The first time I assigned myself to a major was when I was in high school, writing my college application essays — specifically, the “Why Michigan” essay. Although I had never really given my college major any serious thought at the time, I figured it would be wise to be specific in this essay so that I could demonstrate to the admissions committee how I spent lots of time thinking about my future at the University of Michigan. I used my artistic discretion and wrote down political science, which worked most cohesively with my high school credentials. I had volunteered for a Michigan political campaign and had cultivated an interest in politics through my AP government class. Thus, political science it would be — at least for the sake of my application. I would figure out my real major when I got to college, I told myself.
I needed to use my provisional major again when I arrived at the University and started to meet new people. Almost invariably, I would be asked my name, maybe where I was from and then what my major was; “political science” was my go-to response.
I guess I could have been truthful and said that I didn’t know yet, but I wanted to demonstrate a sense of confidence to my peers who were forming their first impressions of me. The more I said out loud that my major was political science, the more it felt right. Before I knew it, my temporary, fill-in, show-Michigan-admissions-I-have-actual-interests-and-aspirations-major became my real major.
As a high school senior, I remember being shocked that I was already expected to have thought about a major without ever stepping foot in a college class. I had imagined that college would be my time to explore different disciplines and new classes covering niches I had never dreamed of before. Although I was thinking about eventually attending law school, part of the reason I had chosen to go to the University was because it has excellent programs in a variety of different disciplines. I figured no matter what I landed on, I would be in good hands.
Based on the fact that it was standard to ask a freshman what their major was, I did not feel that most people were embracing college as the exploratory experience I had hoped it would be. Although there were a few people I met who were completely undecided, I felt that most people offered up a concrete answer.
Generally, the pressure to come to some sort of conclusion about a major and career is a stressor commonly felt among U-M students, despite the fact that 75% of college students change their major before they graduate, and most people change careers throughout their lifetimes. In that way, the presumption that everyone knows what they’re doing with their academic career and for the rest of their lives is an illusion.
At the same time, students applying to the College of Engineering or the Ross School of Business might have to think a little harder about their future when applying to college, since they are applying to specific programs.
I spoke with Divum Mittal — a double major in the School of Public Health and the Business School — about his process for navigating his academic route, specifically about the moment he decided what he wanted to do. He explained that he had it “pretty narrowed down” when he came to college, but thinks it’s not realistic for high schoolers to know exactly what they might want to major in or do for the rest of their life.
“I think colleges on the Common App generally ask, ‘What’s your major?’ I think they can’t really expect you to know exactly what you’re doing, which I think kind of puts you in a spot” Mittal explained. “With Ross, for example, say you’re not totally sold on business, but then you have to apply to Ross specifically, and that’s a pretty specific major.”
In that way, it seems like some high schoolers may have to be more forward thinking than I was, especially students who are interested in business or engineering.
Although my interests would oscillate among a few options such as economics; English; philosophy, politics and economics; my intended major generally stayed in the social science lane that I had unknowingly laid out for myself while applying to college. Gone were my anticipations of collegiate academic exploration where I would try a myriad of different classes to see what fit me best. Instead, I decided to skip the uncertainty and focus on my social science degree and my goal of eventually going to law school.
The crack in my prelaw armor, however, was medicine. I had always seen medicine as a noble and heroic pursuit. The premed major would need remarkable mental acumen and an impressive drive to undergo the premed requirements and then attend medical school, which I perceived as the peak of academic excellence and achievement. I was secretly jealous of my premed friends. Besides, before my introduction to the social sciences in high school, I had always dreamed of being a surgeon, of course to help people, but also for the prestige.
Usually, when these doubts creeped in, I would try to quickly shut them down and remind myself that I loved my social science and humanities classes. Sophomore year though, I decided I couldn’t bear the fact that I felt like I was blindly following a path without having tried anything else, specifically the natural sciences. This feeling was probably also augmented by the fact that I took my rigorous science courses my junior and senior year of high school — at the height of COVID-19 when schools were still figuring out how to engage students effectively.
Thus, I talked to a couple advisors about my prelaw uncertainty. They told me it wasn’t too late, although I might have to take a fifth year if I wanted to complete the premed requirements. I decided to take general chemistry and try to figure it out.
I was not a fan of chemistry. This didn’t necessarily worry me too much, though. Although I had friends who seemed to genuinely enjoy their chemistry classes, I figured lots of premed students suffered through chemistry to reach their long-term goals of helping people every day.
After taking chemistry and engaging in serious thought as to what kind of classes make me feel the most excited, I decided to return to my initial social science, prelaw plan and am now in the Ford School of Public Policy. I also made it a priority to speak to professionals about their work lives and seek out legal internships. My internships and love for classes that focus on reading and writing helped validate my commitment to pursue a career in law, a career I had already instinctually gravitated towards. I also started to outgrow my insecurity regarding the social sciences and the feeling that medicine was somehow the perfect career. I realized that my passion and experiences were pointing towards the social sciences and pre-law track, and that this is the information I should be using to guide my career choice.
Looking back, I realize that my premed crisis — which I dramatically dubbed this “period of uncertainty” — was likely a symptom of forcing myself into a path without taking the time to seriously consider other options. I felt I at least owed myself a chance to try something else and even consider the possibility of pursuing another career path.
In high school, I fixated on taking AP classes that would help me get into college. I knew which subjects I found more and less enjoyable, but I didn’t really let that dictate my choice of classes. I also felt that I could really do anything I put my mind to, a confidence I attest to excellent teachers growing up and supportive parents. Although I am certainly grateful for my high school experience, I couldn’t really narrow anything down, besides knowing I definitely did not want to be a mathematician. I felt like I never had that chance to do some serious exploring and thinking.
I also don’t remember feeling pressured to figure out my future plans. Thinking back, I do recall that our counselors had us write down our career goals and take a career test, which to me bore an uncanny resemblance to BuzzFeed personality quizzes. My friends and I would laugh about the wildly implausible careers our results would yield. Although I’m sure these exercises were meant to be taken seriously, I did not take them to heart and assumed, as lots of people had told me, that I would figure out what I wanted to do in college.
Instead, I found myself falling into a path I wasn’t even sure about, which culminated in taking a chemistry class that took time away from my other difficult classes. My chemistry class and lab credits ended up contributing to my distribution credits in natural science, but compared to other natural science courses my non-STEM friends were taking, chemistry took up a lot of my time and made it hard for me to focus on my difficult economics class.
It was also emotionally and mentally taxing to do this exploration and reconsider my whole career trajectory during the second semester of my sophomore year. It felt like the clock was ticking and the longer I stayed in this limbo in between career paths, the less likely it would be that I would make it in either one.
If I did decide to go the premed route, I would have a lot of catching up to do. I was advised that I would likely have to consider taking out a fifth year of undergraduate study. In fact, a survey of college kids enrolled in two and four-year programs in the U.S. found that “28% of students said their change in major delayed their expected graduation rate by two or more semesters.”
While going through this experience, I was frustrated that I had not been more forward thinking in high school, even just to determine basic ideas of what I did and didn’t like. If I had known that it would be so difficult for me to explore in college, I would have tried to do more critical thinking about my interests in high school and maybe even find opportunities to get exposure to different career paths. I could have possibly avoided the stress of my premed crisis which occurred during my finite time at the University.
I spoke to rising LSA sophomore Jack Handzel, who is planning to major in political science, about his experience at the University. Handzel explained that he “came into Michigan with a few sort of ideas locked in.” He had fostered an interest in political science in high school — through extracurriculars and political science-related classes — and ended up enjoying his introductory and more advanced political science classes. Handzel had also taken organic chemistry his first semester.
“Even though I think I’ve ultimately decided to lean a lot further to the social sciences, I’ll always appreciate the knowledge I gained with those courses I explored,” he explained.
I asked Handzel whether he felt that the people around him seemed to know what they were studying when they first got to the University. He explained that most people had a vague idea of what they wanted to do, even if they did not have all the details down.
“I’d say both myself and most people around me would have plans that they’d share with others. They weren’t completely formless in terms of what they wanted to do,” Handzel said. “But they had an idea of their goals, and even if they weren’t quite sure about which route they were going to take, they were really clear about the end result.”
So it seems like high school students who eventually attend the University are doing at least a little bit of thinking as to what they might want to do in college and in their future careers. According to Handzel, they might not know which major they want to pursue, but they may come into college with broader interests that later get fine-tuned.
To better understand the mindset of college applicants, I spoke to incoming freshman Sophia Guo about her plans for her time at the University. She told me that she is most interested in the biopsychology, cognition and neuroscience major. She has always been a math and science person, and she liked AP biology and chemistry in high school, which is when she really started to figure out that she had an interest in STEM. I asked Guo if she had chosen classes in high school with the intention to try out what she might like to do in college. She said that she had decided to explore those courses in high school because she wanted to make sure she liked her college classes and would be able to learn from them. She also said that her high school counselors had encouraged her to consider different classes throughout her high school career.
I asked her if other incoming freshmen seem to have a good idea of what they want to study in college and pursue as a career.
“I think a lot of my friends, similar to me, know kind of what they’re interested in vaguely or they have one or two majors they think they want to do, but a lot of them still have said ‘Oh, I don’t know like I could change my mind on this,’ ” Guo said.
So it seems that the type of unfettered exploration I had imagined college to be, where everyone is kind of starting from scratch and taking all different kinds of classes, was a little less intense, at least for some people. Maybe the collegiate exploration I had imagined was happening much more subtly. Rather than exploring polar opposite majors and different fields of study, students spend time figuring out the specificities of their passions and what they might like to do in their careers. Although there may be students who decide to make the drastic kind of change that I had tried, it seems to me that some of the exploration in college happens within broad disciplines, interests or long-term career goals. This kind of exploration would certainly be more manageable than the type of exploration I had tried, which involved completely switching gears academically.
I asked Mittal, who has a double major in public health and business, if clubs and internships had played a big role in reinforcing his passions. He told me about his finance role in Blueprints for Pangaea, a club that reallocates excess medical supplies from Michigan Medicine to different countries and healthcare systems. Mittal explained that while classes are still very important in terms of learning the principles of business, clubs “touch the experience side” a lot more than classes, which has allowed him to further understand the “business landscape.”
I spoke to rising Business junior Hailey Howard, who also has a minor in history, about exploring different career paths within the business sphere. Hailey had honed an interest in business in high school. She told me that she went to a “really small, under-resourced school,” so she was only able to take personal finance in terms of business classes. However, she was able to dual enroll at a community college nearby, where she discovered her interest in international business.
She said that she was able to figure out what she might want in a future career through treks that the Business School conducts, which are trips to big cities where students are able to visit different companies. She also said that clubs have helped her think about what she might want to pursue as a future career.
“The clubs help a lot because they’re just so connected with alumni and mentors that are upperclassmen that have done internships,” she said. “They’re very knowledgeable and can give you the real world advice that you want to know and not what the company always just tells you and tells everyone else as well.”
So, while I ended up sticking to my original prelaw plan, I am glad that I allowed myself the room to seriously think through my interests and priorities. Looking back to high school, I do wish that I had allowed myself to take classes I was genuinely interested in, in addition to the classes I thought would make me look like a good student. At the same time, it’s hard to instruct my former self to do so, since I don’t have the luxury of knowing whether I would ultimately get into the colleges I had wanted to had I taken less AP math classes, for example.
Ultimately, my premed crisis did not change the course of my career. However, I am glad I allowed myself to step outside of the prelaw track and take the time to ensure I was pursuing an academic career and profession that felt right for me. I think that as students, it is important to embrace imperfections in our academic plans and explore different options through all the avenues available to us. I would suggest that every student, no matter how certain they might be about their career goals, engage in exploration through classes, clubs, internships and mentorship. Although I don’t foresee any dramatic career crisis in my near future — and I ultimately did not choose to major in political science, per my U-M application — I am excited to embark on a new, more specific exploration chapter with my public policy degree.
Statement Correspondent Yael Atzmon can be reached at yatzmon@umich.edu