Majors
What each major is like week to week, what it pays, and who ends up switching out. Then go try the career it points at.
- AccountingIn their twenties, half of marketing and general business graduates are doing something no degree was needed for. With accounting it is one in five, and the average accounting graduate earns $76,194 four years out.Leads to Accountant
- BiologyIt is the degree people pick to become a doctor. Nearly half the people who start it finish in something else.Leads to Physician
- BusinessIt is the most popular major in the country and it is not one major. Business splits into finance, marketing, accounting and more, and which of those you pick is worth about eighteen thousand dollars a year.Leads to Founder
- CommunicationsIt has a reputation as the safe, flexible choice. Half its graduates are doing work you can get without a degree at all.Leads to Journalist
- Computer scienceYou will spend most of it staring at code that does not work yet. If that sounds fun, keep reading.Leads to Software Engineer
- Criminal justiceMost police departments will hire you without this degree. Two thirds of the people who finish it are doing work that never required one.
- EconomicsIt gets filed next to sociology and political science, and it pays like a business degree. Four years out the average economics graduate earns $82,686.Leads to Investment Banker
- FinanceBanks pick their people in the spring of second year. Wait until third year to think about it and at a lot of them you have already missed it.Leads to Investment Banker
- General engineeringAt most universities this is not a degree you finish. It is the two years every engineering student shares, and then you name a kind of engineering and move into that degree instead.Leads to Engineer
- MarketingTwo full years go by before you take a marketing class. It also pays about the same as the general business degree it sounds more specific than.Leads to Content Creator
- Mechanical engineeringThe first two years are maths, physics and chemistry with engineering names on them. The mechanical part starts in the second year and never lets up.Leads to Engineer
- MusicYou audition to get in. After that, most of the hours are you alone in a small room with your instrument.Leads to Music Producer
- NursingTwo years of science classes, then two years of 12 hour hospital shifts looking after real patients while somebody watches you do it.
- PsychologyYou came for people. A lot of the degree is graphs. That surprise is the reason people leave it.Leads to Data Analyst
- Social workFor most social workers this is the first of two degrees. The master's after it is what most of the better paid work asks for.
Want the career instead of the major? See all 18 careers