When I ask a junior what they want to study, the most common honest answer is a shrug. That’s a reasonable answer at sixteen. It’s a weak answer on an application, and a costly one in college, where changing majors late is the single most common reason a four-year degree takes five.
The goal isn’t certainty. It’s informed uncertainty — “probably engineering or economics, and here’s why” rather than a blank.
Why the quizzes don’t work
Career inventories ask students what they like and map it to job titles. They tend to confirm what the student already assumed and offer no sense of what the work is actually like day to day. A student who “likes science and helping people” gets told nursing, medicine, and physical therapy, which have almost nothing in common as daily work.
What does work: conversations
Find three adults doing three different kinds of work the student is curious about and ask each for twenty minutes. Not a job-shadow — a conversation. Four questions:
- What does a normal Tuesday look like?
- What did you study, and did it matter?
- What do people who are good at this have in common?
- What would you tell a sixteen-year-old thinking about it?
Parents’ networks, neighbors, the parents of teammates — in Bucks and Montgomery counties there are engineers, nurses, software people, accountants, tradespeople, teachers and small-business owners within a mile of almost any house. People say yes to this request far more often than students expect.
After three conversations, most students can say what they’re not interested in, which is progress, and usually one direction has gotten more interesting rather than less. That’s the direction to look into further.
Turning a direction into an application
“Undecided” on the Common App is a legitimate choice at many colleges and a bad idea at some — engineering, nursing and business are often direct-admit programs that are hard to transfer into later. Knowing the direction lets the family check how each college handles it.
It also makes the essays better. A “Why us” supplement that says “I’m interested in supply-chain work because of a conversation with a logistics manager who described solving a different puzzle every day, and your program has the only undergraduate co-op in it I’ve found” is credible in a way “I’m interested in business” never is.
What to look at by college
For each direction the student is considering, check whether the college admits directly to the program or to the university; what the four-year graduation rate is in that program; and, on the federal College Scorecard, what graduates of that program earn in their early career. Three numbers, per college, per direction. It’s an afternoon, and it changes lists.
A note for parents
The direction doesn’t have to be the one you’d pick. It has to be one the student has actually looked at. Your job is the introductions, not the conclusion.
By Jeff Thompson, Phortex Campus · March 10, 2026 · ← All posts