Recently, the first cohort under Taiwan’s 108 Curriculum Guidelines—the curriculum introduced in 2019—finished the January exam and received their results, so many students have begun choosing universities and majors.

As a teacher on the front line, I have inevitably been asked plenty of questions such as, “Would this university be a good choice for me?” and “Does this major have good career prospects?” Sometimes students also add, “So what exactly does a public health department do?”

I had a feeling I would keep giving these answers over and over—possibly for years. Since all these questions are connected to choosing a university and major, I figured I might as well turn them into an article XD. It may save me a tiny bit of trouble.

How Your Major Relates to Your Future Career

They are not necessarily connected. More precisely, the job you eventually do is not determined entirely by your major, and your major does not completely limit the work you can pursue. It is only one factor, and the degree of influence varies from field to field.

If you want to work in programming, for example, you do not necessarily have to graduate from computer science or a related major. There are now many online courses and in-person resources for learning programming. After teaching yourself, you can build small projects for a portfolio, join a team for competitions and gain a few wins, or practise solving problems. I also know plenty of friends who work in the field without having studied computer science.

If you want to enter a legally licensed medical profession such as medicine, however, eligibility to take the examination and practise comes with specific educational, coursework, internship, and examination requirements. You therefore generally need to choose the corresponding professional field of study. If your first degree is in another subject, the current system still offers post-baccalaureate medical and Chinese-medicine programs as possible training routes, but you must still complete the required professional education and statutory procedures before becoming eligible for the examination and professional practice.

Legal careers such as attorney or judicial officer are somewhere in between. Even if you did not study law as an undergraduate, you may be able to complete the required legal subjects through an interdisciplinary law graduate institute, a law-and-technology institute, or a credit program and thereby qualify for the relevant national examination. The eligibility rules for attorneys and judicial officers are not identical, however, and simply enrolling in a particular graduate institute or credit program does not automatically qualify you. Your degree program, completed subjects and credits, and the rules in force for the examination year must all be checked individually. Once you meet the eligibility requirements and pass the relevant national examination, you may still enter the profession. The same idea applies to cram-school teachers: graduating from the corresponding subject may look more attractive, but strictly speaking, if you teach well, present lessons effectively, and students like your classes, you do not necessarily need a degree in that subject.

So, to put the point up front, studying a particular major does not mean that you can only do one kind of job—or that other jobs are forever closed to you. There is no absolute relationship between the two.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Major

Many people begin immediately with questions such as “What do students study in this department?” and “What careers can it lead to?” Before tackling those two important but difficult questions, however, I consider many other dimensions when choosing a university and major.

For me, filling out a preference list has never been only about whether I “like this major” XD.

Public or Private University?

This question affects tuition. If your family’s financial situation is difficult, or if they expect you to pay your own tuition once you enter university, private-university tuition is generally more expensive—at some schools it can be about twice the tuition at a public university. If that amount may be unaffordable, you might need to rule out private universities and prioritize public ones, or think through the next few factors, such as whether you will need a job or a student loan.

How Easy Is It to Find Part-Time Work?

University life can be expensive. Whether you attend a public or private university, there may be department dinners, family-group gatherings where senior students treat junior students, and graduation gifts for upperclassmen. And, of course, if you start dating, gifts for every special occasion are practically unavoidable. If your family covers all your living expenses, that may not be a problem. If they do not, or if the amount is not enough for everything, you will probably need a job.

Should you work in food service? At a cram school? As a private tutor? The options depend heavily on the city or county where your university is located. In one of Taiwan’s six special municipalities or another urban area, for example, part-time jobs are usually easier to find. This should also be an important part of choosing a university and major.

Another consideration is how many days per week you will need to work to cover your living expenses. How will you balance classes, student clubs, and dates with your boyfriend or girlfriend? Working too much will also affect your condition in class. Becoming a master of time management is practically one of the most important subjects at university.

The University Environment

After all, this is a place where you may spend four years—or more. Don’t worry, I’m not saying you won’t graduate XDDD. You might stay at the same university for graduate school, so you could be there for many years. Surely the environment matters?

Besides the subjective question of whether the scenery is beautiful XD, you should also consider the surrounding amenities. Where can you get food, and what price range do those places fall into? If leisure and entertainment matter a lot to you, is there a cinema nearby? Are there enough photogenic cafés? You could even ask whether your favorite bubble-tea chain is close by—although I do not recommend weighting that too heavily, because those shops change so quickly. One may be there this month and replaced by another the next XD.

There are also more practical details. If you ride a scooter, is there a repair shop nearby? If you live away from home, where can you buy daily necessities?

For questions like these, I recommend visiting the area around the university before submitting your preference list.

Do You Like the Department Building and Its Surroundings?

You may be wondering: is this really a question?

Yes—especially at a university such as National Taiwan University, where the main campus and other campus areas can feel very different.

I did not originally know that public health students spent so much time away from the main campus. When I was admitted to NTU, I thoroughly researched the food around Gongguan, the local amenities, and places where I could rest or do homework between classes. Then, in my second year, I discovered that I spent roughly three days out of a five-day week in the public health building near Chenggong Senior High School.

Fortunately, there were plenty of good places to eat nearby—all safely stored on my personal list XD. I could also arrange more classes on the main campus, treating different days of the week as a change of scenery. Pretty nice, actually.

Will You Need Housing, and How Expensive Is Nearby Rent?

This matters when the university is far from home and you need somewhere to live. You may be able to enter the university’s dormitory lottery, but you should also consider what happens if you do not get a place. Where could you rent, and how much would it cost per month? Renting outside adds another expense, which must be included in your living budget and will affect whether—and how much—you need to work.

Of course, if your family already has a home in that city or county where you can live, you can ignore this part entirely.

Do You Like the University’s Name?

Mm, now we have reached something high-school students are more likely to consider XD.

Ask yourself honestly whether you care about prestige. Does it bother you if someone says you did not get into a particular university? Do you insist on carrying the label of “a student from University X”? If so, the university itself becomes the fixed choice, and you can select the major within it according to your scores and preferences.

Industry–University Collaboration

Is the university welcomed by employers, or does it carry negative labels? Generalizing like this is not ideal, but it is a practical consideration that comes up often. If a university does carry a negative reputation and you still genuinely want to attend it, you may need to think about how your own work can change an outsider’s impression of the school.

As for industry collaboration, you can usually learn about it through the department’s website, so I will not go into detail here.

What Does the Department Teach, and Where Can It Lead?

These are the questions high-school students ask most often, but they are actually the last factors I consider.

I have always believed one thing: “Before you have truly tried something, what you call ‘liking it’ is never quite the same as genuinely liking it.” Dislike can also come from not understanding something or from a bad learning experience; it does not always mean that you truly hate the subject.

Unless what you hate is the unknown itself—rather like me refusing to eat food I have never tried because I do not know its texture or flavor and that is terrifying. Yes, I am extremely picky. Ahem.

Taiwan’s 108 Curriculum Guidelines encourage students to explore possible future directions during high school, but nothing quite matches the feeling of actually being inside a field. Preferences and tastes also change. Something you like now may not remain your favorite forever. Is it really sensible to use such an uncertain factor as the only basis for choosing a university and major? I think that is questionable.

Interest is still important, of course. What you can do is learn as much as possible from departmental websites or organized platforms such as IOH before deciding. Reality may still differ from your imagination, but at least the gap does not have to be enormous.

Choosing according to which future job seems profitable is even less reliable to me XDDDD. Four years can transform an entire market. A job that is popular now may be displaced four years later, or a better technology may emerge. As I said earlier, you do not necessarily have to stay in the same discipline from beginning to end to enter a profession; you can change direction. Career considerations are more useful at the level of broad qualities: perhaps you want highly independent work, a large corporation, or the financial sector. Look at the characteristics of the work, then consider which majors could plausibly lead toward that kind of path.

A Brief Summary

After listing all those factors, what led me to choose NTU’s Department of Public Health?

First, once I entered university, I wanted to cover all my tuition and living expenses myself—although I eventually wanted to do too many things for my problem-solving-tutor income to cover everything, so my family still helped with part of it. Second, being an NTU student simply felt awesome. Third, I wanted to earn money through physics problem-solving or private tutoring, so I needed a location with a larger market. Fourth, I thought, “I work this hard—how could I possibly fail to find a job? I can make a living in any field.” So I had no strict requirement for the major; anything that looked reasonable and did not repel me would do.

Naturally, I filled a whole row with NTU programs and did not list other universities. Taipei was expensive, but private tutoring and problem-solving-teacher positions were easier to find—a welcome bonus++. When I looked through the departmental websites, public health seemed to be a field that touched a bit of everything. “All right, this one!” I deliberately moved public health to the top of my preference list—and, sure enough, I got in.

So, What About a Department of Public Health?

After somehow wandering into an interdisciplinary law graduate institute years ago, I almost forgot my memories of public health. So yes, it really does feel like something from a previous life XD.

First, a little context about my undergraduate experience. Apart from the courses absolutely required for graduation, I took very few classes in my own department. I probably spent more than 80% of my time in the colleges of science and engineering. Yet nearly everything I studied was closely connected to public health, and graduate school later made the necessity of those foundations very clear.

I will explain why in a moment. Compared with my classmates, however, I was the kind of student who seriously slacked off within the department—and, looking at where I am now, perhaps the least conventionally successful and least on-track one of all. Everything below is therefore entirely my subjective view and personal approach. It absolutely cannot represent everyone. Let me state that first XDDDD.

What Is Public Health?

An introductory public-health course certainly begins with this question. Unfortunately, I was probably asleep, so after thinking for a very long time, I still cannot offer a precise definition or explanation. After spending so many years around the field, however, I can give a rough answer.

If something is related to health, it is part of public health.

Public-health questions are also often examined from the perspective of a population rather than an individual, which means they frequently involve trade-offs and conflicts among different interests.

It is an extremely interesting field, and an extremely broad one connected to almost everything. That breadth makes interdisciplinarity inevitable.

How the Public Health Curriculum Is Organized

Before my first year began, I thoroughly studied the department’s curriculum map and the elective and required courses for both semesters through the NTU Course website. The curriculum appeared to contain roughly two types of courses:

Survey courses: judging from the syllabi, these seemed designed to walk students through the many areas touched by public health—what each field does and what issues it cares about. They looked rather like interest exploration. One thing was certain: completing them could not possibly give you deep knowledge of every area. My actual classroom experience later confirmed exactly that XD. Most of these courses were required.

Foundational courses: general physics, general chemistry, calculus, general biology, and so on, together with basic medical sciences such as physiology and anatomy, and even sociology and psychology. Some were electives, some were required, and others belonged to required or elective course groups. At the time, I thought: “If public health concerns health-related issues, perhaps we can observe and understand those issues from many different angles. So these foundations must be the prerequisite skills that let us unlock other branches of the skill tree, right?”

When I Really Disliked Public Health

Because the curriculum was designed this way, I spent a period thinking that public health merely touched everything without going deeply into anything. It felt rather flimsy.

Later, however, I realized that the depth of your knowledge should not come entirely from what a teacher delivers. If you genuinely want to learn something, you can take additional courses yourself!

So honestly, my reason for disliking the department was not very reasonable at all.

How I Arranged My Undergraduate Courses

“With a curriculum like this, the more foundational knowledge I gain, the more branches of the skill tree I can unlock, right??” This is a very typical thought for the sort of RPG player who wants a character to master both physical and magical attacks and researches a magic-swordsman build.

But how could I know which knowledge I ought to learn? Ah—I could use the department’s introductory and survey courses to investigate.

When I encountered biostatistics, I felt I should understand statistics more thoroughly, so I went to the mathematics department for a statistics course. When environmental sampling and analysis came up, I immediately thought I should study analytical chemistry. And if I wanted to learn all that, my science foundations could not be weak, so in my first year I rather wildly upgraded general physics, general chemistry, calculus, and general biology to the “A” versions.

As an aside, the difference between the A courses and the B or C versions was that A met for more hours each week and ran for an entire academic year.

Later I went almost completely mad, cramming engineering mathematics, environmental chemistry, and everything else I could think of into every open slot in my schedule. At the same time, I was working in a laboratory, holding other jobs, solving problems near Taipei Main Station, and teaching classes in Neihu. Every course came with piles of homework. I genuinely cannot imagine how I survived that period. Eventually, I could only sacrifice required departmental courses—sorry QQ—skipping them enthusiastically, or using class time to work on laboratory tasks, job assignments, or homework from other courses.

I remember someone sternly asking me, “If you keep skipping class, what is the point of coming to university?” Mm, I only skipped required courses in my own department. I had nearly perfect attendance in my courses outside the department XD.

I did largely exclude the social sciences from my schedule, because I had slept through them in high school and could not summon even the tiniest bit of interest. Then karma sent me to study law and repay the debt. But that is another story...

This was only my own approach, and I do not really know what other students did. Even while learning through all those courses, I remained deeply anxious. Students in other departments seemed to be studying impressive, practical, directly applicable knowledge, while I was still learning things such as physics and chemistry. Was I going to become unemployed immediately after graduation? 555.

Graduate Training

Later, it turned out that I had worried too much. The knowledge foundations I built as an undergraduate were preparation for graduate school.

Graduate school was when I finally chose a specialized area. Because of the adviser I worked with, I focused on how the particle size and composition of PM2.5 affect health.

Understanding the principles behind the laboratory’s instruments drew heavily on analytical chemistry, while data analysis required a great deal of statistics. Only then did I truly experience something my adviser had once said: “Learn every kind of knowledge; you will use it someday.” That sentence has stayed with me for life—especially after entering the legal world Orz.

The specialized training was really concentrated in graduate school. My entire undergraduate education had been a foundation-building period.

Graduate training also included developing an attitude and method for conducting research. I was extremely fortunate to meet an adviser who took the training of graduate students seriously. Graduating from that laboratory left me almost ready to work as an independent researcher. Later, when writing a thesis in law school, I could schedule my writing and plan my literature review on my own and graduate properly XDDD. I even submitted my master’s thesis for publication, and it was accepted in full without revision on the first attempt. That was probably the peak of my academic life... and then everything began rolling downhill again, sob.

The Greatest Thing Public Health Gave Me

If I had to name it, I would say a hunger for knowledge—and humility. There are simply too many things I do not understand, so I learned to ask and study whenever I did not know something, and to listen to perspectives from other disciplines. Public-health faculty were also highly receptive to different fields and showed considerable respect for people entering from elsewhere. That felt completely different from parts of legal education, where outsiders can be told, “You need to learn our language before you can speak with us.” Of course, not every legal professional is like this; it is simply how I felt during six years in law as someone from another field XD.

That hunger for knowledge and humility also made me perfectly willing to begin law with absolutely no social-science background, be thoroughly beaten up by the subject all the way through, and still think, “This feels amazing.”

Becoming accustomed to crossing disciplines also helped me build an entire method for learning new knowledge. Even when I encounter something I have never touched before, I can get up to speed very quickly. That was a benefit I never expected at the time.

Careers for Public Health Graduates

Many students ask me, “What can I do after graduating from public health?”

The obviously public-health-related possibilities include pharmaceutical companies, analytical work, teaching, the civil service, occupational safety, and environmental health—the list goes on. I also know graduates working in areas that do not look connected at all, including cram-school teaching, law, production, and finance XDDDD. Instead of asking, “What can a public health graduate do?” my current answer might be, “I cannot think of anything a public health graduate absolutely cannot do.”

That is not empty praise, but there is a condition.

You need to be someone suited to studying public health.

Who Is—or Is Not—Suited to Public Health?

People who may be suited to it: those who want to decide their own future direction, arrange courses, and explore; those who do not want to be confined by an established career path and hope to keep many possibilities open; and, of course, anyone who wants to unlock an absurd number of branches on the knowledge skill tree.

People who may not be suited to it: those who expect a direct path into employment immediately after graduation, do not want to plan their own lives and prefer a predetermined route, or have no interest in exploring and experimenting.

Conclusion

I originally only wanted to answer a few questions from students. Somehow, this turned into an advertisement for public health? (A strange development.)

Although I entered the field almost by accident and went through a period of really disliking it, I eventually came to love the freedom to choose what I wanted to study and decide how to arrange my time, plans, and life. There was no predetermined burden and no route laid out in advance; every step felt fresh and interesting. Every public-health student could also shape a life with its own distinctive character, which is genuinely wonderful.

Looking back now, I am truly glad I entered public health. (Wow, are we really ending this sentimentally? XD.) But that is honestly how I feel.

I hope this article offers a few additional factors to consider when choosing a university and major. And, of course, I hope it helps readers understand public health a little more deeply—even if the picture is inevitably partial and based only on my perspective Orz.