Undecided? No Problem

The Advantage of Being an Undecided Major

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Choosing a major for a college career can be difficult, especially when you have many skills and interests.

  • You might be a strong musician
  • You may also have a knack for physics
  • You could have a penchant for programming
  • A love for literature and the humanities
  • You could have a mind to pursue a business degree

Goshen College focuses on international, intercultural, interdisciplinary, and integrative teaching and learning that offers every student a life-orienting story. You might feel a lot of pressure to decide your major right now, but your studies at Goshen are not just about building depth in a particular field, they are also about exploring their academic passions.

  • Chemists that know how to write strong essays
  • Programmers that know how to start their own businesses
  • Artists that have learned how to promote themselves and their work

Being undecided now need not be a challenge for the future. Being undecided can be an advantage.

Goshen College: At the Service of Undecided Students

At Goshen College, there are loads of resources available for undecided students and we have some of the highlights listed below.

  • Explore career and educational opportunities with Career Services.
  • View and read more about Goshen College’s variety of majors, minors, and concentrations.
  • Remember that one-on-one conversations (with multiple people, such as your academic advisor, other professors, senior students, and the director of our Career Services Office) and personal career counseling are available to all students.
  • You will acquire a variety of skills and discover what you love through our CORE curriculum classes, designed for first-year students with an undeclared major.
  • Go to the on-campus academic major-minor fair in October and interview one-on-one with a professor afterwards to discuss academic and career options.

Discover Your College Major – Lots to Learn, More to Explore

Still skeptical? Say hello to Dan Vader

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Hello. Daniel Vader here. When I started my first semester at Goshen, I was an undecided student. I was good at a lot of things and bad at a few, but I had no idea what I wanted to study. At first, I thought I might major in physics or maybe start working towards an engineering degree, but then I rediscovered my love for writing and literature while taking a class with one of Goshen’s many amazing professors. Eventually, I decided to declare a major in English and minor in computer science.

You might be scratching your head right now. English and computer science seem like an unlikely combo, don’t they? But since graduation, I have had more opportunities and been to more interesting places than I ever could have imagined in my first year of college. I have been to Peru, Ethiopia, and Burkina Faso; I have taught English as a foreign language in Chad, and I have worked as a freelance web developer. Then Goshen College hired me as their web content strategist and manager, using both my editorial skills, critical-thinking skills, and my programming knowledge to aid digital communication.

But the journey of this undecided student is not over with my intended major. In order to pursue my passion for health-related social justice, I am now working on my Master of Public Health in Epidemiology at Drexel University.

My point is that you can be undecided in college, combine your interests, have a successful career, and love your work. If you are starting your first semester at Goshen College and are “undecided,” I would wish you luck, but I doubt you will need it.