9 exciting courses you can pursue after high school that aren’t Engineering or Medicine

Confused about what to study after high school? Do your interests diverge from the usual track? This article compiles a list of exciting and innovative bachelors degree programmes.

Indian parents once took pride when their children became government employees. Soon after, in the era of privatisation, young graduates became more excited about working for corporate companies. Degrees that would help people enter the IT sector were pursued like hot cakes. As the scope of foreign education grew, Indians started getting reputed jobs in Europe and the USA. According to gadgetsnow.com, one out of three people working in Apple is an Indian today. While these success stories initially fueled excitement among the millennials, today’s Generation Z seems to have outgrown this excitement. They are more keen on pursuing something unconventional, that meets their interests better. So what are some exciting and innovative bachelors degree programmes that high school graduates of today can consider pursuing?

To delve into this, we interacted with two foreign education experts of Ahmedabad – Neha Gajrawala and Pauravi Varde. The two women, over their personal experience of finding a suitable and relevant education to their aspiring wards, realised how critical this step is in the lives of parents and students. This prompted them to organise their learnings into a well-etched overseas educational consultancy – Continental Leap.  Unlike their contemporaries, they focus on the student and work to find relevant vocation for them. We caught up with these experts to help us curate the right kind of list. So here it is – a list of some of the most exciting courses young people can check out today for their undergraduate studies, across the streams of science, commerce and humanities!

Sports Management

If you are a sports fan but think you might enjoy a desk job, then this course might interest you. A Sports Manager controls all matters related to finances for sports teams and sports persons, at both the college and professional level. Some core responsibilities of a sports manager include hiring coaches, negotiating contracts and trades, managing media correspondence, and organising promotional events. Leadership skills and decision-making abilities are a few essential qualities that can make or break an individual in the field of sports management. Qualification is not a constraint, and any high school graduate from any stream can pursue this profession. In time, you will also be ready to handle the criticism of fans when the team you manage loses a game!

Sports Engineering and Technology

The field of sports engineering is rapidly growing. It covers both the research and industry of sports, and looks into developing state-of-the-art sports equipment, game venues, and performance feedback systems for athletes. The field is a great career opportunity for science students, who are specifically inclined towards the science of sports. Those studying physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and materials science will have to delve into an intense study of kinematics, dynamics and biomechanics as part of this program. High school graduates from the science stream can apply to various institutes in Europe, Australia and Iran to pursue bachelors in sports engineering.

Video Game Development

For computer whizzes who like wearing tees and denim to work and like to stay glued to a screen for hours, but also happen to be interested in coding, software development, mathematics, and creative arts skills, video game development can do wonders! In this curriculum, students learn to design games for computers, mobiles and consoles. As their experience grows, they can develop a speciality in a particular system and either work for a publisher (a game developing company) or work as an independent game developer. Gaming enthusiasts from any field (preferably from the field of computers), can get into this emerging field as long as they are gaga over technology. The course is available in various countries and in some Indian institutions too, like National Institute of Design (NID).

Luxury Brand Management

High school graduates from any field (ideally, commerce) who have good interpersonal skills, and aim to carve out a niche in media communications, product design, brand knowledge, and service development, can also consider becoming luxury brand managers. Brand representatives analyse the reputations of brands and maintain a healthy relationship with the brands’ clienteles. While a luxury and maybe selling cosmetics, lifestyle products or even high-end luxury products like private jets, the key responsibilities of this role include predicting the scalability of a product in the brand’s overall collection and to preserve the brand’s legacy. The best education in this field can be pursued from reputed institutions based in the USA, Singapore and across nations in Europe.

Econometrics

This is a course specifically designed for problem solvers who love skimming through piles of data to find facts. Students use statistical methods to analyse econometrics data to test or develop economic theories. This might include risk management for a business or researching the financial arrangements for a start-up. The methods used are based on statistical inferences and not just on economic theories. People use calculation tools to help a business grow sustainably. If you are a brilliant commerce student, are very much in love with statistics, and are ready to nail the common entrance exams held by various institutions based in the UK, USA, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong, econometrics could be your choice.

Product Designer

A product designer is like an artist who designs and conceptualises ideas systematically to develop them into sustainable inventions or products. The profession creatively combines technology, science and art. The creator is responsible for visualising and creating a 3D model of a prototype and eventually producing a tangible product. Reputed academies in USA, India and countries in Europe and Scandinavia offer great product design courses, even at bachelors level, open to students from any stream. Institutions might require their own candidate assessment during admissions.

Linguistics

Got an aptitude for the languages? Linguistics might be your calling. Different from the study of literature, linguistics is a science of languages that draws upon analyses of grammar, syntax (sentence structure), forms, phonology (sound patterns), morphology (word structure) and phonetics. Linguistics graduates can work as great speech therapists, who can help people with speaking disabilities. Many schools these days prefer to hire a linguist to help children develop better lingual skills. Various linguistic degrees are offered in universities across the globe, and the field is mostly pursued by students from the arts and humanities.

Atmospheric Sciences

With the planet experiencing an increased greenhouse effect and the worsening effects of climate change, the world has started embracing ecological studies evermore today. Atmospheric Studies became popular in the mid-nineteenth century and is even more relevant today with the latest technologies that we can use to evaluate the Earth’s atmospheric changes. The Atmospheric Sciences mainly focus on studying processes in the Earth’s atmosphere, which include changes in the weather, increasing pollution and even changes in the atmosphere due to the deforestation The field is a mix of meteorology (atmospheric chemistry and physics), climatology (the study of climate variability), aeronomy (studying the upper layer of the earth) and even planetary science. It can be pursued after high school, mainly by students from the science stream.

Oceanography

The study of Oceanography, which is conducted both in labs and on the fields, includes researching various water bodies, mainly oceans, for their marine life, ecosystems, waves, currents, seafloor geology and shifting of sediments. The field is a holistic combination of history, geology, chemistry, physics and thus recommended only for students from the science stream who can pursue it as their undergraduate degree. The most highly recommended institutes in this field are situated in New Zealand, Australia, USA, Singapore and nations in Europe. There are a few institutes that offer this course in India, like the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa.

If you know of any undergraduate programs that are also exciting and innovative, send us information about them through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Whatsapp on +917016718614. We would love to feature them in our article.

List of programmes curated with the help of Continental Leap