Today is the first day of the 2024 college entrance examination, and about 13 million candidates will embark on a new journey in life.

Come on and best wishes.

When it comes to college entrance examination applications, which one is more important: city, school, or major?

I think this is basically a consensus.

The order of choices is: city, school, major. Of course, there is a business logic behind this.

Big cities are getting bigger and bigger, and this is an irreversible trend.

Big cities have large populations, so they have large economies, abundant excellent educational resources, many good hospitals, and even many art facilities.

If a New York show comes to China, it can only choose one place to perform, and that will almost certainly be Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or Shenzhen.

On the other hand, because of these facilities, people want to escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in their hearts, but their bodies are honest.

Excellent people must hang out with excellent people.

Returning to my hometown alone actually accelerated the depreciation of my professional skills.

That’s the network effect.

So, the preferred factor for a university is the city.

The priority is Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, followed by other first-tier cities and economically developed provincial capitals, such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an, etc.

Use the four years to look for opportunities to stay.

The importance of school is greater than that of major.

You can ask the older friends around you what majors they studied in college.

(You can also leave a comment on what you have learned and what you are doing today.)

I believe that what many people (even most) do today has nothing to do with their majors.

Why?

Because it is too difficult to let an 18-year-old child judge what he likes, what will be popular in the future, or even what he is good at.

When I applied for my university, I heard many people say:

"My mom said girls should study accounting, it's stable!"

"International finance is very popular. All the outstanding students in the school are applying for it, so I want to apply too!"

“The computer industry pays well!”

For most people, the decision to choose a major is made a little too early.

Maybe our parents, and even many of our college application guidance teachers, don’t actually understand what the majors they recommend mean.

We always choose a major without understanding what it is.

On the other hand, if you are the company's HR or manager.

When you look at a person's resume, do you mainly look at his school or his major?

When many large companies recruit people, they will not hold a "computer major" job fair and invite computer majors from all universities in the city to attend.

They will only go to the best schools in the city, and they can enroll in many majors.

The score line of a good school is actually a more important filter than the major.

Therefore, the importance of school is greater than that of major.

In addition, when choosing a school, you can give priority to comprehensive universities. (Except if you want to study medicine, art, performance, etc.)

Comprehensive universities have large platforms and can provide you with more resources.

At the same time, if you study a less ideal major and later want to change your major or get a second degree, you will have more options.

When choosing a major at the undergraduate level, I suggest that you do not choose a major that is too "operational".

What is operational expertise?

When I was in college, international finance was the most popular major.

Many of our top students went to study international finance, hoping to find a good job.

But before I graduated, I was no longer able to study international finance.

International finance is a profession at the operational level.

Study the specific aspects of a specific industry. These knowledge and skills change very quickly and are easily outdated.

So what major should you choose?

Choose a major that is as basic as possible.

For example, mathematics.

All professions are manifestations of these underlying abilities.

Although mathematics seems useless, it is actually the most useful.

If you are interested and capable, I suggest you choose a basic major like mathematics.

It has stronger "anti-aging" ability.

University is a stage for laying the foundation. After graduating from university, many people may never have another four years to study systematically, develop study habits, and improve their personality.

At this stage, your cost of trial and error is very low because you have nothing to lose.

In this case, I think you should not limit your studies to the scope of business.

Because business is something at the application level, it is a combination of many basic capabilities.

For example, business requires the ability to deal with people, the ability to negotiate, the ability to sell, etc. What are these abilities essentially? Empathy.

In business, market analysis and market planning are often required. What abilities do these require? Mathematical and economic abilities.

In business, you often need to give speeches and write. What abilities do these require? Language skills and even psychological skills.

So behind business, there are actually some common underlying capabilities.

The earlier you lay the foundation for these basic abilities, the greater the benefits will be to you in the future.

Only after having these basic capabilities can various disciplines blossom.

Therefore, the more basic majors you can learn during your undergraduate studies, the further you may go in the future.

Of course, learning some operational-level majors during undergraduate studies will also be immediately useful.

However, expertise at the operational level can easily change significantly with the times.

What can support you to go further may be the basic skills you can learn in basic majors.

So what exactly is a basic major?

For example, more basic majors in the liberal arts may be philosophy, literature, history, etc.

The more basic major in science and engineering may be mathematics.

If you are particularly interested in business, what is the basic subject related to business? It is economics.

If you want to get even more basic, it's mathematics.

So I would advise you to study mathematics if possible.

Taking a step back, you can study economics instead of necessarily studying business administration at the undergraduate level.

City > School > Major.

Try to choose a first-tier city, a comprehensive first-class university, and a major that is as basic as possible.

Receive the best education you can, within the limits of your choice.

This is my personal opinion on college entrance examination application. For your reference.

Of course, taking a step back, no matter which city, university, or major you choose, if you ultimately feel it is not ideal, you should not be discouraged or depressed and think that your life is over.

Don’t ever think like that.

This is just the first choice in your life. It doesn’t matter if you don’t make the right choice, as it will not completely determine your ending.

There will be thousands of choices in the future, and you must be fully prepared before the next choice comes.

No matter where you are, you should learn from excellent teachers and classmates as much as possible and squeeze out everything you can learn.

Set a higher goal for yourself, such as becoming a graduate student at a certain university, working for a particularly good company, etc.

During your four years of undergraduate study, keep working towards your goals.

For those who are proactive and constantly making progress, no matter where they are at the moment, their future will definitely not be too bad.

Finally, I want to say something to the kids who are about to enter college:

University is the starting point of the business world.

The essence of business is transaction, and transaction must be an action that takes place with people.

Therefore, it is extremely important to be able to deal with people.

In the two months after the college entrance examination, of course not just two months, including the four years of university, I suggest that you go out and see the world, meet more people, participate in more activities, experience different lifestyles, and meet different people.

When we were in school, we spent more time reading and studying, and we mostly interacted with teachers and classmates, so our contact with the real world was relatively limited.

But in the future, you will definitely work with a lot of strangers. You need to better understand the world and the various people in it.

Only when you see all kinds of differences can you constantly correct your understanding of the world, realize the true operating laws of the world, make your judgments about things more accurate, and collaborate better with others.

It is never too late to learn a lot of specific business knowledge.

However, basic abilities such as dealing with people and understanding the world require a lifetime to accumulate, and the earlier you start, the better.

Once you have these basic skills, everything else will come naturally.

Therefore, you must use the four years of college to lay a solid foundation so that you can go further.

I wish you can go to your favorite city and I wish you can be admitted to your favorite university.

Also, congratulations on starting college life and entering the real world.

The four years in college are very precious and wonderful four years in your life. Please enjoy the scenery along the way.

I wish you all the best.