No regrets: How to choose the right subject to study at university
Nine out of 10 graduates would choose to do an undergraduate degree again if they could, with just one in 10 saying they would choose not to go to university if they had their time again.
Around half of the graduates say they’d choose the same subject.
But… four in 10 say they’d prefer to study a different subject.
This is according to recent research by the Policy Institute at King’s College London.
That’s 40% of graduates who wish they’d studied something else, and 10% of graduates who wish they hadn’t gone to university at all!
Now, I don’t want to be a scaremonger about this, and throw you all into doubt about your choices - after all, nearly 90% of graduates felt their time at university was worthwhile enough that they’d do it all over again.
But these figures are concerning enough to suggest that either there is a mismatch between what many students are expecting from their degree and what they are getting, OR students are not making fully informed decisions about their choice of course.
Now, choosing a university is not like buying a bar of chocolate. With chocolate, you generally know exactly what you are getting, because you’ve tried it before. Or, you’ve had something similar, and can make a very good guess about what the new version will taste like.
Chocolate, you see, is one of the most tangible products available. You can see it, touch it, taste it, and very quickly you know what it feels like to eat it! We all know what value we get out of chocolate, and we all know which is our favourite.
A university course, on the other hand, is pretty much the ultimate intangible service. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, and you can’t ever know what it feels like to take the course, until you actually take it.
Even more frustratingly, despite all the research done on graduate salaries, you will never actually know what specific value the course provided for you over your lifetime. Half-way through your career you’ll probably still be wondering whether you’d have got where you are without your degree.
So, how do you go about choosing the right subject to take so that you don’t end up as one of the four in 10 who wish they’d studied something else, or worse still, one of the one in 10 who wish they hadn’t gone to university at all?
Well, I have three ideas for you that I hope might help:
1. Just do it!
This idea comes not from the American sports brand with the swoosh logo, but from Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.
“Want to be a musician?” he says “Then just play!”.
And by extension, whatever you are thinking of studying, just try doing it, now.
Say you are thinking of studying Law, but haven’t studied it before. Don’t just read the university websites and look at the course outlines. Get down to your library, pick up a legal textbook and actually study it. Do you find it interesting? Do you want to read more? If the answers are yes, great. If not, then you’ve just learnt something really important; Law is not for you!
And it’s not just books! You’ll find a whole load of online and in-person subject tasters on Springpod and UniTasterDays. These will give you real insight into what it's like to study a whole range of different subjects at university.
These sorts of activities are generally known as super-curricular activities, and you can read all about them here:
2. Check out what potential careers there are for your subject
The Prospects website has a fantastic resource available called What can I do with my degree?
You can look up almost any subject and see the sorts of jobs the subject can prepare you for, the sorts of skills that studying that subject will give you, and what type of work graduates of that subject actually do after graduation.
Now… reports, statistics and data do not tell you what your future will hold. Your interests, your priorities and the choices you make will determine whether you go on and follow what others have done, or whether you forge a completely different path.
However, by looking at this type of information, you can go into your studies with your eyes wide open, and with a realistic idea of what might be possible for you after you graduate.
Those who go to university with realistic expectations, and their eyes wide open are far less likely to have regrets than those who don’t.
3. Ikigai
Ikigai is the Japanese for “life’s value”, or “life’s worth”, and if you have found your ikigai, it means that you’ve found your purpose in life. In the west we aren’t particularly good at articulating these sorts of things, but in 2014 a fella called Marc Winn took a standard careers venn diagram and stuck the word Ikigai in the middle of it.
It looks something like this:
If you currently have an idea of the type of career you’d like to pursue, and are choosing a specific subject to study at university in order to get into that career, this diagram is a great way of checking whether you are making a good choice.
Is the subject something you love doing and learning about?
Is it something that you are good at?
Could it lead to something that you can be paid for?
And is it something that the world actually needs?
If the answer to each of these questions is ‘yes’ then you could be on to a good thing.
For more about this, have a look at:
Of course, once you have an idea of what subject you want to study, there is a whole lot more that you can do to make sure you find the right course and university for you:
Check the course details for things like assessment methods, work placements and study abroad options
Go to Open Days
Chat to students using platforms like Unibuddy
Check student reviews on Uni Compare, Whatuni etc.
All of these things can help you find the subject and the specific course that is right for you, and help minimise the chance of you regretting your choices a few years down the line!
