• Question: Hi what is a good thing to study in college and univeristy to give many opportunties for job options?

    Asked by Sadie on 1 Dec 2025.
    • Photo: Eliza Karlowska

      Eliza Karlowska answered on 1 Dec 2025:

      Depends what you like to do! Maths or Physics will definitely open a lot of job opportunities in the future. You can work in research, data science, software engineering, finance, education, technology. Those degrees will teach you problem solving, data analysis, programming. Like any other degree, they will also teach you teamwork (for group projects), time management and communication skills.

    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 9 Dec 2025:

      Depends what you like to study or what career you are interested in. There are lots of general degrees out there so you can study lots of different aspects of a topic in your first year before sorting into what you want to do in your second year.
      But anything to do with data management will always have job opportunities, so careers in cybersecurity, data analysis, computer science, programming, IT, AI, server building etc. – I would definitely look at computer science related degrees if I was starting out now.
      Even if you don’t go into a computer science related career – you will learn different skills that will help in your future career.

    • Photo: Margaret Duff

      Margaret Duff answered on 22 Dec 2025:

      When you choose what to study, you should think about what you enjoy and what you are good at and what you might want to do as a job in the future. What can be tricky is that lots of subjects you do at school change a lot at college and university. I would suggest looking at university and careers websites and seeing what you get excited about!

    • Photo: Allyson McIntyre

      Allyson McIntyre answered on 6 Jan 2026:

      At university I would say some of your key topic of chemistry, maths, physics & computer science will open a lot of opportunities. A lot of degrees allow you to pick elective classes so you can add additional classes to top up your skills. I know when I went through my degree (in chemistry) people were able to get jobs as accountant as the problem solving skills were greater and they found people with chemistry degrees sometimes better than those with accounts degrees for example. I would be careful not to specialise too much initially – look for degrees with a broad scop that you can narrow down as you move through the years.

    • Photo: Amy Mason

      Amy Mason answered on 9 Feb 2026:

      Maths, it is clearly the best. (This answer is biased and inaccurate)

      If you like science or maths, but don’t know what you want to do then any science or maths based subject – it doesn’t really matter which one, as you can use any science degree to pick up the skills needed from another science degree with a few extra training courses and extra readings. I know people who have gone palaeontology -> maths, maths -> archaeology, biology -> biochemistry -> statistics.

      If you don’t like science or maths, do something you really care about and will enjoy reading about for several years.

      At the end of the day, you can always change your mind and switch course or take other qualifications later. This decision is a medium term one (what do I want to do for the next five years) not a long-term one (what do I want to do for the rest of my life)

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    I think the best thing to study is something that you enjoy and that interests you. If you decide that STEM subjects are ‘your thing’ then studying any one of these will open lots of doors to future jobs and, as Eliza says, at university you’ll learn lots of other skills that are just as important for your future working life as your technical skills. A friend of mine studied chemical engineering at university and her first job was as a chemical engineer for a manufacturing company and while doing that job she realised she was interested in logistics, so she moved into a logistics job within that company and since then she’s moved to a job with Amazon, which has nothing to do with chemical engineering! So that’s a good example of when your degree is a good springboard into work but it doesn’t necessarily have to define what you do for ever, if you decide to change direction.