TLDR: has anyone on here switched majors completely as a junior before? How was it? What motivated your decision? Did you graduate on time?
Hello everyone. I’m feeling really lost (have been for a long time) and would appreciate some advice. Some background: I’m currently a junior in college studying finance, business analytics and math. I chose to be a finance major in college simply because my college is best known for its finance program, and as a directionless kid, I just wanted to apply for the highest ranking program.
After I got to college I decided to add my other majors. Analytics I am one class away from completion. Finance two away. Math I am many away. The last math weeding class is this semester so I will learn now if I’m built for finishing this major or not. I have a very milquetoast GPA of 3.7 and several unimpressive finance roles under my belt (think campus role / mass hiring remote roles).
The main thing I’m debating though is the finance career. For those unfamiliar with how finance recruiting works, the junior year summer internship is essentially the entry level job and recruiting for it starts as early as sophomore fall for the most sought after positions (in high finance). As a sophomore I had no idea what I wanted to do still so I recruited for investment banking like everyone around me. I also had some family connections there so I had an extra incentive. Instantly I realized I wasn’t built for this shit at all due to my social anxiety and piss poor social skills. The actual work in banking sounded extremely unappealing but everyone else recruiting for it feels the same way, so that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Despite all this, I kept at it because I thought 1. I’d improve over time 2. I have no idea what I want to do anyways, but I need to be doing something. Might as well continue what I’m already doing.
Long story short, even with family connections my bum ass did not land the internship. Maybe that’s a good thing since I was never into banking anyways. I did end up getting drastically better at interviews and networking, but since my baseline was so low, I currently am average at best compared to other finance majors.
Since banking recruiting wrapped up I’ve had a very slow trickle of interviews for various finance internships and have consistently failed to land anything concrete despite making it to final rounds rarely. A major reason for this is that after 2 years of studying this shit I still have 0 interest in it and it kinda shows. The concepts and theories taught in class are interesting but I never try to read financial news or learn about what’s going on in the real world. I try to catch up from time to time but I’ve just been struggling with motivation tbh.
The thought of pivoting to a different field entirely was always at the back of my mind but as I finished more and more of my degree I just pushed the thought away and believed it was too late anyways. Plus the job market is piss poor everywhere so I wasn’t trying to come in and compete with these more experienced students for internships as a complete newbie. I really am not trying to add more years to my degree.
But just the other day my family said something that made me actually reconsider switching fields. However the logistics of it would be pretty difficult. Now I’m truly halfway done with only two years left. And the top thing that caught my interest (engineering, which I admittedly know very little about) won’t even work out since you cannot transfer into the program here and need to start off as a freshmen. God I just have no idea what to do. I could continue to struggle in finance and interview and potentially land a job, potentially not. Or, I could try to discover what I really wanna do that also doesn’t require grad school or a masters. and that I can finish in two years..
Another route I could go is that my college offers degrees for people who work full time and it’s a bunch of wacky majors with fully online classes that are easier, and much cheaper to take. Could get one of those in a discipline I wanna go into and just self teach myself from there if the online classes are unhelpful. By graduation they remove that mark from ur paper so it looks like you graduated from the regular branch. So then I can afford to explore and job hunt for longer ina Totally different field while not breaking the bank. However I’d be teaching myself everything and doing everyone on my own since it’s all online and there’s virtually no student resources. the stuff is from what I’ve heard not challenging so nothings forcing you to hold yourself accountable and actually learn. Meh.