sometimes you might want to save, I don’t know, monkeys in the Amazon, but guess what? Maybe that’s not a position that’s offered in Portland or Seattle. So would you move to the Amazon? Would you go to Brazil? Do you know Portuguese?

And sometimes it’s not as dramatic as the Amazon, but it is about the weather. I know the weather is a big deal for a lot of people. Thankfully, I’ve been blessed with good weather throughout my career, but if you don’t want to live somewhere cold or you cannot handle the cold, like the snow, you don’t see yourself realistically shoveling snow off your car every morning before you go to work, that’s something to consider.

Once you have your major decided – because at this point you know what major to pick to get the career that you want to get – you also might want to research what kind of clubs or organizations you need to join that will better your chances at getting this job, because you should try to make the job that you want as specific as possible.

If it was marketing, let’s say that you’re thinking, “I want to market for local nonprofits in the hunger sector, for hungry children.” Okay, you should probably have some volunteer experience with working with children, or maybe you ran a food drive. That would be something really, really good to put on your resume or your cover letter for your prospective employer.

Definitely look into extracurriculars, clubs, internships, anything you can add to your resume. That will make you stand out, because like I said, you don’t just have to have an MBA to be like everybody else. You could have a very specified major and still there’s somebody else, just one person, that had one more skill than you did, one more internship, one more experienced, and that got them your dream job.

It’s not always as dramatic as that, but always prepare yourself to have the best chances.

Lastly, there are some minors and certificates that might be helpful for you. I think when I studied, there were some certificates on graphic design basics that I could have taken and probably would’ve saved me a lot of time down the road because I would already have known how to use a lot of basic Photoshop. I later had to take a course in that to have the ability to create graphics on my own for social media.

Definitely look into that, because those might actually be more skill-oriented than majors sometimes. It is something you can put in your resume if it’s a certification. That’s absolutely something that will make you stand out.

Okay, guys, so that’s basically everything that I wanted to say. I hope it helps. I hope this advice gets to someone out there right around when they’re picking their major or going back to school or having a career change. Really think about the job environment that you want to be at.

I know I will spend most of the days of my life working, so try to make it a happy one. Try to make it somewhere where you don’t feel super anxious or uncomfortable or like this isn’t your field, this isn’t for you. Definitely decide on the work environment first.

Those are my thoughts. If you guys have any other comments, any other ideas, please, please share them below. I would love to hear them! There’s always more on the subject that I want to know, and I’m not going to lie, every now and then I do think of going back to school.

So if you have any more ideas on that, let me know. Thank you again for watching my video, and if you haven’t already, subscribe to my channel.