The Major Choices initiative, launched in 2004, highlights certain lesser-known departments and encourages students to follow their academic passions. One of the key messages to students is that there need not be a tradeoff between studying what you love and securing post-graduate opportunities. The booklet is filled with the stories of alumni who are now pursuing interesting and rewarding careers unrelated to their major, and quotes from graduate school admissions officers and recruiters testifying that their selection processes consider students from all majors.
Major Choices can be misleading. Too often, the Major Choices booklet uses carefully chosen anecdotes as evidence that post-graduation opportunities are equal regardless of a student's major. The booklet, however, provides students with no information on which to judge whether the outcomes in these stories are common ones or exceptions. Also unclear is whether a recruiter's statement that students from all majors will be considered for a position means that students will be considered equally without regard to major.
Students would be better served by Major Choices if it provided additional information. Princeton has excellent academic departments that are both small and large, and some students undoubtedly enter careers unrelated to their major after graduation. But Major Choices does not provide students with a detailed analysis of what students from each major have done after graduation and what their success rates have been in securing post-graduate opportunities. Students would benefit from seeing the correlation between the programs, courses and activities in which students took part and the fields they entered upon graduation.
The Major Choices booklet also has relatively few stories from young alumni with whom current students may be able to better relate. Students' majors influence the jobs they hold right after graduation more than it influences their second or third jobs. Showing that alumni have careers in fields unrelated to their majors is not as convincing as examples of what young alumni are doing. Such information is a better indication of what students can expect when they first enter the job market, something that is very much on their minds.
Encouraging students to explore the academic path less taken is important. But it is also important that students know what opportunities are likely to await them when they graduate so that they can best prepare themselves to follow their passions.
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