# Choosing a major?



## Isaythings (Jun 17, 2010)

So seeing as how my second year of university starts soon and I have a meeting with an academic advisor in the near future I was hoping to get some input on a couple majors from people who are already taking them. Some idea's that i've thrown around have been Business, Medicine, Law, Engineering and Psychology. Although i've all but dismissed Business and Law are there any people majoring in Engineering or Psychology that could provide an inside view on what kind of things i can expect? Or even anyone who works in one of the above fields who can describe the day to day work and responsibilities from an inside view? Just incase anyone was wondering i've tested as an ENTJ, thanks for any insights


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## cdeuterian (Apr 28, 2010)

Kinda going off MBTI stereotypes here but I would say if you as an ENTJ are well suited to enter a managerial position in any of those fields you may want to pursue an MBA or MPH in night school while working. With a basic undergraduate degree (in whatever field) you'll be doing a lot of scut work in an entry level job, that is unavoidable, however constantly researching and improving your credentials will allow you to rise in the ranks and attain a position where you can manage/direct people and resources in order to make a more far-reaching impact. I know of someone who earned his MD degree, became a vascular surgeon - a very intellectually stimulating field but nonetheless he decided to get an MPH or MBA (I forget which one), this eventually led to him becoming an administrator in a hospital system and make his impact on the healthcare system as a whole rather than individual surgery cases. I'm not sure what his MBTI type was though.


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## Isaythings (Jun 17, 2010)

Thanks for the response! So all of these fields seem to sync well as long as i'm in a position to exercise some control? I will admit that i much rather be the one in charge than someone following orders (mostly because I find it hard to follow instructions when I dont see the point or can think of a better way to do things). I dont know much about the field of psychology but i've always been interested in how and why people act the way they do. I've also been sought out for advice by friends. I dont know how much all of this syncs with personality types but I tend to take most placements like these with a certain degree of skepticism. I'm really leaning towards Psychology or Engineering right now, can you shed any light on these areas specifically? I have to go to work now but i'll be back on later tonight, thanks again for the insight.


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## katerp (Apr 26, 2010)

I don't know anything about the engineering field but I was a psychology major. 

First of all, I think one of the things you have to take into consideration is what your plans are for after college. Do you want to go to graduate school or start working immediately? How important is it to you to have stable, well-paying work? It would be easier for you to find a well-paying job in engineering especially if you only plan on getting a bachelor's degree. If you want to do something with psychology grad school is pretty much a requirement, but a lot of psychology majors go on to study something else in grad school including some of the fields you mentioned (plenty of psych majors go to business, law, or medical school). 

Second, there are a lot of subfields within psychology - are there any subfields of particular interest to you? (clinical, social, developmental, cognitive, etc.) If you major in psychology you'd get a broad background in all these areas and then in grad school you'd specialize. At that point if you wanted to you could combine some of your interests and study forensic psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, health psychology, or neuroscience. Have you taken any classes in psychology - or any of the other fields you mentioned - that would help you focus your interests? What do you like or dislike about the classes you've taken so far?


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## Isaythings (Jun 17, 2010)

Well i've taken some business courses, initially I found them interesting but they began to get really boring when most of what was taught was pretty much common sense attached to some new terms. I really enjoyed biology mostly when it came to microbiology and the nervous system so something like neuroscience is very interesting to me. I actually didn't take a psychology course in the first year as at the beginning of this year I didn't view it as an option but from what I hear the first year class is pretty much like business in terms of a lot of common sense backed by new terms and some study activities. It is rather important to me personally that I have a job which can promise me a fair amount of security and a decent enough wage to live a comfortable life. If i went the psychology route I think i'd like to work with people to help them work out their problems which i'm sure requires school beyond a BA or maybe neuroscience (although i've heard the term i'll admit to being rather clueless to what it actually entails). 

Basically I want a job that requires me to make use of my love of science, where I can work in an environment where I spend a good deal of time interacting with other people (I enjoy working in proximity to people as i enjoy talking even if it's not work related which is why I really dont want a lab job as a researcher or something) and where I can make enough money to live comfortably with decent security.

Thanks for the reply :happy:


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## katerp (Apr 26, 2010)

Sorry for the delayed response...



Isaythings said:


> I actually didn't take a psychology course in the first year as at the beginning of this year I didn't view it as an option but from what I hear the first year class is pretty much like business in terms of a lot of common sense backed by new terms and some study activities.


That happens sometimes in psychology. I remember when I took my cognitive psychology class (which deals mostly with memory, attention, how people process information, etc.) about half of what we learned seemed like common sense and the other half was opposite of what you'd expect.



> It is rather important to me personally that I have a job which can promise me a fair amount of security and a decent enough wage to live a comfortable life. If i went the psychology route I think i'd like to work with people to help them work out their problems which i'm sure requires school beyond a BA or maybe neuroscience (although i've heard the term i'll admit to being rather clueless to what it actually entails).
> 
> Basically I want a job that requires me to make use of my love of science, where I can work in an environment where I spend a good deal of time interacting with other people (I enjoy working in proximity to people as i enjoy talking even if it's not work related which is why I really dont want a lab job as a researcher or something) and where I can make enough money to live comfortably with decent security.


If you're interested in a career where you help people with their problems directly and you're interested in neuroscience psychiatry might be something for you consider if you're willing to go to medical school, or clinical psychology if you'd rather go for Ph.D. Really the main difference between the two is that psychiatrists can prescribe medication and clinical psychologists can't - if they think medication is necessary they can only refer patients to a doctor who can prescribe the meds for them. Well that and psychiatrists make way more money (median salaries of $64,000 for clinical psychologists vs. $160,000 for psychiatrists, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-11 Edition - great career research resource BTW). There is a lot of competition for spots in clinical psychology grad programs though, so if you decide to go that route you have to be very commited and get some research or counseling experience to be competitive. 

Neuroscience is really an interdisciplinary field now that draws from biology, psychology, and medicine. It's an interesting field but I believe most of the jobs in this field are in research so I don't know how much interaction you would get (unless you become a doctor and could interact with your patients).


You said that out of all the things you were considering you've now pretty much narrowed it down to psychology and engineering - can I ask why? Maybe knowing what you disliked about law, medicine, and business will help people provide you with more useful information. No matter what you should try taking introductory courses in all the fields you're interested in or at least doing some research. Getting some experience with psychology and engineering should help you clarify things - then you'll know for sure if either of those majors are really options for you or if you just like the idea of them. Hope this helps.


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## Isaythings (Jun 17, 2010)

Hey thanks for the response.

Well with Business and Law it was the lack of science that made me decide against pursueing them. Psychiatrist vs Pscyhologist is actually something I considered and if it's possible to keep the medical school door open for one more year it's something I will definitely put more thought into it. Thanks for pointing out the lack of patient contact down the neuoscience stream, it looks like i have a lot more research to do.

Thanks again


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## jbking (Jun 4, 2010)

I'll admit I graduated from a Canadian university back in the '90s, but even then, there was something to be said for being within a Faculty that kind of limited one's majors normally. In my case, I was in a Faculty of Mathematics, so unless I wanted to cross into another faculty it wasn't possible to have a major like English or Physics even. The majors available back in my day were Pure Math, Applied Math, Combinatorics & Optimization, Operations Research, Statistics, Actuarial Science, and Computer Science. Thus, I wonder what did you study in your first year and what was good and bad about that?

While I work as a Web Developer, which in many other circles would be called Software Engineering, my majors in university were Computer Science and Combinatorics & Optimization. Did I take a lot of software development courses in doing that Computer Science major? A few, but really most of what I know and use now wasn't taught in school aside from the Software Development LifeCycle and some Object-Oriented Programming principles. The rest of the stuff was mostly academic and if I had gone into academia, it may be useful to know things like Symbolic Computation or Computational Complexity. My point is that what I studied in school and the work I did after graduating weren't that close in the end. I had a few courses involving C-style programming but my first job out of university involved using ISAPI stuff that wasn't quite the same as I graduated just before the big dot-com boom. Not that I mean for this to be a post so much about myself, but I'm just wanting to know a bit more about your situation before recommending this or that. Of course, if you want to know more about what I do, I could post more if you think it'd be helpful.


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## Isaythings (Jun 17, 2010)

I took a wide range of courses in my first year and as a result I have many of the general degree requirements filled already for most any degree. I now have the option of choosing something to major in without having to worry about getting a certain amount of Science or Humanities credits. I've narrowed it down to Psychology or Psychiatry, the only problem is the paths to each are very different seeing as how Psychiatry requires medical school and thus many science courses where Psychology would more or less require a masters which is almost exclusively Psychology courses. I've talked to both the Pscyholoy department at my University and an Academic advisor so hopefully together we can work out a great path to one of the above options.

I'd like to again thank everyone for their thoughts on the matter and for taking the time to share them with me.


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