MyMajors didn’t pick the major(s) I am thinking about. Should I forget them?

Not necessarily. As is also true of human advisors, MyMajors is not a perfect predictor of your ability to succeed in any field. It offers its best estimate, to a large degree, of your likelihood of success and enjoyment of a major. If you are convinced you know what your major should be, do that. Don’t rely solely on MyMajors. While you may not agree with the recommendations, this may be because:

• Your goals, in fact, may be based on the wrong perception of what it takes to succeed in that field. You may not realize that, for instance, a nurse at the undergraduate level takes most of the same science and mathematics courses that a Pre-Medicine student would take and you may not have done well in those courses in high school. Your grade point average, your standardized test scores or other input you gave may make it unlikely that you can succeed. Follow up with your advisor or counselor to see if they agree.
• You are seeking a major that MyMajors does not consider. There are literally hundreds of majors that are offered somewhere. Many of these are a sub-field of a major that MyMajors does consider while others are simply unique to one college or university.
• Some people expect (or hope) to see graduate majors that MyMajors does not evaluate you for. For example, it would never recommend nuclear physics, counseling, or clinical psychology, because these are advanced degrees that you would enroll in once you have completed your bachelor’s degree.
• Some people expect (or hope) to see graduate majors that MyMajors does not evaluate you for. For example, it would never recommend nuclear physics, counseling, or clinical psychology, because these are advanced degrees that you would enroll in once you have completed your bachelor’s degree.
• Occasionally, students expect to have a career recommended. MyMajors does not recommend for careers (e.g., cosmetologist or welder), but for majors found at universities and colleges that are at least four years in duration. It not only does not recommend for careers, but it does not recommend for careers or vocational courses of study that are typically found in career colleges, in two year colleges, or in technical schools. These are perfectly fine choices for students to make, but MyMajors is not designed to assess your ability to succeed in them.
• Some students wonder why a career they are thinking about may not be recommended even though you need a four-year degree to enter it. Again, MyMajors does not recommend for careers of this nature (e.g., profiler, governor)
• MyMajors cannot know everything about you. It does not know if you are an Eagle Scout with merit badges in twenty topics, that you won first prize with the steer that you raised, or that you devour science fiction books and have written a published story. All of these, and many more, characteristics also contribute to your selection of a major. There are just too many possibilities here for a program like this to consider.
• Is it MyMajors or you? MyMajors can recommend its best guess about a major to consider. It cannot motivate you to get excited about majors if you aren’t excited about some of these already.

There may not be a single reason why MyMajors did not recommend a particular major. It accumulates over a hundred pieces of information from you and tries to evaluate this input in a manner similar to that of a well-education counselor. All of these factors and the weightings you gave in expressing your values and enjoyment of these factors, affect the eventual recommendations, but to varying degrees.