Picking Your Major

Picking your major can be a stressful part of becoming an engineer, especially if you don’t know what you want to do yet.  Luckily when you come to Penn State, you do not need to know which engineering discipline you want to major in right away; around winter break of your sophomore year is when you need to decide.  This gives you plenty of time to sample all the majors that might be of interest to you.

A class that everyone at Penn State is required to take is a first year seminar.  You can take this class in anything, but I suggest taking it on an engineering major to get an idea of the major you are considering.  There is also a general seminar that covers all engineering disciplines.  I came to Penn State thinking I wanted to be a civil engineer, so I took my first year seminar in civil engineering to learn more about the major.  I found this very helpful in choosing my major because I realized that civil engineering was not for me.  This may sound discouraging, but it assured me that another major would be a better fit for me.

One of the best resources that the engineering college has to offer freshman and sophomore students is an event called Major Nights.  The college hosts these nights in the beginning of the fall semester and each night focuses on a different major.  This way you have a chance to explore every option of engineering.  At Major Nights, professors, faculty, upperclassmen, and graduate students are there to talk about the major and answer any questions you may have.  They were very helpful and informative.  I got to ask current students what they wanted to do once they graduated.  This helped me to see what I wanted to do and if I liked the major or not.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t know what you want to do just yet; you have plenty of time.  I’ve considered almost every major because they all interested me at some point in my college career.  I went from civil to mechanical to nuclear to biological to biomedical, back to mechanical and then finally decided on biomedical and mechanical.  So don’t worry about not knowing what you want to do or what major you should pick.  My best advice I can give about choosing your major is to talk to as many people as you can about their major; why they chose it, what they want to do with it, why they like it and dislike it, etc.  Even talk to people in majors you hadn’t considered.  I actually hadn’t considered biomedical until I talked to some of the upperclassmen in that major because it sounded interesting; now it’s one of my majors! You never know what might interest you.

Corinne Dally is a junior majoring in Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, and is a Mentor for WEPO'15!