Many employers are starting to reach out to students as early as high school. Others like NASA have educational programs in place for kindergarteners on up. This got me wondering when do students make decisions about majors and careers. And what inspires them? To address these questions and many more, I fielded a survey, received over 1100 responses from college students and grads, and this is what I learned.

• 54% decided their major in college
• 46% decided in high school or earlier

Of the 54% who decided their major in college, 68% proceeded to change their major. Of the 46% who decided their major in high school or earlier, only 19% went on to change majors. That’s pretty amazing, that means ~37% of all respondents knew what they wanted to major in before college and stuck to it.

Even more incredible, for those employers who are worrying about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), 61% of respondents in the engineering, sciences and technology career paths, decided their major in high school or earlier, and 89% of them stayed with the same major.

Those are pretty compelling facts to cultivate talent as early as you can - for some employers, reaching freshmen may be sufficient; for others, you may need a high (or even middle) school strategy as well. Clearly, waiting for senior year is too late!

(stay tuned, the next post will cover key influences on majors and careers)

Tags: career paths, influences, Major, STEM

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 10:42 am and is filed under Experience Surveys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.