Major Spotlight: Design Your Own Major

What if you know exactly what you want to study, but no college seems to offer a major that quite captures it? At some colleges, you can design your own.

A self-designed major allows students to combine courses from multiple departments to create a course of study around a particular interest, question, or emerging field. Designing your own major doesn't mean simply picking a bunch of interesting classes and giving them a creative name. These programs are usually highly structured. Students work with faculty advisers, develop a proposed curriculum, explain how their courses fit together, and get the major approved by a faculty committee.

This option could be a great fit for students who:

Have interests that cross several different academic fields
Love making connections between seemingly unrelated subjects
Want the flexibility to explore an emerging field that may not exist as a traditional major

Where Can You Design Your Own Major?

Here are three colleges that give students the opportunity to build an academic program around their own interests.

Brown University: A great fit for students who want maximum academic flexibility. Brown's Independent Concentrations allow students to design their own interdisciplinary major. Some examples include Environmental Storytelling, Health Literacy and Illustration, and Compassion in Healthcare.

University of Rochester: Rochester's Interdepartmental Major allows students to combine coursework from at least two departments into one customized program. Past examples include Sustainable Urban Development, Cultural Consumerism, and Artistic and Mathematical Space, which combined advanced math with studio art, computer graphics, and the mathematics of origami!

Pitzer College: A great fit for students looking for a small liberal arts college with lots of flexibility. Pitzer students can create a Self-Designed Major and complete a capstone in their chosen field. Recent examples include Climate Toxicology, Documentary Activism, and Queer Health Justice.

Emily's Take

I love self-designed majors because they challenge the idea that every student's interests need to fit neatly into one academic box. For the right student, this can be an incredible opportunity. It’s important to know that creating your own major usually requires more intentionality, not less!

Have a major you're curious about? I'd love to feature it in a future College Majors You Might Not Know Exist spotlight.