 Everybody knows that going to college and choosing a college major can be a very stressful experience. And we've all seen the headlines. If you consult the oracle and ask how many times the average student switches their college major, it's going to say at least three. And that's one of the reasons that less than half the students who get a four-year bachelor's degree actually graduate in four years. And on top of that, about two-thirds of students regret their college education decisions. And if you're new to this channel and you don't know, I went all the way through the education process to getting a doctorate. And on top of that, I spent years studying this stuff and helping people choose their ideal college majors. And after helping hundreds of people get the most out of their college experience, in this video, I'm going to go over the seven best tips that I have come up with to help you choose the ideal college major for you. And by the way, guys, if you haven't done it already, go ahead and boop that like button and also share the video. I don't have some kind of giant marketing department behind me like a lot of these universities do spending millions of dollars a year in order to get my message out. And so really, I rely on you guys liking sharing. And of course, if you haven't done already subscribing. So thank you for that. And by the way, I am offering a limited time discount on my life's work, which is the college 101 course. And that's going to be a discount. You'll find it down in the description below. So definitely check that out because it's not going to last long. And I'm not just saying that. So my first tip for you starting at the very beginning when you're just starting to think about what college major is going to be the best for you and which one you want to pick is to sample a bunch of different subjects, right? So the reason for this is obviously you want to find out what you're passionate about what you're good at, etc. But how can you do that when you haven't actually tried them out? So of course, you can look back throughout your life at different classes you've taken and think about what you've excelled at. And that does help. But really, you want to go out and actually try different things out. And luckily for you, there are so many different resources that are completely free online right now, you're watching one of them, which is YouTube. And there's so many other resources out there that are either completely free or very cheap. On top of that, lots of the top universities in the world actually offer their courses online completely free. They'll tell you what book they're using. Sometimes they'll even give you sample problems and the tests for you to take on your own. And these are some of the smartest people in the world, world renowned professors that will record their lectures for you and basically give you everything that you would get if you went to the school, except for the credit for taking the course. So some of the best courses you can take just to sample the subjects are going to be those entry level courses. So something like Math 101. Usually these intro level courses are kind of designed to just be like a sample platter where they just go over the surface level stuff. But you get to sample a bunch of different things that have to do with that degree path. So it's really worth it, especially at these beginning stages to take your time to figure out what you're actually good at and what you enjoy doing. And it's really hard to do that when you're someone who's probably 17, 18 years old, and you don't really know what you enjoy doing. And they're asking you to make a huge decision where you're going to go, you know, $40,000 in debt most likely in order to choose a college major right off the bat. And that brings up the next point, which is you want to get to know yourself, right? This is like one of the oldest questions known to man philosophers have been asking this question for thousands of years. Who am I? Okay, I'm being a little bit overly dramatic there. But I think you get my point, you really want to take the time to figure out what you're good at and what you're passionate about. And sampling stuff online is great. But I think you should go one step further. And what you want to do is actually send text messages and emails to people that know you in real life. And you basically just want to ask them what they think you're really good at and what they think you're really bad at. You can tell them it's for a leadership class, for instance, if you think it's weird, that's totally fine. But just try to get some feedback from people. On top of that, I know this is a little controversial, but I think it's very useful to take the MBTI test. It's kind of a personality test, 16 different personalities that you can be. Now, some people say this personality test isn't very accurate, but I have actually found it to be extremely accurate not only with myself, but with different people that I've interacted with, whether I've worked with them, etc. And at the very least, it'll start you off thinking about what type of personality you have, even if it's not completely accurate, it'll at least get the ball rolling. And there's a really good website called 16 personalities.com where you can just take the test for free. It probably takes 15 minutes. And I think you will learn a lot about yourself. So the first letter is going to be E or I, that's extroverted or introverted. And I think that's pretty self explanatory, you know, extroverts like to be around other people, they feel energized being around other people, whereas introverts like their alone time, and they actually gain energy by being alone. The second two letters are either S or N. And S is basically like a very realistic type person. So somebody who, you know, if something happened in a crisis, for instance, they would be able to know exactly what to do. They're very by the book as well. Whereas N is more of a big picture type person, and they tend to be more creative. The next is either T or F. And that's basically a T is somebody who's very logical. And they also tend to think about things more objectively, pragmatically, whereas people who are S are more emotional, like they're feeling, but they tend to think about things more subjectively. So what's the best for the whole. And then the last one is either a J or a P. J's tend to be more organized and prepared. These are people who would be considered to be like OCD, you know, they want things very organized and in order all the time, whereas P's are much more spontaneous and flexible, and they actually enjoy going into kind of chaotic situations. So for instance, if you're someone who is going on a trip, you know, if you were a J, for instance, you would probably plan every single hour out. Whereas if you were a P, you kind of just want to go on the trip and enjoy it as you go. Now there are some other things, but these are just a few things you can do to kind of just get to know yourself and figure out what your strengths and your weaknesses are. And in my opinion, it's very important that what you choose to do as a career is something that you are good at, right? So it's one of your strengths. You don't want to make a fish try to climb a tree. Fish are very good at swimming, but they're not very good at climbing. So you definitely want to double triple quadruple down on your strengths and then just try to minimize your weaknesses. The next one on the list is going to be choosing a major based off of your career. So this is basically beginning with the end in mind. A lot of people just choose their major purely because, oh, I think, you know, psychology is super interesting, but they don't actually think about what career they're going to go into with their psychology degree. And I'm using psychology as an example because it's so popular, but you can see this with all different types of degrees. So unless you're either like a rich kid, a trust fund baby, who is never going to have to get a job because you know you're going to get money from your parents, or if you're someone who truly does not care about making money, you're like a minimalist and you can live off of, you know, $20,000 a year like a king, then you want to make sure that you are getting into a career that's going to pay for your lifestyle. And so many people get degrees thinking, for instance, they can just get a bachelor's degree and go into a certain career when in reality they have to get maybe sometimes minimum a master's or even a doctorate just to be able to get an entry level job. Other people get degrees trying to get into a career when they actually don't need to get that degree in order to get into their career. And so they basically wasted their time. Another common mistake you'll see is people will get a degree that doesn't really have all that many career prospects unless you're doing something very specific. And all of this can be avoided if you simply begin with the end in mind. Figure out what career you want to do and then work your way backwards, reverse engineer it and figure out what steps you need to take in order to get to that career. A lot of the time you'll be extremely surprised to find that maybe you don't even need to get that major. Maybe there's a fast track process, for instance, for you to get to that career. And it also has so many other bonuses. I mean, I could make an entire video just off of this one concept alone. For instance, there's a lot of careers where you don't really need to get amazing grades in order to get into them. That's amazing. And so, you know, if you find that out, you know that it doesn't really matter the grades you get. A lot of the time what it matters is your work experience. But there are some careers where you do have to get good grades because you have to go to graduate school or something along those lines. And you're not really going to know until you do the research and you figure this out. And then you reverse engineer what you need to do in order to get there. And this brings me to my next point, which is you need to have a plan, even if it's a bad plan. If you don't have a plan, you're basically just going to be like a leaf that's just floating in the wind. Just whatever way the wind blows you, you're going to blow that way. Or if the wind blows this way, you're going to blow that way. You're not going to have any control over your life if you don't have a plan. And so if you have a bad plan, what you can do is you can look back on your plan and figure out what made it bad. Maybe it was that you are not passionate enough about this field you're going into. Or maybe it is that, you know, it doesn't make as much money as you want it to make. Or maybe the job prospects are really bad. And when you actually talk to people in that field, they're not very happy with it. Or maybe the field just isn't anything like what you imagined it to be. The whole point here is that you made a plan and you figured out what didn't work with that plan. And that allows you to make a better plan in the future. Whereas if you didn't have a plan at all, you wouldn't be able to go back and figure out what made it bad so that you can improve it. So it's very important to have a plan, even if it's a bad one, and you end up changing it. And the next part I'm going to talk about is after you've kind of gotten an idea of what general careers and degrees you're interested in, maybe you've whittled down the list to about 10 or so by doing research on the internet and figuring out what you're good at, what you're passionate about, etc. Then what you want to do once you've gotten the list down a little bit is start contacting people in these professions. Now this is something that does take some time to do. And that's why you kind of want to make sure that you don't have a list of hundreds of different careers at this point because they just take too long. So start contacting people who are in these careers. You can do this by reaching out to them on LinkedIn. You can do this by reaching out through your network. Facebook groups are great. Sometimes you'll find different groups of professions and subreddits. But the big thing here is you want to talk to people who are actually doing the career, not writers online or anything like that that are writing about what careers are hot or anything like that. Talk to the people who are in the trenches and actually doing the career right now. Or if you can't get ahold of them, then talk to the people who might be hiring them like hiring managers or recruiters or business owners. And then ask them what they think of the career. What are the job prospects like? What is the job satisfaction? And you can also ask them questions like, hey, do I need to get really good grades in school? Do I need to join a bunch of clubs and organizations? Or, you know, does work experience matter? Is that the only thing that matters? Do I need to focus on skills and how to demonstrate those skills? What is some good advice that you can give me as someone who just graduated from college? And you want to make sure that you get several different opinions because you might run into someone who's very positive or you might run into somebody who's very negative. So you want to make sure to get a balanced opinion on this. You'll be surprised. Most people are more than happy to answer questions like this because they wish that they had somebody to ask those questions to when they were younger. And then the next thing is just a general piece of advice. But I'd say this is extremely important. And that is, don't go all in on the money. You know, I get this question all the time, you know, people will watch my videos, they find a few careers that are really good, like they make really good money. And then they ask me, oh, which one should I choose? And I just, the only question I ask them is, which one are you more interested in? Which one are you more passionate about? And you always want to go with that one because after a certain point, the money does not matter. And I've gone over this in other videos, but you know, studies have shown that you are not going to be any happier after about $75,000 a year. Now, some of the different studies are going to be different if you're living in San Francisco or somewhere else, but it's around $75,000, $80,000 a year, you're not going to be any happier. So you do want to make sure that you can go into a career that's going to get you to that $75,000 a year level. But after that, you just want to make sure that it makes you happy, something that you are passionate about because you're going to be doing this for a long time. And that brings me to my next point, which is just as important, which is don't go all in on passion either. You know, I'm passionate about playing video games. That doesn't mean that I would go to college and get a video game degree. That's absolutely ridiculous because there's almost no jobs out there for people who play video games unless you're like a world-class, you know, Fortnite player. And for me, if I tried to become a world-class Fortnite player or Call of Duty player, it would probably ruin the game to me. I play video games for fun. It is a leisure activity. It's a hobby to me. And sometimes if you try to make a hobby into something that is your career, it's almost like waking up to your favorite song. If you set your favorite song as your alarm clock every single morning to wake up to, it would probably ruin the song for you, right? So if something is a passion of yours, if it's a hobby of yours, but you know that you can't make money from it, then don't go $40,000 in debt in order to get a degree. Go for something that you're passionate about, but you can also make money from it. And then keep all of your other passions as a hobby. Before you leave, check out these other videos right here. I made them just for you. And if you haven't done it already, go ahead, hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video. And I will see you next time.