About The College Major Quiz

Last updated October 7, 2026

What we do

Choosing a major is a big decision. The College Major Quiz takes about 3 to 5 minutes. It asks 62 questions about what you enjoy, what you feel confident in and what you want from a career. It then compares your answers with profiles of 86 common bachelor's degree majors.

Your results show your top matches, the interests behind each one, and the careers each major leads to, with median pay and projected job growth. The quiz is free, and there's no sign-up or email address required.

Who built it

Hi, I'm Brennan, and I built The College Major Quiz. I'm a chemical engineer. I studied chemical engineering and loved it, and I know how much it helps to land in a major that fits.

I wanted a free quiz that rests on real data and research and shows every step, so you can see why it suggests what it does. As an engineer, I test things before I trust them. The quiz has been checked against thousands of simulated students, and I took it myself. An early version matched me with Mathematics instead of engineering, which led to rewriting several questions and changing how answers are scored. After those fixes and more testing, the quiz matched me with the top three majors I had wanted to study in college. The methodology page covers that story and every other test.

The quiz is a starting point. It doesn't replace a conversation with a school counselor or academic advisor who knows you.

How the quiz is built

The quiz rests on decades of career research, mainly John Holland's six interest types (RIASEC) and social cognitive career theory. The major profiles come from three public sources:

The O*NET 31.0 database from the U.S. Department of Labor, which rates occupations on interests, knowledge and work activities
The National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk, which links college programs to the occupations they prepare students for
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment projections for 2025 to 2035, for pay and job growth

The methodology page explains every step, including the scoring formula, the choices we made by hand, how we tested the quiz and what it can't tell you.

How we tested it

Before launch, the quiz went through five kinds of testing. Each number below comes from a test we can rerun, and the methodology page gives the details.

4,300 simulated students. For each of the 86 majors, we simulated 50 students interested in it who answer imperfectly, the way real people do. 4,298 of the 4,300 found their major in their top five. When we made the answers much messier, 97% still did.
22 realistic students, 220 runs. We wrote profiles like a pre-med student, a future nurse, a theater kid and a future lawyer, listed the majors a counselor would expect for each, and ran each one 10 times with random changes to their answers. In 213 of 220 runs, the top match was one a counselor would expect, and so were at least two of the top five.
Every major can be found. Answering the quiz the way each major's own profile would, 80 of the 86 majors came out first and all 86 came out in the top three.
Stable results. When we added random changes to answers, an average of about 4 of a student's top 5 majors stayed in their top 5.
Real people. When a real test-taker got a result that didn't fit, we traced the cause, fixed it and reran every test above.

We also checked every factual statement on the site against its original source.

Our standards

Every number has a source. Statistics on this site come from our data or from cited research, and we check research claims against the original study.
We show our work. The methodology, test results and limits of the quiz are published openly.
We say what we don't know. Research finds that matching interests to a major helps, but the effect is modest. Your results are a starting point, not a verdict.
We fix mistakes. When we find an error, we correct it and update the date on the page.

Who it's for

High school students choosing a major, college students who are undecided or thinking about switching, and adults going back to school.

Independence and funding

The College Major Quiz is an independent website. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Labor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics, the O*NET program or any college.

The quiz is free to use. The site may show advertising to cover its costs. Advertisers have no say in the quiz, how it scores or what your results show.

Contact

Questions, corrections or ideas for the quiz? Email me at contact@thecollegemajorquiz.com.