Today a client and I had a long conversation about how to report her intended college major on her applications. Was choosing a major necessary when she is only 16 years old? She has been stressing out about it. She has many, many interests and an equal number of talents. And she just can’t decide what to be when she grows up.

I told her to join the club.

First, let’s take a look at the philosophical implications of choosing a major. In the grand scheme of things, a major isn’t all that important. Even career advisers say so. The fact is that beyond your first job out of college, your major won’t matter.  You’ll learn new skills on the job, and your career will mutate and morph as the economy evolves, and (more important) as your own understanding of where your interests and talents lie.

To give you more insight, you might want to take a look at a guest post in which a recent college grad recounts his own experience in choosing a major and making career choices right out of college. His conclusion is that what’s important is that you love what you are learning and that you build experiences, contacts, and skills that will help you pursue the jobs that most interest you.

It’s Not Necessary to Choose a Major Before You Get to College

The fact is, your job–and your career–will likely change many times before you retire. An article from the New York Times also admonishes parents (and college counselors) that it’s sort of unrealistic to expect that an 18 or 22 year-old can or should make career decisions as if they are making a decision that is lifelong and permanent. We all have the option of changing our priorities, of chasing new careers, of refashioning our professional selves at many different points throughout our lives.

So from a counseling point of view, I tell most of my students not to stress out about college majors and career choices. If a student has interests in engineering or business or other specialized fields it does make sense to understand the requirements necessary to enter those fields. For example, if there is a possibility that a student wants to go to medical school then she should know what the prerequisites are and thus be careful to complete them.

Or a prospective engineer may have to major in engineering from the get-go (but he may change his mind down the road as he learns more about engineering and about himself). Undecided does not mean “without decisions.” It’s smart to know what the options are and how to keep options open for as long as possible.

Sometimes It Make Sense to Choose a Major Early

However, with regard to completing college applications, there are times when it makes sense to declare a major. Why? Because admissions officer are also social engineers. They are looking for people to populate certain departments. Especially those hard-to-fill ones like art history, anthropology, music (at some schools), geology, geography, and others. So if you have a passion or skill that you plan to share on campus. It certainly doesn’t hurt to express that focus by announcing your intention to major in that subject.

Similarly, if a college has a particular strength or reputation in a certain issue, it makes sense to tell the admissions folks that one of the reasons that you are applying to that school is the excellence of that department–you are showing that you have thought about what makes that school a good fit for you.

Still, the majority of students heading to college are undecided. It’s okay in America to be undecided. Most of us are still undecided. We’re exploring, discovering, and learning. And isn’t that what it’s all about, anyway?

Since 2007, the expert team of college admissions consultants at Great College Advice has provided comprehensive guidance to thousands of students from across the United States and over 45 countries across the world. Great College Advice has offices in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, North Carolina and Massachusetts.  

In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With nearly 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other. 

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I reviewed a question the other day on LinkedIn. The question was this:  what can you do with a major in philosophy? I thought I would share my response with you.

Here’s the question:

Is philosophy a good major?  Why?  Just wondering what you can get with a philosophy major or if it’s worth the time and money.

And here is my response:

Good question. I get this sort of question a lot in my line of work.

The answer to your question does not lie in the opinions of others. It must come from within yourself.

What can you do with a liberal arts major?

Let’s be philosophical. Some value college as training for a profession. Others, who tend to pursue degrees at liberal arts institutions, see college as a process of training the mind. As you may have experienced, most folks who hear this question. Immediately begin thinking about the economic value of a philosophy degree–immediately upon graduation. But what they don’t know, is that plenty of philosophy majors at liberal arts institutions go on to very successful careers.

Did you know, for example, that statistically one of the best majors with the highest percentages of acceptance to medical school is (drum roll….) philosophy? Medical schools like people who have thought deeply about what it means to be human, to appreciate beauty, and to have thought theoretically. Medicine has plenty of technicians, but not an awful lot of deep thinkers. And medical schools value deep thinkers.

Furthermore, in a liberal arts context, I firmly believe that it matters little what you major in. What matters more is what you can do–the skills you acquire (a second language, computer programming skills, strong economics, scientific research skills). You can acquire some of these skills even as you complete a philosophy major. Or you may acquire them in graduate school or in the working world after graduation.

It’s possible that you can prepare for several careers (as you are statistically apt to have at least seven before you retire) simply by training your mind to be flexible, creative, analytical, and quick. If you read Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. For example, you may be convinced that philosophy actually is much better training for careers of the 21st century than accounting or marketing or biology, even.

Finally, you ask whether the degree is “worth” the time and money. Well, be philosophical: define “worth.” Certainly a philosophy major does not have immediate, tangible value that is easily calculated in “return on investment” (ROI) terms. Such a calculation is easier with a professional degree (MBA, JD, Engineering) or with a licensing program (e.g. teaching/education).

But if you define “worth” more broadly, you might agree with Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So maybe you want to examine human nature, appreciate the concept of beauty, think about what constitutes the “good life.”

While I respect the opinions of those who pooh-pooh the value of a philosophy major, I wonder how many of them have actually ever taken a philosophy course. How many of them know successful people in business, the arts, the law, journalism, medicine, and other professions who pursued a liberal arts degree and majored in philosophy?

So what can you do with a major in philosophy?

So to reiterate by returning to your question: “what can you get” with a philosophy degree? On the one hand, absolutely nothing. On the other, everything.

People who major in philosophy can work in artificial intelligence, science policy, medicine, law, banking, and just about any business you can imagine. Philosophy majors work in high tech. They work in government. They run organizations.

The skills of analysis, logic, and problem solving are relevant to any profession.

In the end, doesn’t the answer to your question depend on many variables well beyond your choice of major?

As was inscribed above the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi: “Know Thyself.” Start there, and the answer to your question will be come, well, self-evident.

What if I can’t decide my major?

Most young people have a difficult time settling on a major. Despite the Oracle at Delphi, most teens are just getting to know themselves and figure out what is important to them. If your family has a teen who is struggling to make this sort of decision–and struggling to create a solid college plan, give us a call at Great College Advice. We helps students wade through these tough decisions and create an action plan.

Mapping College Journeys. It’s what we do.

The post What Is Value of a Major in Philosophy (or the Liberal Arts in General)? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Lawrence University which is a liberal arts college that also has a music conservatory. It offers both a specialized Bachelor of Music degree, as well as the Bachelor of Arts degree.  The BM degree is more narrowly focused on music, and it generally the choice of students who want to major in performance in voice or on an instrument, or perhaps they want to pursue a career in music education. The BA degree is the liberal arts version of a music degree: you can major in music within the liberal arts.  For the BA, you would take about 25% of your courses over four years in the music department.  For the BM degree, it would be more like two-thirds or even three-quarters of your courses in the music department. 

The Reasons Why Major in Music

Whether or not one aspires to be a professional, performing musician, there are many answers to the question of why major in music. Even in this day and age of high technology and the importance of science and mathematics, or even business, music remains a viable option that can give any student the sorts of skills and habits that employers value.  

Music Majors Make Independent, Diligent Employees

Music majors are used to working independently to achieve a goal.  They meet with their supervisors once a week.  They review past work.  Then they get new assignments to continue to improve and amplify what they are already doing.  The supervisor gives assignments and expects the person to return the next week with those assignments completed.  During that week, the employees work on their own and they puzzle out the problems, and ultimately through practice and exploration, they find the solution to that problem or puzzle. They practice whatever they need to practice in order to make sure that it’s right. A week later, they return to their supervisor and say, “Got it done; give me my next problem.”  That’s exactly what musicians do.  When they are going to their private lesson for an hour each week and they’re getting information, they are getting an assignment and they complete it.  They are developing the independence to take direction, do the work, and continue to improve over time.  

Why Major in Music?  Collaboration!

The workplace today requires people who can collaborate.  Employers want team members who can listen, appreciate the contributions of others, seek out the voices that may complement their own, and work together toward a common goal.  Musicians do this sort of thing on a daily basis. In every ensemble that they are ever in, they are working with one another to achieve a common aim: to perform a piece with a clear vision that may be jointly defined.  Importantly, they are listening to one another.  They respect the roles that each plays in the accomplishment of the goal.  They are attuned to what other people are saying and communicating so that they can take that information and do something with it.  

Practice, Practice, Practice

Music develops the sort of habits that any employer values. However, no employee is going to be perfect every single time.  Some things take practice to get right.  Musicians are used to practice. They are also used to making mistakes and then fixing them.  Musicians know that in order to improve, in order to build technique, and in order to get it right when it counts, it’s important to practice over and over until things become routine and the ultimate performance is stellar.  

Importance of Communication

Finally, he talked about the importance of communication. And then he talked about while he was in Microsoft, that he was working with some of the biggest brains in the world. But sometimes despite those big ideas that these smart people had, these people at Microsoft weren’t communicating. It’s one thing to have ideas, but if you can’t be a good communicator–especially to others who may have different perspectives or roles within the organization, then those ideas really aren’t worth all that much.  Employers want good communicators.  What do musicians do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?  They communicate.  They do so through the music itself, and they have to do so with words–so that they can agree upon and work toward a common goal.   Further, a musician is used to performing in front of large groups.  They are accustomed to the jitters that can be channeled in a positive way to make the performance better.  Performance is something that musicians are able to do very, very well.  They’re not afraid to put themselves out there and show people what they can do. 

Employers Value Young People with a Music Degree

The fact is that most employers are not looking for people with specific majors or degrees.  They are looking for team member who can get the job done.  People who can learn quickly.  People who can work independently to achieve a particular goal.  People who are not averse to practicing over and over until things are done right.  People who know how to collaborate with one another.  People who can communicate clearly with others as they map out and accomplish a common goal.  People who can share ideas with others and who can perform when the time comes.

So why major in music?  Because it develops the skills and habits that employers of the 21st century value–and pay for. 

To hear Brian Pertl deliver his own TedX talk about majoring in music and pursuing the liberal arts, have a look at this video.

Great College Advice
 
 

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The post What College Majors Offer the Best Job Opportunities? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Check this video out to learn how faculty members use the help of TAs to manage large classes:

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
*****************

You may read the transcription below:

I’m here now on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. It’s about 12 miles or so north of Chicago. Great location. If you get out towards the leg it’s, the campus is right on Lake Michigan. You can see downtown from the campus. So it’s another kind of, one of these campuses is like Tuffs, like the University of Chicago where you feel like you’re very much part of the city. But you’re still enough outside of it that you can have this beautiful tree lined campus, green, especially now in the summer.

Probably not so great in the middle of winter. But there are a few things to know about Northwestern. Of course, I can’t sort of in this short video tell you everything. But remember that first of all Northwestern is on a quarter system. So that means that you take only three classes at a time in ten weeks – three or four, maybe four classes – four classes a quarter in ten week quarters. So it’s a little more intensive than at some other places where you might take five or six classes over a 15 week quarter.

A couple of other things. There are about 8,000 students here, so it’s a little larger than some other private universities, the caliber here. But it’s not so large that it’s a great big huge state university. Sort of a nice size in between. This is a size that a lot of students are looking for that is difficult to find. The Admissions Office is telling us also that 97% of the classes have fewer than 100 students. That’s an important figure to know.

That’s probably more important than the student to faculty ratio, which is a 7 to 1. Ignore that statistic. It tells you absolutely nothing about the classroom experience. The percentage of classes that are certain enrollment or less, that’s better. So 97% of the classes here are 100 students or less.

However, if the class is over 40 students then there is a TA for the class that runs the discussion section as opposed to the professor. So we were, our tour guide was from a double major, Bachelor’s in Music and Performance at the Venice School of Music, and none of those classes are large, and so there were no TA’s in that school. But then she also is doing a BA degree in History, and about 50% of the student classes that she had taken in History were over 40 students and therefore had TA’s. Now of course it depends on the classes you pick.

You might be able to take History to find a lot more classes that have a lower enrollment if that’s one of your priorities. To find those classes that have maybe 15 to 20 or maybe even fewer students if that’s a priority. But also remember that the more popular the class. The larger the enrollment and the more likely you are to have a TA.

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As of Fall 2011, The English department of the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University has added two new tracks:  Creative Writing and Film and Screen Studies.
According to the student newspaper, The Daily Orange, these two new majors have been two years in the works.

“With recent faculty hires and the introduction of new courses, we thought it was the right time to establish specific emphases for students who want to concentrate their studies in the major in one of these two areas,” said Roger Hallas, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies of SU’s English department.

Students who major in Creative Writing, will study with the distinguished faculty from the MFA program – which was ranked 5th in the nation by Poets & Writers Magazine.

The post Syracuse University Adds Creative Writing to its English Department first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

It pains me to see families make college choices based on misinformation, like choosing what they can afford base on the advertised prices of colleges (instead of what a family would actually pay) or squandering great high school achievements by not using the application to tell the story that makes a student most compelling to colleges.
Now with PossibilityU there’s a way for every family to afford the expert support that will help them make the right choices, and find and get into the right college for them. It’s been my experience over and over that at the right college students are more successful, happier, and get more financial aid.
If you want to know more, please check out PossibilityU.com. Or let me know if you have any questions about whether or not PossibilityU is right for your family.
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant and
Chief Advisor, PossibilityU
 
 

The post Affordable, Expert College Advice You Can Trust first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

1. If you pursue a BA degree, about 25-30% of your classes over four years will be in your major. The other 70-75% will be roughly equal mixture of general education requirements and electives. If you pursue a more specialized degree (e.g., BS, BM, BFA, BBA), 50-60% of your classes will be in your major field.
2. Your major should be a reflection of both your academic interests and your academic strengths: you want to enjoy the subject and do well in the courses offered.
3. In researching majors at particular universities, be sure to consult the catalog or bulletin, where you will find all the details of what that major department requires.  You can also find the range of courses offered, course descriptions, and information about the faculty in the catalog and on the departmental homepages of the college website.  And if you have a chance to visit a campus, be sure to meet with a professor in your preferred department(s).
4. It is perfectly fine not to have strong preferences as you enter the university.  Remember that a majority of students changes major at least once in their college careers, and many change their major several times.
5. Few employers or graduate schools require specific BA majors for entry-level positions or for admission to business, medical, or law schools.  Religion majors can go to med school, art history majors can be admitted to business school, and chemistry majors can become excellent lawyers.  Even to become a teacher, it’s generally better to major in an academic discipline than in education. No matter your educational or professional path beyond college, your overall performance while you are there will matter much more than the major you choose.

So there you have the basics.  Now it’s time to start evaluating yourself:  what are those subjects you know you like already?  What are the things you don’t like so much, or really aren’t your academic strength?  What are those subjects you have never been exposed to that you’d like to explore?
Put on that thinking cap, and start informing yourself.  Still puzzled?  Have a look at this related post that gives you more of the basics of choosing a major.
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
 
 

The post What Is A College Major, And How Do I Choose One? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Catalog.

Once upon a time, colleges published a thick directory of every policy and procedure and course offered by a university. College students everywhere carried these around, thumbed through them, folded the corners of important pages, and highlighted requirements.

Today, the catalog is entirely online. But it still exists as a whole, and is located quite apart from the marketing glitz and pretty photos of a college’s main website. Sometimes you have to dig for it. The easiest way to find it is simply to type the word “catalog” in the search bar on the college’s website. Enrolled students know about the catalog: prospective students like you generally do not. But now, you do. So make these catalogs a regular part of your research on a college.

Hours.

The second essential vocabulary term is the use of the word “hour” to measure academic coursework. Unlike in high school, most colleges measure units of study in the number of “hours” required.  Instead of saying, “we require you to take 3 courses in English,” you may find something like this: “to complete the major in this discipline, you must complete 54 semester hours of coursework.”

A “semester hour” reflects the number of hours per week you will spend in class with your professor. A three-hour course meets three hours per week during a 15-week semester. A four-hour course meets four hours per week. Some schools are on a quarter system, in which each term is only 10 weeks. Thus you may find courses measured in “quarter hours,” meaning that a 5 quarter-hour course meets 5 hours per week for 10 weeks. (And if you are wondering, a 3 semester-hour class is roughly equivalent to a 5 quarter-hour class).

This vocabulary is important so that you can translate “hours” into “courses”: you will find that course listings indicate the number of “hours” that course is worth. Some courses may be four hours, others two, others only one. In the end, however, the total number of hours must add up to match the number of hours required for the degree.

Distributive Requirements.

Back in the olden days, most colleges offered a core curriculum in which every student took an identical set of courses in a prescribed order. Few such colleges exist anymore, but there are a few (St. John’s College, with its two campuses in Santa Fe and Annapolis, is perhaps the best and most famous example). This is how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were educated.

Today, however, most colleges require some sort of mix of major requirements, free electives, and what may be called “general education” or “distributive” requirements. Faculty at each college define what they believe is the proper mix of courses that will produce the kind of educated person they envision. They may require that you “distribute” your courses in some fashion.

One of the most common ways is to require that you take a certain number of courses in the humanities (e.g., English, languages, literature, philosophy), social sciences (e.g., psychology, political science, sociology) and the sciences (e.g., chemistry, biology, physics). Some colleges may also require you to take courses that build particular kinds of analytical or quantitative skills. Others may want you to explore regions of the world with which you may be unfamiliar. As you research colleges, you will want to pay particular attention these requirements; for they serve as the backbone of your education, and are a concrete expression of the fundamental philosophy of the faculty who teach there.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant and Researcher of Colleges

The post Researching Majors and Degree Requirements–A Vocabulary Lesson first appeared on College Admission Counseling.