With tuition fees constantly on the rise, there’s a lot of pressure on students. If you are willing to spend a lot of time, energy, and money on your degree, you need to make sure you’re making the best possible choice when selecting your courses. What you decide to study in university will play a crucial role in your career path, so there is a lot at stake.
If you don’t feel a strong pull towards a specific field of study, you will have to put a lot of thought into your decision. Here are four tips to help you out.
Analyze Your Interests
After spending so many years in school, it’s impossible not to know which academic subjects spark your interest. Analyzing your interests and passions is the only way to find potential career paths. What intellectual, artistic, or athletic activities bring you the most joy? Are you more likely to read a book or play sports for fun? Are you more fascinated by the complexity of humans, objects, or systems? Accurate self-assessment is essential.
After analyzing your interests, determine which of them have correlations in the academic and professional world. Be realistic.
Compare Options
Another helpful tip is to check what universities in your region or country have to offer. Looking at the list of courses available in universities is a great way to discover options you may not have considered. Read what each course entails. What are the differences in teaching methods, curricula, and student assessment practices?
Are you interested in criminology, for example? Compare criminology courses from top universities. Look at the syllabuses. How are they different? What about tuition fees, course structure, or class size? Comparing courses and universities is a critical step in the process of choosing the right degree.
Think About Your Strengths
Once you have a good idea about what universities have to offer, make a list of top preferences. How do they align with your strengths and academic abilities? Unfortunately, having a strong passion for a field is not enough to guarantee career success. This aspect is especially relevant when it comes to athletic and artistic careers.
In the academic and professional world, hard work can take you far. However, without a natural inclination for a field, you may have to work a lot harder than those who have innate talent as well as great work ethics.
Taking your strengths and abilities into consideration when choosing your degree will help you shine in university.
Consider Your Learning Preferences
Maybe you like the idea of being an English major, but do you see yourself spending hours upon hours alone in the library reading classic after classic? Perhaps you find medicine fascinating, but would you be comfortable participating in a cadaver dissection? Thinking about your personality and learning preferences is crucial when choosing an undergraduate degree.
If you don’t enjoy the learning process, you will struggle to stay on top of your academic responsibilities.
An undergraduate degree is a big investment of time, energy, money, and resources. Use the tips above to make the best decision for yourself.
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The best undergrad degree by far is a STEM degree. Most other degrees aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.
I agree, Steve. For those who don’t know, STEM stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering, Math.”
While STEM degrees are highly employable, one cannot disparage students pursuing other academic passions or talents, teaching for example. All education has value to the individual and society.
Nobody is disparaging anyone, Patrick. But it is a fact that many degrees being offered today by some very expensive universities, actually take a decade or longer for the students to just break even on their investment. So while all degrees may have value, they are not equivalent in value.