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College TNT
Helping students and families navigate to and through college!
College TNT
Finding Your Fit: From High School Interests to College Majors
Navigating the complex landscape of college choices begins with understanding yourself—your academic passions, learning style, and career aspirations. While rankings and prestigious names might catch your attention, the foundation of meaningful college selection lies in matching institutions to your unique needs and goals.
The cornerstone of your college journey will be your major—the specific discipline you'll focus on throughout your undergraduate years. Unlike high school, where you've likely only experienced core subjects, colleges offer between 70-170+ different majors, many of which you've never encountered. Start exploring these options early by considering what truly excites you academically. When you're passionate about your field of study, better grades naturally follow, opening more doors for your future. Some career paths like nursing or engineering have clear connections between major and profession, while liberal arts degrees like English or Political Science provide versatile foundations for countless career possibilities, including ones that don't even exist yet.
Your academic temperament matters just as much as your interests. Do you thrive in competitive environments, or do you prefer collaborative learning? How honestly can you assess your work ethic? College demands more rigorous study habits than high school, so understanding your learning style helps match you with environments where you'll succeed. Beyond standard curricula, explore whether special opportunities like honors programs, undergraduate research, study abroad, or co-op experiences align with your goals. These experiential components often become the most transformative aspects of college education, bridging classroom learning with real-world application and helping clarify your career direction.
Ready to take the next step in your college journey? Listen to this episode for guidance on aligning your academic interests with potential majors and career paths. Share this podcast with friends navigating similar decisions, and connect with me on Facebook and Instagram @CollegeTNT for more personalized advice on finding your perfect college fit.
For more about me - my experience and my speaking, check out the links below.
You can reach me at jen@firstgenfm.com.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenschoen/
https://www.firstgenfm.com/speaker-high-school-educators-students-parents
Hello and welcome to College TNT. I am your host, jennifer Schoen Please call me Jen and today I want to talk with you about how you look at colleges and decide what colleges are right for you and again, I always use the plural colleges because there are many colleges that are going to fit what you, as a student, and your family are looking for. So last week I talked about some, or last episode I talked about some big picture questions to think about who you are and where you're headed. What is it that you want to become? Who is it you want to become? And those are big, heady questions for you to think about who you are and where you're headed. What is it that you want to become? Who is it that you want to become? And those are big, heady questions for you to think about. So hopefully you did some thinking. Maybe you had some great conversations with your family, with your parents, about who you are and where you're headed when you go to college.
Speaker 1:But today I want to talk about probably the most important reason you're going to college and that is to lay the foundation for your career. So it's thinking about careers, what you want to do after college, which I know, especially if you're in ninth grade, is very far away. But starting to think about what things you like to do, what you value and especially what you like to study, what do you want to know more about? So much more so that you're really interested in diving in when you get to college and choosing a major. So that's one of the most important things for you to ask is what are some majors that I'm interested in, and does the colleges, do the colleges that I'm looking for have those majors? And again, 9th, 10th and 11th grade, you've only been exposed to things like you know, english, math, science, social studies or history, and maybe a foreign language, hopefully a foreign language. So those are five things that you've looked at, but a lot of colleges are going to have anywhere from like 70 to 170 different majors for you to choose from, things maybe you've never thought of, you've never experienced before, and so go in with an open mind, but you already know some things that you're both good at and you really enjoy. So think about well, okay, what are those things that I like to do and what might challenge me, but also what's going to get me excited to study, because if you're excited to study it. Your grades are going to reflect that. And then getting good grades in high school, just like getting good grades in college, gets you to that next step, which is your career. You have more options. The better your grades are, the more options that you have. So I want you to think about that. Think about, like again, what do you like? Not necessarily what comes easy to you, that could be part of it but what do you really enjoy learning about? Because if you enjoy again, if you enjoy learning, it's going to make your college classes so much easier.
Speaker 1:You might also, if you're like gung-ho and you really want to look into it, look at how majors lead to careers, and you can do that. A lot of school counselor offices, guidance offices, will have that kind of information. There's this great resource called the Occupational Outlook Handbook, where you can I'm pretty sure it's all online or you can also go to the library, but they're also going to have where you can I'm pretty sure it's all online or you can also go to the library, but they're also going to have where you can look up an occupation and see, well, what's the prediction for that in the future, what's the average salary for that, and dive into some of that information and see, well, okay, I want to look at this career. This looks really interesting to me, or my major connects nicely with this career. Now I'm, the interesting thing when it comes to majors is they don't always connect to careers. And let me back up a little bit In case you're not familiar with the term major or college majors.
Speaker 1:A major is really what specific discipline you're going to focus on when you're in college. So a majority of your courses are going to be in a specific discipline or major. And so when you get to college, you will get to select your major. You will declare your major. That's the fancy word. We say it, although I always think, like you should have a declare your major day where everyone, like runs outside and yells at the top of their lungs Like I'm majoring in this. I think that'd be kind of fun.
Speaker 1:Anyway, back to majors. So the major is your area of focus in college and, like I said, you'll take a lot of courses in your major to get that really solid foundation of knowledge. Now, depending on the college you go to, you can choose two majors. You can choose a major and a minor, and a minor is kind of just like what it sounds like. It's another area of expertise, but it's a much smaller concentration of courses than a major would be. So think about maybe a few areas you want to study, because when you get to college you're going to get in there and you're going to experience all these different courses and that's going to help you decide really truly honing in on your major.
Speaker 1:But for now, as you're starting high school, as you're going through high school, think about like I really like learning this. I could see doing this. I wonder what I could do with this in a career and do a little research. Now, if you want to be a nurse yay, very fantastic profession Then obviously you major in in. Nursing leads to being a nurse. You love numbers. Maybe you want to be an accountant you study accounting. That leads to being an accountant. So there's some things that are very clear in terms of what you study, going into your career, right? Others?
Speaker 1:I was an English and political science major. I thought maybe I'd want to go into law, maybe I'd want to teach, although not really, but I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I just loved studying English in particular. I love literature, I love reading. I love writing, and so all of that really got me excited to go to class every day Maybe not so much the Victorian poetry part of class, but even so, I loved everything I did as an English major. But the question is then, what do you do with it? So that was then on me, you know, when I was in college, to figure out, well, what do I do with that? Because with an English major, so many things are open. You can choose from so many different things, and so that's where you need the help of an office like career design or career development or career services at the college. So don't worry now if you're not like I know what I want to major in, I'm set, I'm focused. This is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:Now in high school is the time to think about again what do you love to study, what do you value, and then use the Occupational Outlook Handbook and check around into some different careers. I can tell you that, having graduated a very long time ago, last century, there are careers now that did not exist when I was in college. I mean, computers were barely a thing when I was in college. But here I am using a MacBook, like knowing how everything works technology, because I got a good education and I was able to understand these things as they came up and move into different careers as they were developed. Same thing for you. You're going to go to college. You're going to learn a specific discipline. You're going to experience a lot while you're in college, hopefully get involved, and that's going to help you grow and get ready for whatever career might be coming down the road. That doesn't even exist yet.
Speaker 1:So, again, don't get too focused right now, but start to ask yourself those questions what are some potential majors that I'm interested in? What might I want to study? And then the opposite of that is what do you not want to study? Because my guess is you probably have some ideas of what you don't want to study, and again, that can change too. But think about those as you're starting to look at colleges. The other thing I want you to think about, too, is who you are academically right.
Speaker 1:Some of us, we thrive on competition. We want to best the other person. We want to get you know better grades than everybody else in the class. We are competitive people by nature, and so that's our thing, and so we want to look at colleges that maybe have more of that competitive atmosphere. Or maybe we want to look at colleges that maybe have more of that competitive atmosphere. Or maybe we want to look at colleges that do not have that competitive atmosphere, where perhaps there's more collaborative projects, maybe things are more project-based and it's really based on your learning and how you're doing versus how everybody else is doing in that competition atmosphere. So ask questions about that. Like, how would you describe the college that you're going to when you're starting to visit campuses? Is it really competitive here? Are some majors more competitive than others? And see what they tell you, because you'll get a lot of good feedback if you talk to students about that. And, again, you can do some research online before you visit the colleges too. But I always say, asking questions is your best route, and if you can ask questions of people who are living the college experience now, you'll get some really good answers about that college experience.
Speaker 1:The other thing I want you to do is be really honest with yourself about how hard you work in college. Now, if you study all the time and you're working very hard to get those grades that you're getting, then that's something to be aware of If you are kind of coasting and you work minimally, then excuse me. If you're coasting and you're working minimally, be aware of that and be aware that maybe that's getting you good grades in high school, but it's probably going to be harder to work in college. And so set yourself up for success now, but also know, okay, what colleges do I need to go to if maybe I'm not quite ready to work super hard? So think about that. I think that's really important. To be honest with yourself about that.
Speaker 1:I didn't work as hard in high school as I did in college, for sure, and so I had to really ramp it up quickly. Luckily, I felt able to do that because I just loved learning, especially because I was in a great major. But for some, like the sciences and things, it's going to be harder to ramp up to that kind of level of difficulty. You can do it, you can absolutely do it with the resources at the college, but the more you start now, the better off you will be. So if you're only working minimally, maybe challenge yourself with some harder courses when you're in high school. Again, it's going to help you get ready for college, because it's not just about admissions to college, it's about preparing yourself for college.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing I want to talk about when you're looking at academics and programs and understanding how hard you do work, how hard you want to work, and translating that into the college that you're looking for, are there any special academic programs? Are you looking for schools that have honors programs, and what does that mean? Sometimes that means extra resources are available to you. Sometimes it means extra funding and scholarships are available to you. So do the colleges have honors programs?
Speaker 1:Is there an opportunity for you as an undergraduate to do some research? Is that something that excites you? You're like, oh, I want to dive in, and it doesn't necessarily have to be scientific research. Okay, don't think like, oh, I want to do research, it has to be a lab. There are a lot of cool things going on at colleges, I can tell you. At Northeastern there was a very small book, very old, and they were having difficulty translating it, and so they had some students looking up languages you know old languages and helping to translate that, and they finally kind of cracked it and were able to translate it. So that's something really exciting around. Again, english, my love and language, and that was considered research. So there is all kinds of research out there that you can sink your teeth into, depending on the college you go to, and if that's what you're interested in.
Speaker 1:The other thing you might want to think about is are there study abroad opportunities? Are there internship or co-op programs where the school helps you get, perhaps, a summer internship or a co-op experience so you can get that college experience, taking what you know from your classroom, going out into the working world, putting that into practice and then bringing back what you learned to the classroom to influence. That. I mean, that's kind of exciting too. So think about those things as you're looking at colleges and I think once you start to think of those things, then you can start to think about well, is a big name important to me? What kind of atmosphere is important to me? How important are rankings? I would hesitate to even use rankings, although it's ubiquitous. You just you can't get away from it. But understand why colleges are being ranked the way they are, because that might not be the way you rank them and you want to rank the colleges based on your interests, not on what someone else says is a best college. So just file that away.
Speaker 1:So I have talked a lot and I have given you tons of questions and things to think about. So I hope this gives you a basis for considering majors, and now you know what a major is. Minors now you know what a minor is and how you might look at the colleges you want to go to, again based on who you are based on where you want to go, based on what you want to study and based on what you are based on where you want to go, based on what you want to study and based on what you want to do after college, because that's the ultimate goal right To get a career that you really enjoy, that pays you what you deserve and helps you, helps your family. So I hope that helps you today with some of those questions and some of those things to think about you today, with some of those questions and some of those things to think about, and I enjoyed presenting this to you and I'll have a part three coming out in our next episode where I'm going to talk more about all about like places and the other really important things, but not as important as choosing your major or not as important as thinking about your major and your career.
Speaker 1:So we'll get to that next time. Thank you so much for listening. Please share this with other folks who may need help thinking about where they're going to go to college, and if you have any suggestions or ideas for me, you can find me on social media on Facebook at College TNT, or on Instagram at College TNT as well. Thanks so much for joining me today and you make it a great day. Bye now.