How To Choose A College Major

Starting a college career is often one of the most exciting and life-changing moments in any young adult's life.

Setting aside the partying, the opportunities for self-discovery, and what is often most teenager’s first real taste at freedom - a university education can open up many financial and career opportunities. When prospective students choose a major, they are forecasting their ambitions for future career; with that being said, there are so many different choices a student is faced with taking. And with the ever-rising costs of college tuition to consider, these can be some costly choices to make.

Not only do future college students have to decide which of the many college majors to study - they have to consider the length of time they wish to spend pursuing higher education as well. Are they going to want to seek a bachelor's degree, or move into something higher?

Students who are looking to pick a double major might want to do further research into their college major choices - to make sure they find the right pair of degrees that will allow them to balance their course load and follow the career path of their dreams. Other students decide to pick a minor to study; usually either a creative liberal arts pursuit, or an additional technical degree that pairs well with their chosen major.

According to a report by the U.S. Department of Education, a staggering 33% of all college students changed their major part-way through their education - usually around their sophomore year.. Of those students, another third of them will change their majors twice or more during the pursuit of a four-year degree.

To change your major often means incurring the costs associated with enrolling in additional college semesters: costs like credit hours, room and board, and exorbitantly priced textbooks. This may persuade students to stick with their chosen major, in order to save on costs; however, the statistics show this to be an unwise decision as well. Of all students who enroll in a four-year degree, 56% of them will drop out entirely before graduation.

Sticking with a college major you hate can lead to frustration, burn-out, and ultimately drives many students to drop out out completely.

With the numbers in mind, it is vital that, when choosing a college major, you’re making a decision that you can stand by.

Deciding what you’ll spend the next four years or more studying is no easy task - but with the Helpfull, it gets just a little bit easier.

Choosing A Major With 100 Opinions

Helpfull’s user-friendly design interface makes it easy for new users to design their own surveys in just seconds!

Whether you’re a teenager enrolling in their very first college credits - or an adult looking to renew and continue their education - choosing a college major can be very daunting. Few people are born knowing what they want to spend the rest of their adult lives pursuing, so it’s important to weigh your options.

With Helpfull, quick and meaningful help is just a few button presses away. To showcase how the Helpfull surveying platform can be utilized to help with any indecision, we’ve asked a selection of one-hundred pollsters to give us advice on choosing a major.

In just 13 minutes, our group of pollsters came together to unanimously decide what they believed to be the most practical, legitimate major of the three choices we provided them. Not only were the results overwhelmingly in favor of one choice - which bodes well for our experiment - they all left insightful commentary on why they believed each option to be the ideal choice for us.

The Helpfull pollsters were eager to share with us their various insights into why they thought their selected field was the one for us. They gave us feedback on the earning potential of each major, the amount of coursework, and their own job satisfaction. Anything we could think to ask - it was right there for us.

A community of unbiased third-parties serves to give us a neutral look at our decisions, and weigh them without any emotional attachment or other bias. Even if we were to disagree with their ultimate decision, their useful commentary will provide us with a reality check for our decision making going forward in the enrollment process.

Get Help Choosing The Best College For You

Let’s assume that, after considering some of the comments from the last survey, we wanted to go with pursuing a degree in Business Marketing. A marketing degree offers more job opportunities for us in the future, and we’re very indecisive - so that works in our favor.

Now that we’ve decided to pursue a degree in business, we send out admission applications to all of our top schools; and what luck, we’ve been accepted to all of them! Going back to Helpfull, we fire up another survey. This time, we want advice on which of our top schools we’re going to write back. Instead of choosing a text comparison survey, we link each of the university websites in a website-comparison test - and share the poll with the community.

The community mirrors our own indecision, and is unable to come to a unanimous decision on which of the top business schools that we’ve been accepted to is the best fit for us. So we look to the comments for further advice.

Reading from the comments left by the helpful pollsters, we learn more about the public’s perception of the different schools and why they’ve chosen their answers. With fifty new perspectives to consider, we’ve been given a lot to think about in regards to picking our next school. After seeing how high the praise was for Harvard Business School, we’ve decided to accept their offer - and we’re now a proud Pilgrim!

With our admittance letter on the way, we're ready to take our first big step into the real world, moving towards our future career path.

Get Feedback Before You Choose A Major

There are some situations where polling a general audience yields the best results for a survey; for all the rest, it’s vital that you choose the appropriate demographics to test.

Education is a field that rapidly changes and develops in new, unpredictable ways. When considering the merits of different college majors, it’s important to get advice from individuals who are knowledgeable in those areas. When considering who to get advice from on the merits of college and the career paths that stem from them, your best bet is to look for advice from recent graduates themselves.

With Helpfull, the specific demographics for a survey audience can be narrowed down on the basis of: sex, age, smoking or non, political affiliation, if they have a bachelor's degree or not- even the kinds of hobbies they enjoy. For our example, we asked the Helpfull pollsters for advice on choosing which subset of engineering we should choose to major in; this time, we wanted to hear only from recent college graduates.

In just 16 minutes, we received fifty responses from pollsters looking to give advice on the merits of each engineering program. The comments they made about potential career opportunities, job pay, and the changing environments of these industries provide us with invaluable insight to consider.

Choosing A College Major with Helpfull

When considering what major to choose, the decision ultimately rests upon your shoulders. You will be the one grinding through countless hours of study periods and late night caffeine-fueled cram-sessions. And it’s going to be a lot of fun; or it will be, if you’re in a program that fits your needs and inspires you. With all that in mind, it is important to weigh the merits of different programs that interest you. Consider the costs associated with the degree, the amount of effort you’ll need to expend to succeed - and make sure that there will be career opportunities lined up for you when you get out!

Helpfull gathers pollsters who are dedicated to giving back to the community through considered response and measured feedback. For any decision - big or small - the Helpfull community is there to give advice and help you work through your choices.

Take control of your future - sign up with Helpfull today, and get surveying within minutes!