Skills / Choose a major with data
Choose a major with data
Compare the majors the person is considering with real numbers. Earnings, requirements, and the actual coursework, weighed against their honest interests. Use when they say "what should I major in", "is X a useless degree", or they are torn between majors.
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Watch the first two minutes
This is how a session goes when everyone else already has an opinion. Click through it.
Scripted example of a real session.
Everyone has an opinion about my major
Parents, friends, and viral articles all argue from vibes and one anecdote. This skill's rule is that every statistic on the sheet comes from a source opened during the session: Scorecard field-of-study data, the BLS handbook, a college's own outcomes page, a real catalog's degree requirements. Your interests go on the sheet with the same seriousness, because which classes you lose track of time in is evidence too. What the skill refuses to do is decide for you.
What you end up with
A comparison sheet the whole argument can stand on. Here is one for two of three candidates, built against a fictional college's catalog.
- Outcomes carry the spread, and what the major feeds. A single median hides both. When a major leads to many occupations, the sheet says so instead of pretending one salary number describes it.
- Upper-division titles are the test. The skill pulls the real sequence from a real catalog and reads the junior and senior titles with you, because that is where "I like the idea of this" gets confirmed or dies.
- Reactions are data. They go on the sheet in the student's words, including which reasons belong to other people, named as such.
- Close calls get an escape plan. If two majors stay close, the sheet records how long the decision can wait and which shared freshman courses keep both doors open.
Questions people actually ask
Will it write my essay or my career-class assignment about this?
No. Graded work stays yours, whatever the class. What the skill hands you is the evidence: a sheet of verified numbers, real course sequences, and your own recorded reactions, which is most of what such an assignment needs. If you draft it, the skill can annotate your draft.
Will it just tell me what to major in?
No, deliberately. It lays the evidence flat and names what it shows, and the choice is yours, because the skill's own rule says a major picked by someone else gets abandoned sophomore year.
Where do the numbers come from?
Sources opened during the session: College Scorecard's field-of-study data, the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, a college's own outcomes page, and the actual degree-requirements pages of real catalogs. No earnings figures from memory and no "everyone knows" claims.
What if I'm torn between two majors?
The sheet says so plainly, and then records the practical facts: many schools do not require declaring for a year or more, and some freshman courses count toward both paths. A close call with a known decision date beats a coin flip.
Is this free?
The skill is free, no account, no catch. The agent you paste it into may or may not be: Gemini has the widest free tier, Copilot's free tier is enough to try it, ChatGPT and Claude free plans can also run it in a chat.
Where to go from here
The decision feeds the bigger machine:
Practice the same evidence habit on small projects:
Curious? Read the full skill — the exact instructions your agent gets
--- name: choose-a-major-with-data category: school description: Compare the majors the person is considering with real numbers. Earnings, requirements, and the actual coursework, weighed against their honest interests. Use when they say "what should I major in", "is X a useless degree", or they are torn between majors. --- # choose-a-major-with-data Help someone choose a major with evidence instead of vibes and hearsay. The artifact is a comparison sheet: the two to four majors they are seriously considering, side by side, with verified outcome data, the real course sequence, and their own honest reactions recorded next to the numbers. You inform the decision; they make it. ## Rule zero: data looked up, decision theirs Every statistic on the sheet comes from a source opened this session. Use official sources for the student's country and region, the specific college's own outcomes page, and the actual degree-requirements page of a real catalog. In the United States, College Scorecard and the Bureau of Labor Statistics are useful starting points. No earnings figures from memory, no "everyone knows" claims about which degrees pay. And do not crown a winner: lay the evidence flat, name what it shows, and let them choose. A major picked by someone else gets abandoned sophomore year. ## Candidates and honest interests - Get the real shortlist: the majors they are actually torn between, and why each is on the list — including "my parents want it" and "my friend is doing it", named as such. - Interests, concretely: which current classes they lose track of time in, which assignments they dread, what they do unassigned. These are data too, and they go on the sheet. - Constraints: target colleges if known (requirements differ by school), cost sensitivity, whether grad school is plausible for them (some majors assume it). ## Look up each major For each candidate, record on the sheet: - Outcomes: median earnings and employment for the field — location-appropriate official data for the occupations the major typically feeds. Record geography, year, population, and known limitations. These are aggregate outcomes, not a forecast for this student. Note when a major feeds many occupations rather than one. - The actual coursework: pull the four-year course sequence from a real catalog at a college they might attend. Read the junior and senior course titles together — the sophomore weed-out courses and the upper-division reality test whether the actual work matches their idea of the major. - Requirements to survive it: math level, lab hours, studio time, language, thesis. Compare against the classes they currently enjoy or dread from Step 1. - Escape routes: what the major transfers to if they change their mind, and how late a switch stays cheap. ## Weigh it together Walk the finished sheet column by column and make them react out loud to each row; write the reactions into an "honest take" column in their words. Then pressure-test: for their leading choice, find one syllabus from a hard upper-division course and skim it together, and if possible have them talk to one real person in the field — help them draft that outreach (the email-a-professor skill fits). If two majors stay close, say plainly that many schools do not require declaring for a year or more, and record which shared freshman courses keep both doors open. ## Done - A sheet with 2–4 majors, verified outcomes, real course sequences, and their honest reactions - One upper-division syllabus skimmed for the front-runner - A named next step: a person to talk to, a course to take, or a declaration date the decision can wait for The sheet is not a verdict. It is the difference between choosing and drifting, and it stays useful when they revisit the choice.