Course selection

Some factors that one should keep in mind when selecting courses are:

• Human capital — What employable skills will you build by taking a given course?
• Consumption — How much will you enjoy the course?
• Signaling — What impact will taking the course have on your college or graduate school admission prospects, or on your employment prospects?
• Networking with teachers — How will you benefit from your relationship with the teacher of the course?
• Networking with students — How will you benefit from your relationships with the students who you meet in the course?

Human Capital

Some things that courses can teach you that build your human capital are

• Knowledge of your strengths, weaknesses and interests that helps you decide what jobs you're most suited for. For example, if you take a course in chemistry and really enjoy it, that might help you determine whether you want to be a chemist.
• Subject matter knowledge that's directly relevant to your future work. For example, if you're going to be a biomedical researcher, a biology course might teach you prerequisite knowledge for your future work.
• General skills that you’ll use in your future work. For example, if you’re going to be a lawyer, a philosophy course might teach you how to analyze arguments — a skill that many lawyers use on a regular basis

It's important to note that appearances can be deceiving here:

• Courses in a given subject can be unrepresentative of what professional practice involving the subject is like. For example, high school science courses often don't include lab work that's representative of experimental science.
• The material taught in courses that are required to get a given job is often not used on the job. For example, many jobs with title ``engineer are actually managerial jobs that don't use coursework in calculus and physics.
• Sometimes courses that say that they teach a skill don't actually teach that skill. For example, a course that's