Building a Personalized College Major Selection Web Page

Boyd, Ryan and Pennebaker, James W. (2016) Building a Personalized College Major Selection Web Page. PsyArXiv. pp. 1-6.

Abstract

Nearly 25% of incoming UT-Austin students are unable to get their first two choices for a college major. Historically, these students have been given an extensive list of all potential majors from which to choose. Many students simply lack awareness of the various majors and have no background knowledge that could be helpful in determining whether specific majors would suit their interests or skills. The purpose of this project was to rely on students’ admissions essays to provide a more coherent and tailored set of recommendations when students are selecting an alternative college major. The logic underlying this project is based on decades of empirical research demonstrating that psychological information can be extracted from the language of students’ admissions essays via automated computer analyses. The results of these analyses can then be used to inform the “college major options” webpage so that potential majors most closely aligned with their interests and skills will be displayed first in a recommendation system.