I don't know what to major in for college. Help?

You’re mom is a little nutty, but she loves you and wants the best for you.
Most kids change their major several times before they’re done so don’t sweat it. In the next few years you will discover something you’re passionate about. You can always start out as a liberal arts major.

It’s too early to decide what you want to major in. Even if you think it might be nice to have it planned out already, your interests are likely to change and you should keep an open mind for a while longer. Don’t worry about it!

You don’t need to know you college major to get a scholarship. But I should also note that there aren’t a lot of scholarships available to 13 year olds. Most of them are for high school juniors and seniors. Don’t start worrying about this stuff quite yet.

There is no reason to know what your major will be.

Work hard, get good grades, and get involved with things you care about (sports, music, volunteer work, art, anything).

The rest will fall into place.

A significant number of people don’t decide their major until (or switch their major) the sophomore or junior year of college. How can you know what you want to study when you haven’t even been exposed to the subjects yet in high school?

You have four years ahead of you before college, how about living in the present and enjoying being a teen?

You don’t need to decide a major to get a scholarship. You need to focus on your studies in high school, get good grades, and try a variety of elective courses to explore your interests. Join a club, maybe work on the school newspaper, or yearbook team.

I have to guess your mom does not have a college degree, or is a little over the top when it comes to figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. Maybe she new from the age of 10 what she wanted to be, but most people don’t. Many people get to college, and even then still change their majors.

@JLeslie My mom does have her college degree. She has her PhD and Masters. She just wants me to carry it on and doesn’t want me to “be a failiure.” But, I don’t know if I even want to go.

@astrix24 These days, doing at least an undergraduate degree is a really, really good idea, almost a necessity. Graudate school definitely isn’t for everyone, though, and your mom shouldn’t pressure you to get advanced degrees if you don’t want to. Maybe you should talk with your mom about the pressure she’s putting on you. Being a “failure” means different things to different people.

@astrix24 She is just freaking out then about your seeming apathy with school. I did not like high school, I didn’t have a lot of direction when I started college, I just went to a nearby Jr. College because I could not get my act together, and I felt nervous about the unknown. You are still very young, but when you are a Jr. I recommend going to some college campuses seeing what you like, what feels good to you, where you feel at home. My dad, who also has a PhD, was freaked that I was getting nowhere fast, and made me visit some schools and pushed me to go away to college. I finally did transfer and it was the best thing I ever did. College was so much fun! I learned about majors and industries I knew nothing about. You must go to college and I recommend live in the dorms and get the full experience. Your mom is right, you have to give it a try. If you want to travel, you can always do a study abroad a semester. She probably does not want you to take of a year after high school and then go to college, because she has not confidence you will go back to school, since you don’t want to go. Travelling seems like an avoidance tactic.

For sure take your SAT or ACT tests twice and if your score is low the first go around, take a course to help you score higher. Do everything in high school, like you have the intent to go to college. Once in college, if it really isn’t for you, then you can make a more rational decision about it.

You are worrying way too early. Now is the time for sampling many things and exploring yourself and life. When my son was 17, he wanted to travel with his band, when he was 18 he went to college expecting to be an English literature major. He changed to computer science at 19 and is now a PhD and software engineer. Don’t fight with your mom about college yet – there’s plenty of time to do that!

Oh, to add to the topic of interest changes and along the same lines of @janbb‘s son, when I was your age, @astrix24, I wanted to be a graphic designer. Now at age 19, I’m a robotics engineering major! I’m glad I didn’t choose my life path at age 13.

You could always just tell your mom what you are interested in, you can always change your mind. You must like something? Computers, math, psychology, journalism, accounting, fashion, biology, whatever. Just so she feels like you are thinking, and semi interested in learning.

My folks said I have the rest of my life to work and goof off and forced encouraged me to go to college too. I too did not know what the hell I wanted to do so I enrolled in Business school changed my major a year later and now work in a completely unrelated field.

I know a lot of people who went to college and most if not all seem better off for the experience. It was a bunch of fun too!

Tell her science. Or humanities. That’s about as close as you might want to get now. And in any case, it’s provisional. Don’t worry. No matter what you do now, you’ll be able to choose something different when you get there.

When my parents were like that, I just told them I wanted to be a nanny, even though I didn’t. But it shut them the hell up, didn’t it? So just pick something, anything, to take the pressure off.

In a few years, you can show her studies about all the benefits of taking a year off, and how tons of colleges actually recommend it.

Regardless of what you think your major will be when you start college, something like 85% of all college students change their major at least once. Very few scholarships are actually based on what you think you’re going to study. Some may require you to major or minor in a particular field, but that won’t really matter until you’re actually filling out the applications for the scholarship your junior and senior year of high school.

Pay attention to whatever activities you naturally gravitate to, even if it doesn’t seem school-related (or constructive, necessarily . . . ). Do you like people? Drawing? Traveling? It’s a good idea to know yourself and apply it to possible careers or whatever. Nothing is set in stone.

Also, another depressing statistic: Most people don’t go into job fields related to their major. I hope for all our sakes it’s not true.

@efritz, it is true, but it’s not a bad thing. There are two types of higher education— education for employment and education for knowledge. The things that make you successful as an employee or launch a career can have nothing to do with what you study in school. You learn a lot about yourself by doing challenging things, whether at school or working while in college. Many adults have jobs that they never heard of or could imagine anyone would be paid for when they were in college.

@BarnacleBill – glad you found the good side for that statistic, that is very true. It just bummed me out because I’m in school studying something I know I love. However, I’m pretty fortunate knowing what I want to do, so my dedication is focused and specific.

My daughter told me that she figured out that you take a lot of different classes in college, figure out the ones that you don’t mind doing the extra work for, think about why you don’t mind doing the work, and then look for a major related to that. So far, she’s interested in logic, french, meterology, and sociology. One of the ideas tossed about this week is “implementing governmental and cultural process changes to help French speaking cultures adjust to climate changes.” With that out there, she’s trying to figure out how income could be derived from that. Or something else might spring up from that combination. Who knows? She will probably major in sociology and minor in French.