First year neuroscience student Olivia Cappetta has switched her major many times: beginning undeclared, then going through hospitality management, finance, business management and most recently landing on neuroscience pre-med. Cappetta said she found value in going through so many changes.
“The way that I feel with all of the major changes that I’ve had, it was kind of like trying something on,” Cappetta said.
According to the Student Research Group, around 80% of undergraduates change their major at least once, but only 10% change it multiple times. However, Cappetta is more familiar with the process than most.
After her experiences with different majors and doing volunteer work in the medical field over the summer, Cappetta landed on neuroscience pre-med. Even though she hasn't been with the major for long, Cappetta feels confident she's made the right choice.
Fourth-year environmental science student Emma Batson knew she wanted to change her major at the end of her first year at USC. After a year as a pre-pharmacy student, Batson found herself struggling academically and finding interest in her studies.
"It wasn’t what I wanted to do, and I just kind of lost all motivation," Batson said. "So I just hit a point where I realized I really had to change.”
Batson knew from the start that pre-pharmacy wasn’t where her passions lied but still went with it due to external pressures from advisors and family, she said. From that pressure, she felt she needed to go into the medical field.
“I thought, 'Well, I really just need to become a doctor or I’m going to be wasting my life,'” Batson said.
After realizing she needed a change, Batson found herself unsure of where to go next, she said. All she knew was she wanted something related to biology, but that wasn't narrowed down enough, as USC has countless fields of study that Batson's interest could fall under.
"I didn't even know that environmental science and environmental studies were even two different majors," Batson said.
Thankfully, talking to an advisor and reflecting on her interests helped narrow her search down further.
"Just having somebody walk me through it and be like, 'Hey, okay, these are actually two different things'... and then helping me figure out which one would be best for me, my major advisor was really helpful with that."
“I’ve always had a really intense connection with nature. I love the outdoors. I love everything biology-related," Batson said. "So I knew that’s what I really wanted to do. I was just scared to make that jump.”
She eventually decided to go with environmental science after conferring with her advisor since it related so much to her passions.
After making the change, Batson had to take a heavy course load to catch up after taking a number of major-specific classes her freshman year, she said.
“I had a lot of classes to catch up on, so there were a few semesters where I had to take around 21 credit hours to make up for it and graduate on time,” Batson said.
The major requirements for pre-pharmacy and environmental science didn't have much overlapp. Often, students' coming in to USC with a lot of college credits from high school are able to skip many of the Carolina Core classes often taken in the first year.
"The math requirements for pharmacy and environmental science were pretty different, so I had taken a bunch of math I didn't need, and then I had to go back and redo it," Batson said.
“It was definitely worth it," Batson said. "I was nervous about that at first, but it turned out to be all right."
While Batson felt pressured into a major she knew wasn't quite right for her, sometimes students realize their major isn't a good fit later on and decide to make the change.
This was the case for second-year student Gracelyn Hilton, who switched to public health from exercise science this semester after having been biology her first year.
“Exercise science wasn’t what I was thinking it was," Hilton said. "I thought it was more sports-med focused, and I am really interested in sports medicine. But it’s a lot more anatomy and physiology."
She had also already taken a number of classes that were required for exercise science, and she wanted to avoid simply repeating those courses.
After deciding to switch to public health, Hilton found herself much more comfortable in her new major.
“I think (public health) is a little more of what I wanted exercise science to be, and I think it’s really interesting, and the professors are great,” Hilton said.
While going through each of her majors, Cappetta wanted to make sure she was proud of whichever one she landed on, being such a quintessential piece of every college student’s identity and the ubiquitous conversation starter that it is.
“When people ask me, ‘Oh, what’s your name, what’s your major?’ and I have to tell them something, I want to be proud of it,” Cappetta said.