How to pick the RIGHT major

Picture this: You’re freshly off summer vacation, senior year is at your feet. While you spent the summer relaxing on beaches, eating ice cream and hanging with friends, your parents are asking about booking college tours and meetings. While you may be stuck on where you want to go, another question pops into your head, what do you want to study? Let's talk about how to pick the right major. In school, your friend says her favorite class is science. She loves the experiments, collaboration and understanding more about the world around her. She's president of the science club and has a strong letter of recommendation from her chemistry professor. Since her passions lie in science, she'll most likely choose a major that's focused on a form of science. Your other friend is a player on the basketball team and thrives in gym class. He's the best player on the team and his coach is helping him find scholarships so he can go pro. He's most likely to pick a major that helps him market himself as a professional athlete, such as sales or marketing.

Now let's focus on you, you're involved with a lot in your community, had a summer job and now you're thinking about your future. When you were younger, you always wanted to be a newscaster or work in television. You were involved in community theater so you think you might want to look at college’s theater programs. Your parents ask you to research the theater programs at High Point University and you hear some theater alumni say the theater program is great, but they also wished they added a major or minor in communications. Now you've switched gears a bit and are researching the communications major. For people going into acting, communications is ranked the 3rd best major for successful careers according to Backstage ( Polner, 2024), and 1st according to College Consensus (Kemppainen, 2025). Not only is communications good for acting, but it also can help towards careers in advertising, marketing, public relations, and journalism (Lyons, 2022). So say a couple months into college, you decide film isn't for you, but you know with your communications degree, you're not out of luck. The strategic communication degree at High Point University doesn't just offer one job outcome, but allows you to explore many different classes and other outcomes.

Now that we have decided on strategic communications as our major at HPU is the perfect fit for you, let's break down the steps for everyone by asking 3 simple questions. What are you passionate about? What have you done before that you really enjoyed? Where do you see yourself after college? Hopefully these can help guide you in the right direction to choose the perfect major for you!

References

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/acting-degree-options-76538/

https://www.collegeconsensus.com/degrees/acting/

https://topresume.com/career-advice/24-top-jobs-for-communications-majors?pt=GDsPcLWWVVMU1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=20296089815&utm_adgroup=&utm_custom=US-TopResume-PMax&utm_content=&utm_term=&utm_matchtype=&device=c&utm_location=9009599&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20296103273&gbraid=0AAAAADvQXeSMHgW5dEpd5VVdNSgUZTkXV&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9obIBhCAARIsAGHm1mSfsuCQ2QZu5BOSmIshW_EQ9zCmRd_anFs18Abd7aZN41QKuY1t3HQaAnXeEALw_wcB

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https://www.canva.com/design/DAG2hwrbEt4/FKTnrBHy4aTuJoHEQK5Qeg/edit

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