- So you're about to embark on your college career,
and I'm sure you are fielding a big question,
which is what will you be majoring in?
And if you are totally lost on what you wanna study,
stick around, I have three strategies to help you decide
on what your college major should be.
(soft music)
Hey guys, it's Justine with The College Investor,
Investing & Personal Finance for Millennials.
And if you are stuck
on what to decide on for your college major,
you're not alone.
There are plenty of students out there who go into college
not really knowing exactly what they should major in.
So one of the first strategies that you can utilize
is to pick a major based on employability.
So what I mean by that is picking a major where you know
that there are jobs out in the marketplace
that require the type of degree that you will be pursuing.
Now, according to a recent study from PayScale,
there are top five majors for earning high salaries,
and those include petroleum engineering,
electrical engineering and computer science,
applied economics and management, operations research,
and public accounting.
So these majors often have above average pay
for college graduates,
and then later on in your working years,
you can easily make over six figures
by having these types of degrees.
The problem with these degrees, though,
are they typically have a high burnout rate.
So if you can't imagine yourself working on an oil rig,
then petroleum engineering
is probably not the best fit for you.
Also, some employers just don't really care
about the type of degree that you have.
Java developers don't necessarily need a degree
in computer science,
but they do have to have the knowledge and skillset
to write really good code
and be able to work in that environment very easily.
So you don't necessarily have to have that degree
in order to work in a particular profession.
The next strategy is to pick a major based on what you love.
If there is something that really peaks your interest
now is the time to study those interests
while you're in college.
Now there's a couple of reasons for that.
The first reason is you know what you want to study.
If you've always had an interest in music,
then maybe that's something that you should be majoring in.
If you also want to study what you love
and you know that you'll need further education,
such as you're going into medical school or law school,
and your bachelor's degree can really be spent
in getting those prerequisites,
knowing that you have several interests out there,
this is the time in your college career
where you can take a couple of classes
and study something that's completely different
than what you might be studying in your post-graduate years.
Also, if you are coming into college with college credits,
you could have the opportunity to double major,
so maybe you do something in fine arts
and you do something in business
so that you have both
that could compliment each other really well.
Or maybe you want to remain in academia.
So maybe you want to become a college professor
or get your PhD.
And in that case, you can start with a bachelor's degree
that you are really interested in and then work your way up.
The next strategy that you can utilize
is to pick an easy major.
Now, if you're only going after your bachelor's credential,
and you just wanna say that you have that degree,
then picking an easy major would probably be the best bet.
But the problem with this is only 62% of college students
actually finish their bachelor's degree within six years.
Now, while that is more than half,
that leaves a big area of students
who are just not finishing their bachelor's degrees.
And so if you are in the mindset of just wanting
that bachelor's degree as quickly as possible,
maybe the easy major is the route for you,
but honestly, there's so much fun to be had in college.
And you're going to be spending those years
to set yourself up for your career.
And so why not either pick something that you love
or has a high-paying potential?
Also, it's perfectly okay for you to be undecided
your freshmen and sophomore years.
I think being undecided might even be a better idea
than just randomly picking a major,
because then you can get
all of those prerequisite classes out of the way
and take classes in different areas
to figure out what's interesting to you.
Maybe you wanna take a class in Spanish
or you wanna take a class in architecture,
and figuring out what exactly is really interesting to you
and utilizing those classes to help you figure out
if it's enough interest to help you major in that field.
regardless of what major you decide on,
you have to really kind of take a step back
and figure out what has the most earning potential,
but also satisfies your happiness levels as well.
six figures right outside of college,
six figures, right outside of college,
we'd all love that.
But if it's doing something that you absolutely dread,
then it's not worth it.
You have to really blend the balance of wealth building,
and also doing something that really makes you happy.
Now, if you want to really get a head start
in your college career,
it also includes learning
so many things about personal finance.
Financial literacy is so important during this time,
and we have all of those resources to help you budget,
invest smart and get out of debt
here at thecollegeinvestor.com.
Be sure to check it out,
and we'll catch you in the next video.