Choosing Your Major Without Regret

A Federal Reserve survey of more than 11,000 US graduates (2023) found that one in three would choose a different field of study. Among social science graduates, that share reaches 44 per cent. This is not a personal failure — it is what happens when you forecast from an image of a profession instead of its actual day-to-day content.

People choose a major by its image. "Journalist," "lawyer," "biologist" — these are picture-words. Behind each one sits hundreds of hours of specific tasks that one person finds gripping and another finds numbingly dull. Most of us have never watched a professional in that field work through an ordinary Tuesday. Choosing from an image means forecasting enjoyment from something you have never seen from the inside. That forecast goes wrong — and it goes wrong in a predictable direction.

Where one in three comes from

The Federal Reserve's annual report "Economic Well-Being of US Households" (2023 edition, over 11,000 graduates) found that 35% of respondents wished they had chosen a different area of study. The breakdown by field is instructive: social and behavioral sciences rank highest, with 44% of graduates expressing regret; humanities follow at 43%. Medicine and dentistry sit at the other end — only 16% of those graduates say they would choose differently. That is the lowest figure across all 25 degree categories in the survey.

Why do medical graduates regret their choice so rarely? Their professional world is unusually visible before enrollment: a long pipeline of clinical exposure, early specialization, concrete requirements. Students know what awaits them long before graduation. Broad humanities programs scatter graduates across the labor market, which widens the gap between expectation and reality. The key question, then, is not only what to study — it is how to verify a field before committing to it.

Why the forecast goes wrong — systematically

Timothy Wilson (University of Virginia) and Daniel Gilbert (Harvard) spent years running studies on affective forecasting — how people predict their future emotional states. Their 2005 review in Current Directions in Psychological Science summed up the pattern: people systematically overestimate both the intensity and the duration of their future emotions. Wilson and Gilbert called this the impact bias.

When you choose a field by its image, you are forecasting from the professional highlights. The actual job is 80% routine between those peaks.

In a career-choice context, the mechanism works like this. When you picture yourself in a profession, you lock onto the vivid moments — the interesting case, the breakthrough, the moment of recognition. Wilson and Gilbert call this focalism: we underestimate how much our future feelings will be shaped not by peaks but by the ordinary texture of each day.

In 2022, Liu and colleagues published a study in Frontiers in Psychology that tested this effect directly in a career context. Among participants with low occupational engagement — those with little inside knowledge of the profession — forecasting error was significantly higher: they predicted their interest in the work far less accurately than participants who were familiar with the field from within. Those with higher engagement predicted accurately. The practical implication is direct: major regret is largely a problem of insufficient first-hand exposure, not an inherently difficult decision.

What to check before you enroll

An informational interview is the most accessible verification tool. It is a 20-to-30-minute conversation with someone working in the field you are considering. The key question is not "how did you get into this?" but "walk me through yesterday — what were you doing from nine to six?" That question surfaces the routine that open days do not show and course descriptions do not mention.

A job shadow goes further: a few hours with a practitioner as an observer, not a listener. Several hours of direct observation tell you more than any description can — whether the pace, the interactions, and the types of tasks match how you want to spend your working day.

The third check is about task type, not job title. A single word like "marketer" covers a data analyst, a copywriter, an advertising platform manager, and a product strategist — different cognitive modes, different daily experiences. This is why a RIASEC-based career assessment does not ask "do you want to be a marketer?" It asks: do you like working with numbers? Persuading? Creating? Then it maps those answers to what the job actually requires.

What if you have already enrolled

If enrollment has already happened, the Federal Reserve data offer unexpected nuance: most regretful graduates would not give up higher education altogether. They regret a specific program, not the degree itself. The signal is often not "everything is wrong" but "I am heading in the wrong direction within the field."

Before making any drastic move, identify where the mismatch actually is. A career assessment will show you how your interest profile lines up with different types of work — including roles within your current field. Often a change of track or a different entry point into the same area is all that is needed.

Sources

1. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2024). Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023. Federal Reserve. federalreserve.gov
2. Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131–135. doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x
3. Liu Q. et al. (2022). Surprisingness and Occupational Engagement Influence Affective Forecasting in Career-Relevant Contexts. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 838765. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.838765
4. OECD (2025). PISA 2022 Report on Career Expectations. OECD Publishing.

This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute professional advice. Assessment results are based on the RIASEC model and are not a diagnosis or guarantee.