How the quiz works
6 multiple-choice questions, each with 4–5 options. Your answers get weighted across 10 major clusters: CS, Engineering, Business, Nursing, Psychology, English/Humanities, Biology, Economics, Education, Art/Design. The top 5 are ranked and shown with median salary data, job growth projections, and a reality-check blurb.
Major quizzes aren’t destiny — but they’re a useful starting point. 6 questions identify your strongest 3–5 candidates, and elimination gets easier from there.
Salary medians — 2025 data
Some concrete numbers from BLS + Glassdoor + Georgetown CEW 2024:
- Computer Science: starting $85K, mid-career $146K, +22% job growth.
- Engineering: starting $78K, mid-career $125K, +6% growth.
- Business/Finance: starting $62K, mid-career $110K — huge spread (IB analysts at $175K total comp vs accounting at $62K).
- Nursing (BSN): starting $82K, near-recession-proof. NP and CRNA specialties $120K–$220K.
- Psychology: bachelor’s-only starting $44K. Grad school almost required to unlock clinical rates.
- English/Humanities: starting $42K. Versatile if paired with a hard skill (law, tech writing, marketing).
- Biology: starting $45K. The pre-med/PA/dental pipeline — bachelor’s-only earns low.
- Economics: starting $65K, mid-career $115K. Highest-earning humanities-adjacent major.
- Education: starting $46K, mid-career $65K. Meaningful but capped.
- Art/Design: starting $42K. UX/product design roles pay $110K+; fine arts earn less.
Is STEM really worth 2x?
BLS 2024: STEM bachelor’s median is $97K vs $65K for non-STEM. The premium widens by age 35 to ~55%. But STEM has higher dropout rates (27% switch out of engineering in the first two years, per AAES data) and higher weekly workload (STEM students report 22 hrs/week studying vs 14 hrs for humanities). Pick STEM only if the work genuinely interests you.
What if you score evenly across majors?
Your interests are broad, not lost. Broad-interest students thrive in interdisciplinary majors (Cognitive Science at UC schools, CS + Econ at Penn, Public Policy) or use a “major + minor + certificate” stack. Stanford’s most common major combination is CS + a humanities minor — it outperforms pure CS on starting salary in consulting and product roles.
Changing majors is normal
Roughly 30% of students change their major at least once. 10% change 3+ times. Change by end of sophomore year (4th semester) to stay on 4-year graduation. After that, you’ll likely need a summer term. The penalty for changing is real but bounded — don’t stay in a major that you hate for fear of sunk cost.
Beyond the quiz — next steps
- Shadow someone in the job. 2 hours of shadowing a practicing nurse, engineer, or software dev will teach you more than 10 hours of quiz results.
- Take 1–2 intro courses in your top 2 majors. Freshman year is the window. Most intro courses count as gen-ed.
- Read 3 job postings. Junior-level job postings for your top majors reveal what the work actually is. “Psychology major” jobs are a spread from insurance adjusters ($45K) to VA clinical psych PhDs ($95K) — the tail matters.
- Talk to a senior. Seniors in each major know what the upper-division classes are actually like. They’ll tell you the bad classes, the professors to avoid, and the hidden electives.
Related tools
For income-specific comparison, see major salary compare. For 10-year ROI of the whole degree, see college ROI. For STEM-specific premium math, see STEM vs liberal arts.