Choosing a Major

[James Shaw]

Sorry if this has been asked before, I was unable to find anything when I did a search. 

How did everyone choose their major for grad school?

Now I know this may sound like a kind of "duh" question, but I am seriously lost and have been all throughout my college career. I graduated with my BA in Sociology with a minor in Political Science back in December 2014. I don't really think a masters in Sociology is for me because it seems near pointless to me to do that to myself. However I am a bit lost as to what I want to do (which isn't anything new as I switched my major many times during undergrad - english, theater, human services, social work, journalism, education, outdoor education....changed my minor a few times too (education, psychology...)) 

I am kind of drawn right now to the idea of counseling and am thinking about looking into both Addictions Counseling and School Counseling programs. That's kind of the direction I have been going in since high school (school counseling mainly) but I am also interested in looking into Social Media/Marketing programs and Environmental Science/Law programs because both interest me, especially the latter of the two because I am a major advocate against climate change (at least in my own mind). 

So here's my dilemma and I'm interested to hear your answers and any advice you may have for me. I really miss school and would love to be able to start applying to programs as soon as I could. Thank you! 

[TakeruK]

Hello,

When I first read your thread title, I thought you were talking about undergraduate degrees. It is very uncommon to think of "choosing majors" in grad school because unlike undergrad, it's not like you would enroll in a grad program first, and then declare a major, and then adjust it as necessary. Instead, you need to know what you want to do (at the "major" level, not necessarily at the "thesis topic" level though) when you are applying and apply specifically to those programs. It is pretty rare for a graduate student to be able to "change majors", instead, they have to leave the program and apply to a new one.

That said, while I hesitate to say this because I don't really know you, my first piece of advice is that you really need to be a little bit more focussed when you are deciding on and applying to graduate programs. You list 4 different programs as things you are interested in and while it's great to have lots of interests, I think for applying to graduate school, you should pick one or two (ideally related ones) of these interests and spend the time to prepare your applications. It is a lot of work to apply to schools and people generally apply to a large number of schools (4 to 12, on average). If you are applying to 4 different types of programs, then this will multiply the work you have to do by 4 !!

Also, in your last sentence, you say that you "really miss school" but you do not really go into much depth about the 4 programs you're interested in and why you want to go to graduate school in these fields. Maybe it will help for you to chart out your short and long term goals for each of these four programs and then you would have a better idea of why you want to go to graduate school. i.e. what do you want to get out of your time pursuing a graduate degree? Knowing this will make your applications a lot stronger, and also it will help you choose the right programs to apply to and set you up for success afterwards.

In general, my advice would be that while undergrad was a great place to find out what you like and do general and broad learning, graduate school is not about education. To me, graduate school is basically a type of vocational training, not unlike training to be a plumber or an electrician. It is really different from undergrad and other schooling in the past, which is why I always caution applicants against applying to graduate school because they don't know what to do or because they miss school. 

Finally, to answer your first question: how did I know what I wanted to do in grad school? Well, at first, I didn't even know I could go to grad school (or that grad school even existed). While in my undergraduate degree, I started getting interested in research by listening to older students tell me about their work. I wanted to try it myself so I joined my school's undergraduate "co-op" program, where you do 4 years of classes plus 1.5 years of full time (paid) work. My paid work was all research. After taking the 1.5 years off to do research, I knew that I wanted to keep doing that. I also tried several different research projects (4 different ones!) during my undergrad and that helped me determine that I am really passionate about planetary science, so I applied to graduate schools for that!

[James Shaw]

I appreciate the response and I know that "choosing a major" wasn't exactly the correct terminology. I have since actually narrowed it down (because even though social media and marketing are interesting to me, I could never work for a corporation or what have you and environmental conservation is a passion of mine, but I definitely don't have the educational background to pursue a degree in that field). I am currently really considering School Counseling because I know that I can make a career out of that (and I enjoy working with children as I have for the past 8 years), and then after I have established a career maybe I can go on to pursue more education.

I would still love to hear from people though - especially if anyone has found themselves in the same boat. I had such a hard time choosing an undergraduate course of study as well - sociology was just so broad that it encompassed a lot of what I wanted to study which was good - but I definitely don't wish to continue on into a research field or law. 

Thank you again!

[CBclone]

I got my undergrad degree in a rather broad field (Kinesiology) and didn't know what I wanted to do with it. I did an internship in a therapeutic recreation area and fell in love with it. I still contemplated other options, mainly working in intercollegiate athletics (my job as an undergrad) which would've probably lead to a grad program in Sports Management or working in general or outdoor recreation, which would've lead to a grad program in Outdoor Ed most likely. I dabbled in all 3 areas within about an 18-month period after graduating and always felt drawn back to my job working in TR. 

5 years after last being in an academic classroom (fall 2010), I'm beginning a Master's in Recreation with a concentration in Therapeutic Recreation which will give me formalized training, background, and skills that will allow me to sit for a national certification exam.

 

Long story short: I worked for 5 years, experimented with a few different fields, realized which one was for me. 

[TakeruK]

I know a bunch of people that did a similar path to CBclone. They also had a couple of unrelated passions (like James Shaw) so they did a couple of years in each job and then decided they wanted to go to graduate school for an academic field. They are now at one of the best programs in the US for this field now. In addition, I know a lot of professors in my field who did a lot of other things at some point between undergrad/grad school/postdoc/faculty, including being a musician, a wine critic, and a truck driver (not the same person though lol). So, although I still think you should really know you want to study X and work in X before you go to grad school in X, if there are other passions you want to follow now, feel free to do that and go back to grad school later! (Of course, there are different challenges with being an older student but not any that you cannot overcome).

[knp]

Before your parenthetical, here I was thinking that that was the coolest single person to exist!

[rainbowpink]

I graduated from undergrad within four years but during that time, I did a double major in neuroscience and philosophy (mostly focusing on philosophy of science), and took a lot of Scandinavian studies courses. I also took upper-level courses to fulfill almost all my liberal arts requirement, so like, history classes that history majors took and whatnot rather than intro courses with hundreds of freshmen. I also had a lab job and volunteered in the community, plus I volunteered in research labs to get research experience. Basically, I was all over the place and not very prepared for graduate school, even though I've always known that I want to become an academic. I applied to PhD programs in history of science during my senior year, since it's a field that combines my several interests. Didn't work out too well because I was only accepted to one unfunded MA program, so I tried to apply to programs for teaching ESL because there were local schools that had late deadlines and I've always been interested in language anyway so I thought maybe I'd do that for a while, learn some linguistics along the way (by that point I've met some linguistics students who got me interested in the field), and then try to apply to PhD programs later on. I did get into some of those ESL programs but I decided not to do it because even though tuition was not that high, I just didn't feel like it was for me because even though I love teaching, I just knew that it's learning and research that I'm most passionate about, and I'm into theories and scientific details and all rather than applied stuff. So I decided to "take a year off" after college, and I took a few classes (including my first actual linguistics class) for fun and spent time doing other things. I decided I wanted to apply to MA programs in linguistics for the following year because even though my BS was in other stuff, they were relevant enough to linguistics and I heard that it's not uncommon for people to come into the field from related fields. I was surprised that I was accepted to so many programs, and two of them actually offered full funding. I ended up being a TA for an intro linguistics class after having only taken one linguistics class (which also used the same textbook). It was kind of crazy because I overestimated how much students would be able to grasp just because I assumed it should be easy since I learned all of that quickly enough. 

Anyway, I graduated after two years and am about to start my PhD at one of the best schools for linguistics with awesome funding (and also a prestigious school overall).

Among other things, I knew that I wanted to study linguistics because I've had experience doing other things, and I didn't do some of them very well because if I'm not completely passionate about something then it's very hard for me to put in too much effort constantly. But with linguistics ideas came to me easily I barely studied for most of my exams, and most of the work didn't even feel like work. Additionally, I grew up bilingual so there's a lot of personal connection to language overall, and studying linguistics really changed how I view myself, like when school gets tiring and stressful I can honestly tell myself that this is the best thing I could be doing with my life.

Considering all the twists and turns there, I feel very fortunate that I'm at this point three years after I graduated from college. For several years it was so much applying to stuff and worrying about the future, and now there is at least some direction lol.

[Crucial BBQ]

I took four years "off" between high school and community college and then spent a year at that CC before moving on to university.  Growing up along the Pacific coast, and with all that time to think, I pretty much knew what I wanted to major in and that I wanted grad school even before I began taking courses at the CC.

 

Luckily for me my interests are/is not confined to one area of study; biological oceanography, physical oceanography, ecology, hydrology, marine science, marine biology, maybe geology,  and so on could all fit the bill. 

[juilletmercredi]

When I was in college I - sort of accidentally - applied to be a research assistant to a professor in my department. She was doing research on child motor development and I was interested in being a school counselor, so I thought it was a good match to prep for grad school. Well, I fell in love with research, and she encouraged me to apply for this undergraduate fellowship funded by the NIMH. I got into it. It was a 2-year program that focused on funneling more underrepresented minority group members into research on mental health; I was paired up with a research mentor and did 15 hours of research a week, and also heard speakers and took classes and went to conferences. I started doing some work on the interface between mental health and sexual health/HIV, and I wanted to study that and design school-based HIV prevention programs that focused on tenets of psychology and mental health to change behavior, so I decided to get a master's in public health and then a PhD in psychology. But then I found this perfect PhD program that was a hybrid of public health and psychology, so I went there instead. (But now I don't work in public health anymore, although I still do psychological research.)

Interestingly I also had a hard time "choosing" per se. But that's because I had a specific career goal and research problem that could be addressed from a variety of different angles in different programs - psychology, public health, social/public policy, public administration, even sociology. I focused on psychology and public health because I knew the most about these two fields and knew that the theories and methods from them were what I wanted to use in my research and my career, but had I attended an MPH program and moved onto the PhD applying phase the way I originally intended, I probably would've applied to a few social policy/public policy/public administration programs, too (specifically Brandeis's social policy program, and Princeton has a joint program in psychology and policy).

Usually I tell students to let their interests and career goals guide them. You have to have concrete interests and a career goal before you go to graduate school, because as TakeruK said, it's not about exploring - it's about preparing for a very specific career (or set of careers). School counseling is a good goal to have - it's concrete, there are specific steps you have to take to pursue it.

 

[Need Coffee in an IV]

I didn't even think of grad school until my junior year....oops! Luckily, my GPA is decent so I don't have to scramble. Anyways, my undergrad is geology and in this field you better much have to at least get a masters. Technically a BS will get you a technician job, but doing grunt work in the field for the rest of my life didn't appeal to me. I got involved in museum work because of my mentor. He gave me my first volunteer position, my first manager job, introduced me to other museum professionals, etc. Because of him, I've gone on excavations and have had internships at very respectable museums. I wouldn't be on this path I think without my mentor. So I got very lucky! I'm going to be a dork and say I didn't choose the museum life, it chose me. But its ok, not to know exactly what you want! A lot of my friends in the geology department were older than me and didn't do the traditional path. My boyfriend went to college on and off for nine years and is now at grad school. He went from a math major, to forestry, to engineering geology. He even thought about being a food scientist! But I would have to say grad school is a lot of money so I would be really sure before starting a program.