Continuing Education
What Do I Do If I Chose The Wrong Major?
By Anna Dornier
May 14, 2008

As your education progresses and your mind are exposed to a cornucopia of new ideas, you may find that your college major may not lead you to your dream career. If this situation applies to you, but you are towards the end (junior or senior year) of your undergraduate degree, don't despair. There are still steps you can take in order to steer your career towards a different direction. The catch? You may have to do more work. Here are some of the things you can do:

Get a college minor

A college minor can serve as a supplement or enhancement to your academic major. To complete a minor, students would usually need to take an additional semester (about 12 units) or quarter (about 16 units) depending on the type of minor you want to have. Having a minor can enhance your resume because it adds some market value due to the added skills and knowledge that you get from it. As a potential employee or graduate student, employers and schools will look at your minor as an asset that you can contribute to their institution.

A minor can benefit any academic major. For example, as an animal science major, you can take a minor in business if you would rather work in a business setting rather than a medical or research setting. This same person can either work in sales or manage an animal hospital. In another situation, biology majors may choose to minor in English in order to get the skills they need in writing research papers. Whatever major you are currently taking, the choices are only limited by your imagination. Explore your options in getting a college minor, you'll never know where it can take you.

Take additional classes

In some cases, you can take additional classes in order to take pre-requisites for graduate school. These extra classes may add up to a college minor but sometimes they may not. A little confused? Let me elaborate. As an example, let's say that you are a liberal arts major but you really don't have a clue on what to do with your major after college. One option that is available to you is to go to graduate school.

As a liberal arts major (or any major for that matter), you can either take the pre-requisites to meet the requirements to apply to medical school OR you can also take additional classes that are required to get an education degree to become a teacher. At times the classes you need to take may add up to a minor. The lesson of the story is: as long as you have taken the pre-requisites, you are qualified to apply to any graduate program you wish. As a result, you don't have to be stuck with your original academic major of choice. That is, if you are willing to take some extra steps.

There is also another benefit to having a different major than anybody else when you apply to graduate school. For instance, an applicant who has a business degree but have taken all the pre-requisites for medical school may add diversity to an academic institution. This situation works to your advantage since most medical school applicants will have science related majors (e.g. biology, chemistry, biochemistry etc.) That business major gives you an edge over the competition, in this example.

Programs that are closely related to your major

If you were originally thinking of going to graduate school but a different graduate program caught your interest when you graduated, you may not have to take additional classes. For example, if you originally planned to apply to veterinary school but you decided that a nurse practitioner career is the right one for you, their pre-requisite courses may be similar. These two graduate programs are both related to science. Thus, the base or introductory knowledge that the two programs will require is usually similar.

Note: Not all graduate programs may work in the same way as the example I just mentioned. However, if you feel like your two choices are pretty similar but the end points may be different (e.g. working with animals vs. working with humans), do your research. Getting more information about graduate programs is not so difficult anymore. Nowadays, most of the information you need is online.