Research Majors by Looking at the Big Picture

As a student at Montgomery College, it’s easy to focus on the first two years of courses for a major without looking at the big picture. To choose a major carefully, you’ll need to see what the upper-level courses look like – what will you take in your junior and senior year?

Some schools offer charts which show course titles required – Salisbury University gives students a good overview of all the courses, 120 credits, required for a degree. Here is the full list of Salisbury’s Majors: www.salisbury.edu/checklists/undergrad.html These are course titles for Exercise Science at Salisbury University.

Here's another example of courses required at the junior and senior-level for Environmental Studies, at Shenandoah University, VA

Reading upper-level course descriptions gives you the full picture of what you’ll actually be studying. On any school’s website, find “Academics” or “Majors” and go to the major’s page – for example, these are the 300- and 400-level course descriptions for students who study History at UM College Park: www.history.umd.edu/Programs/majWorksheet.html

Some schools will divide information by ‘undergraduate’ (bachelor’s degrees) and ‘graduate’ – master’s and doctoral degrees available after you finish your four-year undergraduate work.

You can roughly estimate that a four-year degree consists of 40 courses (5 per semester, 10 per year) – which 40 courses will you need for YOUR degree?