Why did you choose your college major?
I'm 51 and I was the first in my family to go to college. So my parents weren't in a position to advise me as to what to major in (not that I would've listened to them anyway). I got an almost useless humanities degree. But it did help me to get into a training program with an organization that has led to a fairly comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I have two sons, ages 21 & 23, in college. During their high school years I told them repeatedly "Don't make the same mistake that I did. When deciding what to major in ask yourself 'what is this degree actually going to qualify me to do?' A degree in accounting, engineering, health-care or I.T. actually qualifies you to do something. But what does a degree in psychology, sociology, English, history, political science, philosophy or criminal justice qualify you to do? Essentially nothing at the undergraduate level." My oldest took that message to heart and is getting a B.S. in nursing at UT with the ultimate goal of being a nurse-anestheseologist (requires a masters). My youngest, like me at that age, is full-of-himself and you can't tell him anything. He's getting a degree in psychology with the goal of becoming a police officer. When I was in college I took the introductory criminal justice course just for fun. The professor had been a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, had worked in law-enforcement and had a Phd. On the first day of class he told us "If your goal is to have a career in law-enforcement and spend it writing traffic-tickets then go ahead and get a degree in CJ. But if you want to move up in the ranks then it's better to get a degree in business administration. Because the further you move up in the ranks the less it is about law-enforcement and the more it is about management--dealing with budgets, procurement of supplies & services, personnel issues, etc." I told this (true) story to my son and--just like me at that age--it went in one ear and out of the other. Edit: Not intending to disrespect JessicaN or her answer but she will probably never be the sole or main provider for her family (unless she becomes a single parent). I've been the sole provider for a family of four. For the past 24 years I've worked at a job that I don't like--it sure isn't "fun"--but that pays well. We do what we have to do to provide for our families.
Don’t know what to choose for college major?
So I’ve been a Community College student for over a year now. I was originally going for nursing but I just don’t feel an interest for it anymore. I don’t know what to pick and it’s scaring me. I’m not a good public speaker and definelty not good at math or related subjects. I find enjoyment and interest in psychology classes but here in NY even with a masters, fields in psychology don’t pay well. Any suggestions as to what I should do? I thought about computer science but I truly am just not good at math and never have been.
How do you choose your college major based on job demand?
You cannot. Many people forget that engineers were susceptible to layoffs back in the 80’s (hard to imagine, I know). Today, there are plenty of jobs in sustainability, where as few existed 15 years ago. You cannot possibly know what jobs/industries will be invented in your lifetime, so trying to pick a major based on current job trends is not necessarily the smartest move. Picking a major that teaches you critical think and problem-solving skills, on the other hand, will enable you to adapt and thrive in any job that may come along in the future.
What college major should a student choose if she likes debate very much?
It really depends on what you like about debate.If you're a diehard policy debater I'd have to recommend political science or sor thing related. If you like government policy and how it affects you this should be a no brainer.Past that there is pre-law. That's what many people who do speech an debate end up doing. It's not a bad way to go and of course there's law school afterwards. There's also philosophy degrees which some students take and try for law school.Lastly if you love the logical side of debate, consider a math major. Math is based highly on logic and this can work well together. Also being a public speaker can help distinguish you quickly from your peers in this field.There's also communications, or and degree in something like teaching with a focus on English. There's other degree which focus more on your public speaking skills developed from speech and debate.No matter what major you end up choosing, good luck to you!
HEP COLLEGE. MAJORS i don't know what to choose?
you can major in just about anything with a liberal arts foundation, cause you will most likely have to go to grad school to become a counselor anyways. Psychology or counseling is a good choice, but Liberal Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Education, will all work. Start looking at the different types of counselors- to be a guidance counselor in schools you usually need a pupil personnel services credential. To work in private practice, you will need to be a psychologist, psychiatrist, Marriage/Family Therapist (MFT) or Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). With a social work degree, you could work for non-profits that work with certain demographics, like homeless teens or foster youth. Go to a counselor at your school- it is their job to know about the different programs. Also, look at the websites of the colleges you are interested- it should have descriptions of all programs they offer. and maybe try to make an appointment with a counselor at a nearby college- they are sometimes more knowledgeable. It's true you don't have to decide till you're a jr, but a lot of majors/ grad programs require certain lower-division classes. it's good to take the right class the first time, rather than squeeze it in the summer before you apply to grad school. Good luck, and great choice.
Should you choose a college major based on your passion, even if it's not in demand?
It depends. How important is it to you to be immediately employed after college with a good wage rate? Would the major give you some job opportunities that you would be happy with, or would you get out of college with a mountain of debt and just low wage job opportunities? Would you be planning to go to graduate school in some field that would open career opportunities? Have you considered the marketability of the skill set that you would have, not just the direct job opportunities from the contemplated major. For example, there aren’t too many job opportunities for English scholars who focused on 19th Century English Novels, but as a major in that field, you might be developing marketable skills like archival research, writing, critical thinking. You might be developing computer skills. These are marketable even though your knowledge of 19th Century English Novels isn’t.I think that undergraduate school is the place to pursue passions, and that graduate school is the place to develop careers. A solid liberal arts education lays a good foundation for thinking, communicating, being self-reliant in work, etc. Nobody expects a 20–year-old to be an expert in any career field. There is one caveat, though. Don’t avoid courses that instill some rigor in your education. Take some math and science and writing and critical thinking courses.
What should my college major be if I am wanting to get into designing artificial intelligence?
AI is a pretty broad field. Which one are you talking about? There's perception (e.g., computer vision, speech recognition, object recognition), there's Machine Learning (e.g., anything that would require making a decision), there's planning (e.g., motion planning), there's Natural Language Processing (e.g., information retrieval, machine translation), and so on. Oh, by the way, all those fields overlap quite a bit.Then there's the subfield you want to be in. Are you into robotics? Video games? Search? All of these has a natural bias in the sorts of things that you should study. If you're in ML, you'll want a strong foundation in statistical analysis and linear algebra. In NLP, you might want that, plus a strong foundation in linguistics.Then of course, there's the type of thing you aim to do. Are you a theorist? Are you implementing algorithms? Are you just an engineer? This will affect what you should study.[math]\vec{S} = \frac{1}{N} \sum^N_{n=1} \vec{x}_n \vec{x}^T_n[/math]One thing's for sure, you'll need a lot of math; math is the language of AI. If you don't like math, this is a bad field for you. I cannot stress this enough. The above is actually incredibly tame: it's literally just a covariance matrix, which is usually used for things like PCA. Not all fields use linear algebra as much as ML (which is my field), but you will need to be comfortable with it in general.You will need a strong foundation in theoretical CS. I'm not talking about an in-depth knowledge of quantum computing or complexity classes, I'm talking mostly about data structures like trees and hash tables. This goes both for theoretical AI and for engineering-based AI. It is inevitable that you will need to deal with CS at this level, and not having a good knowledge of it will probably be bad for you.You might need to be really strong in implementation-oriented CS. This will depend on your field. NLP, for example, requires a robust programming component, because your goal is really to process language automatically. In ML it is entirely plausible that you get away with much less coding, especially if you're mostly theoretical.BOTTOM LINE: don't worry so much about majors, just spend time learning what you need to learn. If you do that, you'll be fine.