Majors Are a Choice, Not an Obligation

You can go to med school with a degree in physics or history just as well as a degree in biochemistry

Quite true, and I know a few people who have gone to med school after majoring in physics. The reason most pre-meds major in biology-type fields is because med schools require certain courses for admission, most of which are also required for biology-type majors. (They also require two semester equivalents of physics, which is the downfall of many wannabe doctors.) If you major in something else, these courses have to be among your electives, which is an especially serious problem if you are in a relatively inflexible major like engineering.

I find myself halfway agreeing with both opinions, but for different reasons than those given. I think there's a more nuanced third option, namely: if you're not sure what you love yet, pick the hardest subject you can manage (which may or may not be the hardest subject you think you can manage).

Successfully completing a degree in math, physics, engineering, or any other so-called hard science puts you in the position of having solved harder problems than you are likely to encounter for the rest of your professional life. Even if you don't make it in one of the harder majors and wind up switching to something less demanding, you will still have tested your limits.

I like Paul Graham's essay on the subject: http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html

Both are pretty good reasons, but there's a problem with the "do what you really like" argument, taken alone, which is that it might be taken to mean that if you don't like doing something, don't do it. As someone in the English University system, 30 years ago, where you can still do just Mathematics all the time for your degree, I well remember the first term assignment to write an essay about a mathematical topic. Our dislike of the idea that we might have to write something was manifest enough that we weren't asked again to write an essay. That's three years of not doing something that's vitally important, to one's career, and the implicit message that it doesn't really matter anyway. It took me ten years to discover the consequences. I probably have a little sour grapes at not being forced to do it anyway, as you may have noticed, tempered by a recognition that if I'd been smarter I would have forced myself to do something I didn't like to see myself doing badly. Alternatively, perhaps I wasn't ready back then; seen fatalistically, I just had to take the route I did to being able to write less badly.

Being made to do something you don't like to do, often not a nice experience at the time, is important. ZapperZ's admonition could be taken to be a focus on future fulfillment instead of on the fulfillment of doing something that gets you high now. Some balance of the two is good.

I think that as an undergrad, you can range from "interested in physics" to "really, really, liking physics." But if you're going on to grad school, you'd better be in the "really, really liking" category.

In the case of technical majors like physics or engineering, it is extremely important that you choose it because you like doing it. Why? Because you sure don't want to spend your life doing something you intensely dislike just for the big bucks it pays.

This may not be much of a problem in physics departments, but I sat in stunned disbelief as I heard an engineering prof tell potential engineering students how hard engineers have to work. "It will only get harder." Afterwords, I learned that their attrition problem is largely due to kids picking engineering because a HS counselor told them it pays well, not because they like staying up all night doing it.

You see that in the number of newly graduated teachers who finally get in a classroom and discover they don't like teaching. I've heard that med schools now like to see some work experience in medicine (EMT, nursing aides) so that students discover that doctors work with people who are often very sick or injured. (If you only go to the doctor for a checkup, your view of their world is very selective.)

Physics pays "big bucks"? :)

I always tell people, major in something you like enough that, even if you don't get a job that uses it, you won't feel like you wasted four years. Otherwise, you're betting four years of your life on your ability to predict the job market.

Physics is a funny borderline. Art majors almost always choose their major because they love doing it rather than for the job prospects, and business majors almost always for the job prospects rather than because they love doing it (though I'm sure there are exceptions.)

My art major friends from college explained that, as far as they were concerned, college was a once in a lifetime opportunity to really immerse themselves in art, for four years, before moving onto the banality of the "real world." Why would they pass up that chance just to get a head-start on banality?

I picked physics because it seemed like something that was exciting and absorbing, but *also* practical (unlike Linguistics or English Lit, which I also considered.) Two reasons are better than one.

I switched to physics from electrical engineering because I realized that after my freshman year, I had pretty much used up any electives outside of engineering in the curriculum (due to testing out of some requirements with AP but not being allowed to move ahead in the EE curriculum because of inflexible course requirements.) I liked math and science, but I also liked having room in the curriculum for history and other subjects, and physics fit the bill nicely. I then went to grad school in computer science and became a software engineer.

Chemical Physics grad to Law School here...it's definitely possible, but you get a lot of funny looks when you tell people. Which is why I think Saltzberg's point about the acquired skills in a physics degree is important. It's not a reason to go into physics, but it doesn't hurt to remind people that a physics (or math) degree isn't a waste of time, and that if you don't continue towards a career in either of those subjects you will still have gained many desirable abilities along the way.

I would argue that most people have no idea what jobs are available to them when they pick a major. Engineering, medicine, and law are popular things for college students to say they are interested in because if they don't think they are interested in business those are a handful of concrete occupations they they think they know about.

So given that any given undergraduate degree can get you lots of places and most students don't know what those places even are yet, liking something is a pretty good reason to major in something.

I think this is one reason that things like PNAS, and really anything that gets people with interesting jobs talking about how they got there is important. Most college students really only have an idea about a handful off jobs.

I went to a liberal arts college where talking about a career was considering kind of tacky among the faculty. We were above such "vocational training." That has changed dramatically since I was a student thanks to a really inspired career center director who gets alums talking to students about their jobs and how they got them.

I loved being able to spend four years taking courses because I thought they would be fun, and I do worry about programs that push students into a specific career track early on and don't given them lots of transferable skills. However, eventually you have to get a job and knowing what is out there is nice.