56. Choosing a College Major: What Every Student & Parent Should Know - with Lisa Marker Robbins
Episode 56
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I have an enlightening conversation with college and career expert Lisa Marker Robbins of Flourish Coaching. She sheds light on the importance of choosing a college major with intention and clarity — and shares a valuable resource for high school students (and their parents) to ensure they’re fully informed of their college major options.
We cover:
→ When to start planning for your college major (hint: it’s sooner than you think!)
→ When or when not to declare as undecided
→ Insights into the highly competitive business major (what it means, when to pursue it, and what can prevent you from being accepted)
→ For parents: How to initiate the college major conversation with your high schooler
→ How to connect with colleges to better understand their policies around choosing majors
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned
(Free College Major Guide) The Ultimate Blueprint to Understanding Admissions by Major: The Complete Guide + Email Templates
(Free on-demand video training) How to Guide Your Teen to Choose the Right Major
✏️Enroll in SchoolHabits University (Curious? Check it out!)
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
56 Choosing a College Major: What Every Student and Parent Should Know - with Lisa Marker Robbins===
[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter Podcast. I am so excited for today's episode. This is our absolute very first episode on this show where I am interviewing an industry expert and I cannot wait for you to tune in today and hear all of the good juicy nuggets that we have to share.
Today, I am talking with Lisa Marker Robbins. She is the creator of Flourish Coaching and she is an expert on preparing students for college majors, college selections, and careers that are meaningful and intentional. Today, we talk about the huge decision of how to choose colleges and how to choose careers, as well as this curious trend that she and I have both noticed over the past few years of students to choose business majors, this interest in business majors without truly understanding what what that means.
She shares plenty of tips and strategies for both parents of high school students, as well as high school students themselves. [00:01:00] So if you are the parent of a high school student who will be thinking about college in the next three or four years, this episode is for you. And if you yourself are a high school student and you are college bound, then please stay tuned because what Lisa has to share today is what I wish I knew when I was in high school.
We have a great show and we're going to get started
Katie: Well, hello, Lisa. Thank you for joining us today. I am so excited, not only for this conversation, but for you for being the first guest here at the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. And I cannot think of a [00:02:00] better person to have as the first guest for our show. So thank you so much for being here.
Lisa: Wow, Katie, I am honored. I'm honored to be the first guest. You do such a fantastic job with all your solo episodes, and I know you're going to be adding even more value because you've got great people in your circle who are like minded with you that can help your students, and so I, and I'm just honored to be the first one in the seat.
Thank you so much.
Katie: Thank you. Thank you. Our conversation today, I think, is going to be very helpful for both of our audiences. So, for those of you, um, listening who don't know Lisa Marker Robbins, she is an absolute expert when it comes to teaching students and professionals as well, but teaching high school students how to best prepare for their college journey, starting in high school. And so you and I both work with similar clientele, we work with students, but we have different offerings, but because we work with the same [00:03:00] age student I believe we often encounter some of the same issues, um, that our students are, you know, bringing to us.
And one of those is around college applications and choosing college majors, and so that is going to be the topic of today's conversation. I cannot wait for you to weigh in.
I have two, two sort of, um, things that I want to put on the table today, and then I will let you pick and choose which direction you want to go, hoping we can go in both directions.
Generally speaking, I have noticed a trend over the past few years when I have students working with me in the office and we're working on college essays and supplemental essays and working through the common app, a lot of these juniors and seniors have absolutely no idea what they want in a college major, what they want in a college career.
And so when it comes time to putting these lists together, their college lists together, it really feels excruciatingly [00:04:00] random. And they are choosing colleges based on brand names, based on where their parents went, where their friends are going, what they're seeing as trending. If we can even say that with colleges these days, it's, it's wild.
Right. And so I'm curious to see, um, if you're noticing that same trend of students just entering in with hardly any intentionality into the college application process, and then what we do and then the second more specific trend, is the trend these days of students to just choose the business major without any sort of understanding what that means.
And I'm not sure where this trend is coming from. I am going to turn the mic over to you and let you fill in where, where you see fit.
Lisa: Well, I think these two things that you're seeing go hand in hand. Let's just start with that. So as a career development and career advising coach, um, this idea of not beginning with the end [00:05:00] in mind is very common. Um, for anybody that's read, um, Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly effective people, that is one of his core tenants is to have a destination. It's like, you know, if we're, I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. If we, if we wanted to drive to Florida for spring break with kids, which I'm an empty nester now.
So, um, I, I would have piled them all in back in the day. I would have had a triptych or, or a map. But now we have this phone that we just drop the pin in and that guides us on the best route to get there. The problem that I've seen for many, many years, which is why 15 years ago, I doubled down on college advising or career advising and and career development was you don't have a great college list if you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what. sticks without a destination in mind. And that destination- as a mom [00:06:00] who just finished paying for college for my own children and my youngest just graduated, um, in April of 2024- it was a lot of money. And I see families spending more time planning their next vacation sometimes, or the next car that they're going to buy.
Or I think about my, uh, washing machine broke and how much time I poured into making sure I was making a wise investment on the replacement machine, then they do on this college stuff because I think you've hit the nail on the head. They're leaning into what their peers are saying or what is a highly sought after brand name college.
And business is a highly sought after degree. So it's like, Oh, well, I hear these great things about this school. I hear great things about, Oh, there's plenty of options career wise. And when I graduate, if I major in [00:07:00] business and I know people who majored in business who are making lots of money, it looks lucrative.
And so therefore that's what I'm going to go after instead of actually doing the work to reverse engineer that destination. What am I wired to do? Do I have the self awareness to even know what I want to do and what aligns? And then to chart the course to get there. And that's, that's really how it goes hand in hand.
Katie: Right. Those are great points. So I'm glad to hear that you are seeing what I am seeing, and it's, I'm in the northeast, I'm in Massachusetts, and you know, we have Bentley and we have Babson, and we have BC and we have these tremendous business schools in the area. So I just, I'm, I think it's interesting to know that it's not just, it's not just the Northeast trend.
Uh, so what do you advise these students, the students that you work with, the students who are listening to today's podcast, who are thinking I'm thinking of business, right? They see on social media that, you know, you can [00:08:00] be an entrepreneur, you can, um, just create a business out of nowhere, which means that senior year, as I'm applying to schools, I might as well click business as a major inside the common app.
What are you advising the students who are at that point who are tempted to choose business inside the Common App, but they don't have actual any intentionality to back up that decision?
Lisa: You know, I think a good way for your students or their parents to kind of test if they know what they're getting into and they know their why would be many, many colleges require, and some of the ones that you named, require students to write an essay that says, basically, why this major?
Why are you applying to that major at our school? And what they're looking for is what have you done in the past to make sure that this is an informed decision, not [00:09:00] spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks, and what do you intend to do with it in the future? Because colleges want to make sure that they are handing out their limited number of seats- many of these schools that are highly sought after, like the ones that you mentioned and others, could fill their freshman class many times over, particularly with the most popular majors. And so, they want to make sure that they are making a wise and informed decision on who to give a coveted seat to.
And so start with whether, at whatever stage, and you can do this for any major. Yes, we're talking about business. I mean, there's other common majors, like engineering is another one. Computer science is another one. Nursing. Those are all schools that are high, or schools, majors, that are highly competitive at most colleges and universities.
And people just think it sounds like a good idea based on, oh, I did great in math or, oh, [00:10:00] so and so's dad or mom is doing this job and makes a lot of money. Um, so start with that essay, whether it's a 10th grader, an 11th grader. I don't like really having these conversations with ninth graders. I mean, you can have loose conversations around careers and outcomes and things like that, but like, let's just, I mean, you're fantastic with all the study habits and executive functioning and all that great stuff.
Let's focus on that stuff freshman year and just getting involved in some extracurriculars. But if we can't explain in a 300, 400 word essay your why behind that major, then it's time to do some work.
Katie: Yeah, that's a great point. So if someone is earlier on in the school, they're 10th grade, I would think that is around the time when one should start thinking, not to throw too many shoulds into into it,
we all have different family situations, but I'm going to have a freshman. My daughter will be a freshman next year, and I'm already thinking about this and I have [00:11:00] heard that 10th grade is around the time to start the reverse engineering process, as you mentioned. So for a 10th grader, what are some of the things that we should be asking our students or our children when they're around 10th grade to get to start this conversation, to get them thinking about their majors and their careers and their vision for them future selves?
Lisa: Yeah, we, you ask a great question on the timing, right? So yes, sophomore year, if I had a utopian society that I've now made peace with will never exist. But if I had a utopian society and I could design it, I would start this work with every student by the time they are a second semester sophomore.
Some are ready for it, um, earlier, first semester sophomore, and there are very real deadlines coming. You and I both know that from the work that we do with students. College applications are going to be submitted by, you know, November [00:12:00] 1st ish of the senior year. And so with that in mind, I always say it can be too early, again, we don't want to, I, you're, if you contact me today and said, hey, work with my eighth grader, I'd be like, nope, not yet.
We don't, you know, we don't want her yet in our Launch Career Clarity course, but if a sophomore's ready, great, but if your student's not ready to have these conversations by junior year, start of junior year, you really have to kind of force it in a, a nice way. So how do we force it? Well, we ask just curious questions.
I always say, start with curiosity, parents. It's way better to ask a question than make a statement. And it can be little things. Like, I actually, I have an Instagram reel that I have recently that was me coming in from walking my dog, and, and, it was freezing that day and I'm like, you know, if I had just come in and I had a teenager, I would say like, you know what, I [00:13:00] would never want to work outside, what about you?
Or do you want to work away from home? So you just start asking questions, but there's basically a two step process. You build self awareness first. So what are my aptitudes? What's my hardwired personality? I personally as a career coach use the Berkman personality assessment with my students that generate the list of careers where the student looks like the adults who are already happily working in and thriving in a list of careers.
So it takes it from the world's your oyster, you can be anything, to To a more, that's overwhelming to teens, down to a more manageable list for investigation. So what are my values? What are my aptitudes? What's my hardwired personality? And then let's build career awareness. Kids, I mean, they know what a teacher is, a doctor, a nurse, but they don't know what an actuary is.
They don't know what a project manager is. So there's lots of jobs that they don't know about because they've never had [00:14:00] exposure and quite frankly I hear from their parents that their parents are like, I'm at a loss. I don't know either. And so, two step process, self awareness, career awareness, it's the Venn diagram, where do they overlap?
So, that we can then do deeper investigation, which includes curating experiences, not just reading stuff online or watching an online YouTube video about somebody and their job, before we can make an informed decision, and then we figure out what's the path to get there.
Katie: Okay. Great point. So, you mentioned the Birkman personality test.
So, that is something that I am going to venture to say is new to um, many people, particularly, you know, um, High school students. So could you explain a little bit about that and maybe where somebody might be able to get their hands on it? I know it's something that you work with and that you offer students.
Lisa: Yes, so the Birkman's been around since the 1950s. It is rooted in positive psychology, has high [00:15:00] validation reliability scores, it is tested and retested. Some of your listeners might, a parent might know it because they had to take it as part of their hiring process, or it's a tool that is used for team building at companies like Procter and Gamble, Coca Cola.
Walmart, NASA, uh, groups like that. So it can be a corporate tool, but it also can be a career advising tool. And it's not, it's, it's not widely available. You can't go out on the web and find it. You have to go through a certified consultant. So I am one of those. I've used it with 4, 000 students to date. Um, but you have to know somebody who's certified
to be able to take it and use it. Um, assessments have their place, but it shouldn't be the end all be all. So I want everybody to hear me in that. This assessment gives data points for us to learn about ourselves, but there's a whole lot more than that that goes into [00:16:00] this, right? So this should not be a tool where it says, Oh, my number one career outcome was, let's just go with business, which actually, there are 22 what we call career clusters or career families that the US Department of Labor tracks. So you could go to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and look these up and just start poking around. This is another activity you could do with your teen just you know, kind of talk about what's out there.
So if you go to B as in boy, BLS. gov, and then you just look for the Occupational Outlook Handbook on their, um, on their website, then you can start looking at what are the 22 job families. Now let's go back to business, which is so popular. Business type careers, business, business schools have different divisions.
There's different career clusters within business. So one of them is business [00:17:00] and finance. Another one would be sales and marketing. So there are other business type, uh, majors or careers that fall in the other ones. Economics would go in under our like research careers, right? So it's more of a researcher.
So the Birkman's pointing us in that direction about job families.
Katie: Okay. That's, that's valuable information. For all the links and things that we mentioned in the podcast. I will leave those in the show notes for sure. So nobody needs to pull over their car right now and write that down. No, please don't.
It'll be linked below. But I do have a follow up question for that. So, business is a very broad category as we know and as we just talked about and that does touch on what I see a lot in my office with students who when we're inside the common app and they go to click on business and then they need to pick a secondary major or they need to be more specific with what do what do they mean with business? What does that even mean and they're confronted With [00:18:00] choices that they hadn't even thought it hadn't even known existed.
And so in the moment they're trying to say, okay, well, do I want marketing? Do I want econ? Do I need, do I want finance? And it seems all very last minute. And these students don't even really know what these things are. So my question to you if someone is in this situation where it's, you know, senior year and they are at this, um, crossroad, are they better off choosing, I'm going to use air quotes around this, but it ran randomly, right?
Like random, I think I'm on finance. I think, or going in as undecided because that's usually where my students, the two choices that they end up thinking about, okay, well, I either want business or I don't know. And so I'm going to go and decide it. Do you have any, any, um, thoughts there? Yeah, lots.
Lisa: Okay,
so one of them, I commonly get this question about,
like, if, let's just say there's a [00:19:00] school, like Babson, where they're really known for business, right?
And, um, and the students like, gosh, it's hard to get into that particular major. Maybe I should just put on social work and get admitted to the university, to the college as, um, Um, a different major and then try to switch into it later. Well, that backfires more often than not. That's something that happens where you've painted yourself into a corner and then you cannot get over to the major that you want.
You might have to end up transferring. So we don't want that to have to happen. So that's not a good strategy. So I just want to say that because I get that question all the time on this topic. What you really need to understand about every school that's on that list is what approach do they have to admitting students?
Do they admit students directly into a major? Okay. So for instance, um, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, they, and I mentioned them because the director of admissions, [00:20:00] Andy Borst, who now he's at the University of Georgia, he was on my podcast. It's one of our most popular, uh, episodes ever, but he came on to talk about how admission by major works.
So there are a lot of schools that admit students directly to major, and it can be hard at those schools to switch into the popular majors, the over subscribed majors, if you change your mind later on. So that's one way. Another way is, I call it, it's complicated. So our state flagship here in Ohio is Ohio State University.
They admit directly to some majors, but not to others. Others are pre majors, like nursing, okay, where business can be a direct admit. Then there's others that don't admit to major at all. Tulane would be an example of that, um, Georgia Tech would be an example of that. However, even those schools ask for your future intended major in the Common App, and they will still look for evidence [00:21:00] that you kind of know what you're getting into.
So, this idea of just selecting anything is not a good idea, but the idea of, okay, is undecided a decent option? Some schools will have like business undecided where others will just have general undecided, like more of an exploratory studies program. Purdue University does that. So business undecided at least is giving you a seat in the business school, but not every school is going to offer a business undecided.
So you really need to begin with what approach to admitting students does the school take? And we've got a resource for that. So for your listeners, and we made a special resource just for a special link to make it easy to get to. If you go to our website, flourish, F L O U R I S H, flourishcoachingco.com/Katie.
I [00:22:00] know. You can't be unique with that. Um, you will get access to, we did a study with the 50 state flagship universities and looked at how they, A, admitted. So direct to major, it's complicated or not directly to major. And if there are any majors that were restricted to 12th grade applicants only, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign that I mentioned before.
If you don't apply as a 12th grader, you will never get into that major. They don't take internal or external transfers into that major. And that happens with the most popular majors at some schools. So we have to be aware. So we're, we share the data, we're going to give you our data. We're going to give you a short video from me explaining how it works.
And then I give families the email copy that we use to reach out to the admissions office and vice presidents of enrollment at all of these universities to get down to this information. So then your listeners can take it for [00:23:00] any school that's on their list. So while Undecided or exploratory studies can be a great option at some schools, it depends on on their approach to admitting students. And so you've got to understand the nuances of admissions around majors.
Katie: Wow, that is it's a valuable resource. I will again put that link in the show notes for everybody Um, and I think that that would be helpful and and correct me if i'm wrong No matter what state if you're a parent listening to this right now and you have a child at any stage Um Um, in high school, even freshman year, I know we're not encouraging deep conversations about careers with our freshmen, but that could be a valuable source just to get the conversation rolling and just to get the thoughts in incubation before those deeper conversations need to happen.
And I'd imagine for the students who are listening to this podcast as well, we have many students who listen, and self advocacy is something that we, you know, talk [00:24:00] about and, and teach a lot here on the show.
And if you are a student and you are in command of your own future college experience, then this would be a wonderful guide for you to get your hands on so that you can email these colleges and you can get the information and the answers that you are, um, that you need in order to make it a more informed decision for sure.
Lisa: Well, I think that I find, and I think you probably find it too, Katie, that, you know, it can be overwhelming to just say, email the college, right? And so there's a lot of things that you do in working with students around executive functioning and study habits and um, those soft skills that they're building.
And what I find is if we just have a framework to get us to step one or two. So in this case, it's my email copy. Take it and make it your own. Don't make it, it'll sound like a 56 year old lady if you make it mine. So tweak it, make it your own, but it gives you the framework which removes the overwhelm that makes it possible to feel [00:25:00] confident in reaching out.
Katie: Right. Wonderful. Um, I'm going to wrap up here with a, um, with, um, one final question is what do you think is the most compelling reason that you can give either parents or high school students right now to begin the process of thinking about their future?
Lisa: Well, you asked a great question on timing earlier.
And here's what I found. As a career coach who has worked with thousands of teenagers and young adults and a good number of adults, here's what I know. When we start early, the, the lane is wide. It's really wide. The older we get, we're making decisions and life is happening and the lane is narrowing so that our choices can become more limited.
Okay. So just like I was saying before, if you wait until you're in college to do the career development and advising work, [00:26:00] and then discover that you want a major that, Oh, that major at the school I'm attending was closed off in 12th grade, that it just narrowed right? Now, you could transfer to kind of widen it.
If I am working with somebody that's my age or your age. Well, you know, I sit here and go, well, we have five adult children. Four of them live here in the Cincinnati area. We have a grandchild here. Geography for me would be a barrier if I wanted to make a career change, which I don't luck luckily, but I meet people my age who are like, what's this next chapter?
Or I'm gonna take an early retirement and do something I really love 'cause I never loved it. So by beginning early and being intentional, you'll have a better college list. You'll have better outcomes. You won't paint your teen into a corner or make, make decisions that no amount of money can bust open that door because there are policies and deadlines that are real.
And as life happens, we also begin to kind of narrow that path forward. So to [00:27:00] have the best options, the time with the widest open space where you truly could make any decision, then beginning early is your friend.
Katie: Wonderful. Yes. And I, I think you, you nailed it when you said, um, that no amount of money, right can undo some of these decisions and college is an unbelievable expense for families. And so, thank you. You're right. People spend more money planning their vacations than they do oftentimes on the college process, and that's something that I think you're doing a wonderful job educating folks on the importance of intentionality and planning and the appropriate timing when it comes to mapping out the rest of someone's high school experience into college into career and thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.
Lisa, again, I will leave all the links that we mentioned today in the show notes. And I, I can't wait to have you back on the show for sure. I think we have a lot more to [00:28:00] talk about.
Lisa: Thanks, Katie. I, it was a privilege to be your first guest.
Well, that was just an absolutely wonderful show with Lisa today. I hope that you found it as valuable as I know that you did. Again, I will leave all of the links that Lisa mentioned, including that guide to choosing college careers in the show notes, uh, learnandworksmarter.com is where you can find the show notes for this podcast.
I appreciate you being here. And I can't wait to share more expert voices with you on our show. And until then, never stop learning.
