Parents’ Guide to Supporting Your High School Student’s Choice of College Major
(This post focuses on college-bound high school students. A 4-year college is a great choice for many, but not the only choice or best choice for every student.)
At my daughter’s high school graduation party, well-meaning friends and family asked her the same questions over and over:
Where are you going to college?
What’s your major?
What do you want to do after college?
Such simple questions. I asked these same questions at recent grad parties. College-bound high schoolers know that by the time they march across the graduation stage, they are expected to know the answers – at least to the first two questions.
But any parent who has shepherded a student through the college and major decision-making process knows that the answers are far from simple. And the path to coming up with these answers is a winding road full of switchbacks, backtracks, and plenty of uncertainty.
So…What Do You Want to Study?
Starting junior year (or earlier), students will be asked what they want to study in college by guidance counselors, teachers, parents, bosses, friends, etc.
When filling out college applications, they’ll be prompted to list their potential major or program of study. Putting “Undecided” is an option, but most students feel pressure to list a major. And most parents and other well-meaning adults want to help them figure out their future major.
There are a few good reasons for rising high school seniors to identify a potential major:
Knowing your major is helpful in creating the list of colleges to apply to. For example, if your student loves math and might be considering a career in engineering, it will be useful to know if the schools on their list have engineering programs.
Some schools require that you apply directly to the major for admission. For example, to study nursing at some schools, you apply to the college but also to the nursing program, and it may be more difficult to get into that major later.
Some majors are more popular, and colleges want to make sure they let in students across all majors.
Some funding or scholarship options may be available for certain areas of study.
So…How Do You Figure Out Your College Major?
There is no shame in listing “Undecided” as your major, especially if your student is applying to a liberal arts college that offers a variety of majors. Taking a bunch of different classes freshman year is one of the best ways to explore majors and see what you enjoy studying.
That being said, it still makes sense to have some idea of what you might like to study. And most students feel pressure to have an answer to the “What’s Your Major?” question.
For many students, this is a healthy pressure that pushes them to gather information and have great conversations with the adults around them. They think about the classes they liked. They identify their academic and extracurricular strengths. They start asking questions about what grown-up jobs are like. They explore different majors and programs of study at the colleges they are considering.
For other students, that pressure to somehow just know their future is overwhelming and creates paralyzing anxiety. They know they need to figure it out but have no idea where to begin. When friends announce their majors, it reinforces the idea that there is something wrong with them because everyone else just seems to know. The more they get asked, “What do you want to do?” the more panicked they feel.
Regardless of how anxious they are, all students benefit from support and guidance from parents and other adults in making decisions about colleges and majors.
“Major” Decisions: Back in the Day vs. Now
Like so many things, making decisions about colleges and majors is more complex than it used to be. There are more majors, more schools, more decisions, more uncertainty – and it all makes the stakes feel higher.
For parents who went to college, you might remember starting your freshman year with no idea what you wanted to study, much less what to do after college. Maybe you switched majors five times, took 7 years to graduate, or maybe you were that very rare person who just always knew what they wanted to do.
Most parents get zero training on how to support their kids in the high school-to-college career transition. (To be fair, parents don’t get much training for any part of parenting.)
By default, most parents will rely on their own experiences when doling out career guidance. Parents’ advice can take a few forms:
Do what I did.
Don’t do what I did.
Do what I wish I had done.
Can’t you talk to your Academic Counselor? I have no idea how to help you.
For parents and other adults who want to support their high school student, here’s 5 questions to ask your student. These are questions with no wrong answers. They are meant to encourage conversations with your student, and to help you nudge and guide them in picking an initial major.
5 Questions to Ask Your High School Student:
QUESTION 1: What Makes You Want to Go to College?
I know this is a weird question to ask your kid who is in the process of applying for college. You will undoubtedly get an eye roll. But, in many families it is just assumed that the kids will go to college without ever articulating why. And like most things in life, when you know why you are doing them, it can make the process easier and give you the resilience to weather future challenges.
Slip these questions into a conversation:
Why do you want to go to college?
What do you think you’ll get out of college?
What are you looking forward to?
What do you think will be challenging?
Don’t be surprised if you get a blank stare or snarky answer. (My daughter’s response was a death stare followed by, “Both my parents went to college, so I have to.”)
There are a million reasons why attending a 4-year college to get a bachelor’s degree can be great idea:
To continue your education
To prepare for the work world
To get a job that pays decently
To get a job that you enjoy
To follow in the family’s footsteps
To have fun meeting people
To be challenged to grow and learn
To keep playing my sport/instrument
To get into graduate school
And many more…
Even if the conversation doesn’t go anywhere, the goal is to plant a seed in your student’s mind to think about the reasons they have chosen to go to college. This is also a chance for you to think about why you want your kid to go to college.
What is the Purpose of College? Two Schools of Thought
Why do you want your student to go to college? What is the purpose of college?
Answers tend to fall into two camps: “To Get a Job” vs. “Develop & Grow”
For the “Get a Job” folks, the main reason you go to college is to get a degree that directly gets you a decent-paying job. Yes, you learn and grow and develop, but those things are important because they will help you get a job. Parents in this camp want their kids to pick majors that lead directly to a specific job (e.g., nursing, accounting, engineering).
For the “Develop & Grow” folks, college helps you become well-rounded and knowledgeable about many subjects, including a deeper dive into one area (your major), and you develop soft skills such as communication, problem solving, critical thinking, tolerating ambiguity, and working in teams. Parents in this camp want their kids to pick majors that they will enjoy learning and that will give them broad skills applicable to lots of jobs.
Both camps offer valid perspectives. There’s no wrong answer. It is a matter of values – of what is important to you. Consider which camp you tend to fall into and how this may influence the guidance you provide.
This is usually a bigger issue for parents who view the purpose of college as getting a degree that leads to a specific job. And if those parents are footing the bill for college, it will be important to have open conversations with your student about your hopes and expectations for the majors they choose.
To Do: With your student, as you explore the websites of different colleges, check out the Academic Programs or Majors pages and scroll through the different majors. As you compare colleges, consider which majors are offered or not offered at different institutions.
QUESTION 2: What Do You Care About?
Regardless of your perspectives on the purpose of college, parents want their students to pick majors they find INTERESTING. We want them to be curious about and enjoy what they are learning.
The field of vocational psychology has focused on helping people discover their interests, that is, the activities that they like doing, the topics they are curious about, and the issues they care about. The theory goes, if are interested in what you are doing, you will enjoy it, be motivated to keep doing it, feel a greater sense of purpose, and be less likely to quit or get burned out.
General Interests
As a parent, you probably have a good idea of your student’s general interests. As they grew up, you watched them move through different activities – sports, video games, music, dance, art, theater, etc.
During the high school years, adolescents get clearer about what they like and what they no longer like. It’s not uncommon for kids who played a certain sport or instrument since elementary school to decide that they are done. New, more adult interests begin to develop. We might feel sad when our teenager wants to quit the activity that we spent hours watching or paying for through the years, but the good news is that this usually means that they are crystallizing their interests and moving toward adulthood, a developmentally appropriate step.
Use the following questions to guide your student in identifying their interests – all of them, not just the ones that might be related to a college major.
Start with conversations about how they spend their time. In general, if we spend a lot of time doing something, it’s an indication that we like it. Most young adults will spend a lot of time online…for this exercise, treat that as a valid activity and get more information about what they do, who they talk to, and what content they engage with. (Save any criticisms for how much time they spend online for another conversation.)
What do you spend your time doing? (Homework, Hobbies, Friendships, Music, Sports, Job, Other?)
Which activities take up A LOT of your time?
Which activities do you wish you could spend more time doing?
When you go online, what content do you seek out?
What social media platforms, video games, apps, etc.?
What do you find most interesting?
If you have 10 minutes to kill, what do you do on your device?
Now broaden the questions to bigger-picture ideas that invite them to think about their future. Expect that they will not have answers, or may need time to think it over, or that it feels too personal or vulnerable to tell their parents. This is fine. The questions are what are important.
What issues do you care about?
What problems do you want to help solve?
What questions do you take the time to find the answers to?
If you could make the world a little bit better, what would you do?
Career Interests
Now let’s move into questions that pinpoint the interests that are more career related. The interests that are separate from hobbies, the ones that connect to specific majors.
People can have a wide variety of interests and only a few are directly related to their career choices. Your student might love playing trombone and plan to play in the jazz band in college but not want to pursue music as a career path. They might care about food insecurity or fashion but not want to go through the education and knowledge to work in those industries.
To identify the career-focused interests that match up with college majors, ask about high school classes and listen to the overlap between their general interests and how they talk about the different courses. Except for a handful of elective courses, most high school students are required to take courses in: English, Math, Science, Social Studies/History, Physical Education, Fine Arts, and Health.
Which high school classes have you liked the most?
Which classes have you hated?
Which classes did you like more than you thought you would?
Which classes seemed easy but still interesting?
Which classes did you get decent grades in?
To Do: With your student, pull up the webpage that lists Academic Programs or Majors at one of the colleges you are considering, and match up the types of high school classes they enjoyed and the types of issues they care about with college majors. For example, if your student enjoyed chemistry class and likes food and wellness, explore the webpages for majors in chemistry, food science, human physiology, and maybe hospitality and agricultural/food business management. If your student enjoyed world history and statistics and loves wargames or strategy video games, check out majors in history, international relations, supply chain, political science, and maybe sociology and urban studies.
QUESTION 3: What Are You Good At?
Although what we like (our interests) and what we are good at (our skills) are different, they often go together. Your student may like the classes they did well in, and like the activities they are good at.
While this is overly simplistic - you can enjoy learning biology but get a poor grade in the class because of a teaching style or not turning in homework – when we feel skilled in something it usually increases our interest in it.
When I work with early- and mid-career professionals, we spend a lot of time identifying and articulating skills and strengths. Skills refer to both the specific areas of knowledge you possess within your industry as well as “soft skills” like communication, interpersonal relationships, problem solving, and being self-motivated.
When working with high school students, I’m cautious about putting too much weight on skills in the decision-making process. They have not had full opportunities to develop specific career-related skills yet (college will be a great place to develop them) and they tend to think that if a skill does not come naturally that they are not skilled in that area. For example, your student might get nervous for a presentation in English class, fumble their words, and then conclude that they are bad at giving presentations. But with more practice, they will realize that public speaking is a skill that can be developed, even if it does not feel like they are “naturally” good at it.
But it’s still helpful to ask a few questions about what classes they did well in, and what skills they have developed from a job or activity.
Which of the following areas feel like strengths?
Math/Calculating Numbers
Science Research
Building/Working with Your Hands
Writing
Talking to People
Leadership
Athleticism
Performing Arts
Managing Finances/Money
Organization
Solving Problems
Creativity
To Do: Pull up the webpage for a specific major and look for the list of classes or curriculum or course bulletin for that major. Explore the titles of the Required and Elective classes. You can often find a short paragraph that provides details about the focus of each course. What’s your student’s reaction to the knowledge and skills they would learn with this major? Does this major stay under consideration or not?
QUESTION 4: What Do You Know About Your Parents’ Jobs or the Jobs of Other Important Adults in Your Life?
One question I love asking high school students is how much they know about their parents’ jobs or what other important adults in their lives do for paid work.
It’s too soon for students to be making final decisions about future career paths, but it is a great time to for them to get curious about different jobs and get more details about the day-to-day work tasks of different jobs.
While having a job in high school can build skills for the future work world, for many college-bound students, the types of jobs they have in high school will not be the same as their future professional jobs.
As parents, you are in a great position to share more about your working life, how you chose or ended up in your line of work, how much you enjoy or dislike your job, and how you manage the inevitable challenges of every job.
Look for opportunities to have your student hear about the working lives of other adults. Listening to people talk about their jobs, maybe even shadowing them for an hour or day, can be so useful in helping students begin to see the connection (or lack of connection) between the college major and future job.
To Do: Ask your student if they would like your help in reaching out to 2 or 3 adults you know to ask them more about their jobs. It’s great if those jobs are in areas of your students’ interests, but they don’t have to be. Here are some great questions to ask those adults:
What’s your job title and employer?
What does a typical workday look like?
What do you like most about your job? What is most challenging?
How did you choose or end up in this industry?
What was your college major?
Do you have any advice for people looking to get into this line of work?
QUESTIONS 5: What Would You Like Help With? What Don’t You Want Help With?
Figuring out what major to list on a college application is exciting but can also be stressful. While your student in exploring their options, they are in a place of “not knowing yet.” One skill we can teach our kids is tolerating “not knowing” and allowing them the space to feel some normal anxiety about not having the answer yet.
Ask your student what they need from you, how you can be helpful as they figure out a potential major. Ask them where they are stuck or if it would be okay if you offered some direction.
Invite them to tell you what they don’t need your help with. But also invite them to return to you at any time later to ask for some guidance.
As a parent, I am guilty of talking TO my kids, rather than WITH them. My parenting advice came from a place of love and support, but I know I gave them more advice than they knew what to do with at times. And my two kids went through the college/major decision-making process in completely different ways. I learned the importance of asking them what they needed (and didn’t need) from me, so I could meet them where they were, and not stress them out with providing more than they could handle at one time.
I know how painful it is to see your kid stressed and worried. We have life experience, we have answers, and we want to help them feel better quickly. But if we rush in too quickly, we don’t give them the chance to develop independent decision-making skills and realize that they can trust themselves to solve problems. We plant seeds of confidence by giving them permission to be in the driver’s seat in the decision-making process.
Picking a Major “For Now”
Did you change your major in college? Or know people who changed their major? Of course. When you pick a major while you are still in high school, you are simply making a best guess about what you might like to study.
Instill in your student the idea that they are making a choice of a major “for now.”
They’ll get to college, start taking classes, and then figure out how much they actually like the classes. They’ll have the opportunity to take different classes, talk to different professors, and perhaps pivot to a new area – or not. Normalize this exploration and change process and invite them to talk to you if they have doubts about their major in the future.
Change is good and expected. Adaptability is one of the biggest skills this next generation of college graduates will need. They may or may not change their major, but they will navigate lots of change during their college experience.
