11 Tips for Choosing A College Degree | How To Select A College Major

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Choosing a college degree to study can be a nerve-wracking decision. Luckily, I got some tips for you that can make it easier. 

Read also: 5 Signs You Should Drop Out Of College + 7 Reasons To Stay Anyway

1. What are you already passionate about?

Alright, let’s get the obvious one out of the way. 

You probably know the saying that if you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life. 

That’s why everyone recommends following your passion when choosing a career path. 

As true as that advice might be, for most of us, it is relatively useless since we rarely know what we are passionate about. 

Still, it is true, so I figured it deserved mention. In the end, you should always keep this in the back of your mind. 

2. What are you interested in?

You might not feel passionate about programming yet, but perhaps you’ve been curious about it for quite a while now. 

This can be a good indicator for a future passion. After all, you only know if you will be passionate about something if you try it out.

So you might as well try something that you’re interested in. 

But don’t confuse true curiosity with short-term shiny object syndrome. 

Suppose you are only interested in medicine because you watched Grey’s Anatomy yesterday. In that case, you shouldn’t use this new obsession as a serious indicator. 

3. Who’s career do you envy?

Are there any scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, or politicians that you find yourself following regularly?

Are you fascinated by what they do daily? 

What degree would you need to create a similar career for yourself?

4. What kind of lifestyle do you want?

Many German female law students consider working for the state instead of corporate because mothers get more support. 

They make a lifestyle-related choice when applying for a job. 

Of course, it is never impossible to shape your job in a way that fits your dream lifestyle. 

However, there are certainly more obstacles if you want to practice your job more unconventionally. 

For example, if you already know you wouldn’t want to go out of your house and work with patients every day, becoming a doctor might not be the most suitable choice. 

On the other hand, you can still use that medical degree to start an online business to help people overcome a certain medical issue or help med students get their degrees. 

As I said, there is generally always a way to make your job fit your lifestyle. However, the more unusual your dream job is, the more effort and initiative it takes from your side to make it work. 

5. How many job options does the degree have?

And I don’t just mean this in the sense of whether or not the job market is full or empty at the moment. 

It’s more about how many different careers require the knowledge that you acquire during your studies. 

For example, with a law degree, you have a very broad range of career options. In contrast, an archeology degree doesn’t offer as many options. 

The more options there are, the greater the chance you will find something that makes you happy. 

6. Which degree can teach you the most?

Interdisciplinary knowledge is powerful and a sought-after asset to find solutions to complex problems.

Your unique combination of knowledge in different areas is one of your biggest assets. 

As such, you should consider which degree will add to your knowledge portfolio the most. 

For example, perhaps you’ve already been freelancing in programming for years and developed quite the expertise on the topic. 

Instead of getting an informatics degree, you might decide to go for engineering so that you can combine that with your already existing knowledge powerfully and uniquely and raise your value on the job market. 

7. Which degree is the most useful to you without working in the relevant field?

As I elaborated in 5 Signs You Should Drop Out Of College + 7 Reasons To Stay Anyway I am not particularly passionate about law, and I also don’t plan to work as a lawyer or such. 

Still, I am determined to finish my law degree partly because I know the knowledge will be useful for me in daily life. For the business I am building. 

8. Yes, you should consider the salary

I remember many people talking about how you should never choose a degree because you want to earn a lot.

I don’t entirely agree with that advice. 

Firstly, because money is important. It’s among the holy trinity of things that bother us the most in life – money, health, relationships. 

Secondly, a well-paying job, where you collect knowledge and experience along the way, can be a great stepping stone into a career you are more passionate about. 

Take, for example, this blog. I enjoy growing it into a full income-producing business, but I am not incredibly passionate about it. I mainly started blogging because I wanted passive income. 

But that’s more than ok because I am not only gaining a lot of experience, I am also creating an income that will help me do something later on that I am passionate about without monetary worries. 

9. Will the job withstand the test of time?

Our world is changing at an increasingly fast pace. Jobs that existed fifty years ago are not around anymore, or at least in an immensely decreased number. The future will also see many jobs falling to the wayside. 

So when choosing your college major, you should take a moment and research the anticipated development of the job you are aiming for. 

Jobs that can be automated or made more efficient will likely provide fewer opportunities for employment in the future. 

But chin up, there are also a ton of new jobs opening up. 

Since our educational systems are rather inflexible and take a long time to adapt, they tend to be outdated. So we can’t exactly count on finding a degree that will be useful for new jobs popping up. 

Just think about the very important and sought-after job of social media managers. A few decades ago, there was no such thing as social media. As businesses started increasingly using it in the last years, no college degree could have prepared you for the job. 

As you can see, the college will not help us much to prepare for novel job opportunities. We have to take the initiative, identify and learn the relevant skills ourselves. 

10. Watch Vlogs

The people who can give you the most inside on the different degrees are the students themself. 

Luckily, many YouTubers vlog about their daily life. The more common the college degree you are interested in, the more likely you will find vlogs about them. 

Try it out for yourself. At the very least, they are going to motivate you to study.

11. Just start something

Ok, I know that this advice doesn’t work for countries and degrees, where you must pay thousands of tuition. 

In Germany, we thankfully have very, very low tuition. So it barely hurts financially to begin studying something and drop out after a semester or two if you really don’t like it. 

I know many students take a break after school if they are unsure of how to continue. Sometimes they do internships, sometimes they travel, and sometimes they work. 

And while that’s certainly not time wasted, I am dubious how far it will help them make a better decision for a college degree. 

In the end, you will only know if the degree you’ve chosen is the right one by trying it out. 

So don’t push off the decision indefinitely just because you feel uncertain. 

I hope these tips help you make a good decision. 

If you’ve got any other tips, please share them to help out your fellow Felicity Seekers.

Until next time!