If you don’t know what to major in when you start college, don’t select an “undecided” or “exploratory” major. Do this instead.

Sometime in the next month, the members of the high school graduating class of 2022 who have chosen to attend four-year colleges will select their colleges – and that will seem like the climax to which their high school years have been building. But of course it will only be the beginning of their college experiences.

Shortly after that, students will have to choose their majors. That choice will not be final. Many students change their majors during their college years. But making a careful choice of initial major can make it more likely that the student will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in four years, as most students and parents prefer.

Some students are certain they know which major is best for them even before they arrive on a college campus. If your student is in this category, you can stop reading right now. This post is not for you.

But a student who is considering a variety of majors that are quite different from each other might be tempted to choose “undeclared” or “exploratory”. The first point I’d like you to remember from this blog post is this: Never EVER choose “undeclared” or “exploratory” under any circumstances!

But what if you can’t choose between, say, physics or business or economics? What then?

There is a hierarchy of majors, and that hierarchy tells you which major to start with if you are facing a choice like that. Some majors, like physics and engineering, are what I call “vertical”. That is, beyond the foundational math and science courses all the courses have prerequisites. For example, at FSU the first course that only physics majors take is called “Physics Problem Solving”. It is taken in the fall semester of a physics major’s second year. Physics Problem Solving has two prerequisites – the two-semester calculus-based physics sequence (called here General Physics A and B) taken not only by physics majors but also by students majoring in engineering, chemistry, computer science, meteorology and several other math-intensive majors. Physics Problem Solving also lists three co-requisites (courses that can be taken at the same time or before Physics Problem Solving) – Modern Physics, Calculus 3 and Ordinary Differential Equations. The prerequisite for Modern Physics is General Physics B. Of course, the prerequisite for Calculus 3 is Calculus 2 (and the prerequisite for Calculus 2 is Calculus 1). And…the prerequisite for Ordinary Differential Equations is Calculus 2.

It’s also worth noting that the prerequisite for General Physics A is Calculus 1. So if a student arrives on campus without a Calculus 1 credit from high school, that student has to take classes during the summer after her or his first year of college to keep from falling a year behind.

The undergraduate program in physics builds on Physics Problem Solving. The courses all build on each other, and there is no way to shorten the program from four years. A student who starts in an exploratory major and switches to physics cannot complete the bachelor’s degree in four years.

But that’s just physics, right? Nope. Engineering is worse. In general, while it takes 120 credit hours to complete a typical bachelor’s degree program (and the FSU Physics degree can be completed in 120 credit hours), it takes 128 credit hours to complete a bachelor’s degree in engineering. It is common to take five years to complete an engineering degree.

In contrast, degrees in business and the social sciences are structured very differently – they are not vertical at all. Students in these disciplines usually spend their first two college years completing their general education requirements, and only after that work is completed do they start the courses in their majors. There aren’t so many prerequisites for courses in these majors, and the major requirements can be completed relatively quickly.

A physics major who decides after her or his second year that she or he would rather major in (say) political science or economics can make that transition almost seamlessly and still graduate in four years. However, an economics major who decides during the second year to try to attempt a major in physics instead is very likely going to be in college for six years – two that the student had already spent and an additional four years doing the physics program from scratch. Even at that, it is unlikely the student switching from economics to physics will be successful since the mathematical demands of the physics program are much greater than those in economics.

So a student who is wondering whether to major in physics (or engineering, which is quite similar), business or social sciences should declare a major in physics (or engineering) to start with. It’s relatively easy to get out of physics and succeed in business or social sciences, but it’s nearly impossible to do the opposite.

The rule of thumb is not to choose an “undeclared” or “exploratory” major. Instead, the student should choose the most vertical major she or he is considering. If the student is considering a science or engineering major among other options, then that is likely the most vertical major and the one the student should declare.

A decade or so ago, an undergraduate physics major I knew decided that the Ph.D. program in physics that she had dreamed about wasn’t in the cards, and she decided in the middle of her third year to add a second major in political science. She sailed through the courses for political science majors with A’s and went on to earn a graduate degree in science policy at Georgia Tech.

My son was majoring in physics at a liberal arts college in the Midwest when he decided at the end of his second year to add a second major in economics. The courses that most terrorized economics majors at this college were relatively math-intensive – finance and econometrics. Econometrics is well-known to be the bane of economics majors at many colleges and universities. But my son found that finance and econometrics were much, much easier than the physics major courses in electricity and magnetism and modern physics that he had survived. With his double major in physics and economics, he went on to a top 25 law school and is now working as a litigator and using his mathematical and scientific skills regularly.

All of this was best summarized by a staff member I know who regularly advises students. He said, “I tell this to every exploratory student I have a meeting with. There is nothing they can do as an exploratory student that they can’t do in pursuit of a major. And if nothing else, pursuing a major can help you rule it out quickly if you don’t like it! It [the exploratory major] is a waste of their time and limits their possibilities for taking on a time-intensive degree.”

Amen.