How to Choose College Majors!

Welcome back to another week of the RRA Newsletter! Today we’ll be talking about how to choose a college major - maybe you always knew you wanted to do CS or history or maybe you’re still figuring it out …. Regardless, we are here to help you figure it out!

When choosing a college major, make sure to consider:

• Whether this will affect your choices for college - for example, applying as a CS major to Carnegie Mellon University, which is notoriously difficult, may be really hard! Instead, consider changing your major to similar topics (ie. Applied Math, Engineering) if you are set on CMU.

  • Likewise, if you want to study a certain subject, will you need to apply to a specific school within the college? For example, many colleges have specific business schools for undergraduates that will require different applications!

• What are your current extracurriculars? Regardless of what you choose, in order for your application to make cohesive sense, your major should largely align with your current extracurriculars - this way, you’re not only getting invaluable skills (and technical skills), you can speak of proof of your interests!

• Lastly (but no less important) - what are you interested in? Studying something practical can be great for your career but taking into account your interests and hobbies can be important too!

Reminders and tips for looking at majors:

• While writing about/choosing your major in your college application can be important, you are not bound to it! Many students change their major depending on their interests, classes, and goals in college.

  • Likewise, when you get to college, you may become more aware of more specific programs/majors that are special to your school.

• Consider your long term goals - do you want to go to med school? Business school? Law school? Choosing more related majors to these goals or even consider what you want to do after college.

• Explore college websites and see what classes are offered in a major! See what intrigues you and what you will potentially study.

• Connect with alumni and/or current students studying that major - you can ask them what classes they’ve taken, why they’ve chosen that major and their favorite part of studying in that area! This will also help tie into demonstrating your passion for that school in your essays/interviews.

Choosing a major can be a really exciting part in seeing your college application take shape. RRA is here to help in that conversation as well!