ASG Academic Advising: Picking a Major – Starting with a Career in Mind

A large part of the Advising Program at the American Scholar Group involves helping students choose potential majors for study at U.S. universities. It’s an important question for guiding how you enrich your Five Factors of U.S. University Admissions!

If you know or have a strong feeling about what kind of career you want, you can look up which majors lead you towards that career path to see which of them appeal to you.

Careers Tied to Specific Majors

Some careers require a specific major. A good example is Engineering. If you want to be a Chemical Engineer, you have to apply to a university as a Chemical Engineering major. Your first year will have a general engineering course or two in your schedule. In your second year & beyond, you will start specializing in Chemical Engineering, learning about things such as fluid, material, and atmospheric dynamics.

Nursing is also something with a clearly defined major tied directly to particular career! You apply as a Nursing major when you apply to university & start your first year with basic courses before going into much more difficult & focused courses later.

For Example, these courses teach you things like:

• How basic knowledge of anatomy & physiology applies to homeostasis
• The functioning of the body under healthy circumstances versusinjury & disease states

Is the career you are interested in tiedto a specific major?

Careers That Can Workwith Multiple Majors

A good example of this is a career in business. If you have an interest in math, perhaps you want to be an account or work in finance, you would choose business & finance majors

Or maybe you enjoy coming up with new ideas & design products. In that case, focusing on design and innovation courses in addition to business or even choosing design-related majors would be better for you.

Consider what you can bring to the job. Concentration & noteworthy accomplishments or experiences help you stand out!

Careers Tied to Graduate Schools

Some careers require an advanced degree like a Master’s or a PhD. Many high-end professional jobs require, or are easier to get, with graduate degrees.

• Undergraduates: University students who haven’t yet earned a basic four-year degree (Bachelor’s Degree)
• Graduates: Those who have obtained a Bachelor’s degree are graduates
• Graduate Schools: Offers more advanced degrees like Master’s degree or PhDs
• Graduate Students: University students pursuing for advanced degrees

Becoming a lawyer has many options at the undergraduate level. You can choose to major in Pre-Law, but that won’t be the best choice for all aspiring lawyers. So long as you score well on the LSAT (the test for Law Schools) you can be competitive for admission.

In fact, if you know which area of law you want to practice,you might be better off studying a related major.

• For Criminal Law, perhaps a Criminology major with a concentration in Social Justice
• For Environmental Law, perhaps an Environmental Sciences major or a Pre-Law major with an Environmental Science minor

Earning a graduate degree in Computer Science, will likely mean you need a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering. This is similar for those wanting to get an advanced degree in areas like Biology or Chemistry.

Having a Bachelor’s in these fields make the transition into Computer Science or advanced Biology in graduate school much smoother.

As you can see, you must plan out your education pathway carefully if you want a career that requires a graduate degree.

Do you have a career in mind to help you choose a major?

If not, that’s OK! We will also be going over how to pick what to study at university based on your strengths & passions