There are hundreds of different college majors, from Accounting to Women’s Studies. However, there are a few that stand out because of their popularity, attracting students for their broad range of academic and career possibilities. Let’s take a look at the top 5 most popular college majors, what you can expect from them in college, and what careers you can go on to afterwards.
1. Business
This is the most popular major on our list, and it includes a whole set of more specialized majors such as international business, marketing, or business administration. Typical courses of study might include courses in accounting, finance, and management. Many people might choose to pair a business major with a more focused minor, such as computer science (for those interested in the tech world), a foreign language (for a more international outlook), or finance.
It’s probably not a surprise that most business majors go on to work in business, whether that means starting your own company or working for someone else. Many business majors also go on to do an MBA (Master of Business Administration). However, business is an extremely diverse and versatile major, and people have used these skills to run non-profits, political campaigns, and government organizations.
2. Health Professions
Many students want to work in healthcare after they graduate, so majors related to health are very popular. Many students choose to either advance to medical school after undergrad or become a nurse or healthcare technician. All healthcare majors will have elements of biology and chemistry in their studies and many will also incorporate residency hours (working in a hospital or clinic) as part of their training.
Though the majority of healthcare majors are geared towards becoming doctors, nurses, or some other kind of healthcare provider, these are not the only careers where a healthcare major is relevant. Hospital administration and public health also require people with an intimate knowledge of how healthcare works.
3. Social Sciences and History
This is an extremely broad category, covering everything from international relations to economics, but these majors all have features in common. They all involve large amounts of reading and writing, and all of them require the ability to analyze and compare different arguments. If you have a flair for making strong arguments about historical or current events in your writing, then this might be for you! Since the skills needed in these majors (writing, textual analysis, crafting arguments) are useful in so many fields, the potential career paths are extremely varied. Some more directly related careers might be as an economist, journalist, or a diplomat. Many social science majors might also use their strong reading and writing skills to go on to law school.
4. Psychology
This is the study of the human mind, what drives us, and how we think. A typical course of study will incorporate experimental work, such as performing cognitive tests on human subjects, classes on neural anatomy and biology, and classes on the theory of human cognition, for example that study of how language is formed in the brain.
Psychology majors have a very good understanding of what motivates us and our innate human instincts. As such, they can often be extremely successful in careers which involve gauging consumer interests and desires, such as advertising and marketing. The ability to design experiments to test hypotheses is also a key skill that makes psychology majors well-adapted to conducting market research and analyzing statistical data.
5. Biology
This is another popular major amongst those planning on medical school after college, however it is much broader than healthcare majors. Biologists can also study ecology, animal biology, and molecular biology. Biology majors will usually have a large component of experimental work in their studies, which may be more lab-based for molecular biologists, field-based for ecologists, or even computer-based for those constructing models of disease spread or population growth.
Outside of the medical field and biomedical research, a biology major offers many other career paths. Some might put their biological knowledge to use in a more finance-based role in the pharmacological industry, and others may use their ecological knowledge in a land-management role. Some biology majors even go on to law school and use their experience in more technical legal fields such as medical malpractice law or intellectual property law for biomedical innovations.
These are just a handful of popular college majors and career opportunities out there, so don’t feel like you have to do the same thing as everyone else. You’ll be happiest and most successful when you find something that motivates and interests you, not just going along with what everyone else is doing. This list also demonstrates that no matter what you study or what your interests are, there are plenty of unique career opportunities you might not have thought of initially. So take the time to look around figure out what’s right for you!