The main issue is the skill system in Sims 2. The 7 skills are: Cooking, Mechanical, Charisma, Logic, Body, Creativity and Cleaning. They are all learned skills and any sim can in theory max out any of the skills. However, some sim personalities find it easier to learn some skills than others, e.g. very Outgoing sims learn Charisma more easily than very Shy sims. (The difference is like a 10% boost or decrease in rate, not something that would be too annoying in gameplay).
What they have done with the 11 majors is to make it so that your sim requires a moderate skill level in 4 out of the 7 skills for each major. But, in the real world, almost all academic subjects require Logic and/or Creativity, while practical subjects like creative arts & lab sciences also require Mechanical and/or Body. Cooking & Cleaning are virtually irrelevant, and Charisma is important only at the high levels, when you're applying for funding or speaking at conferences. To me, it would make sense just to work on the skills that are actually relevant to the career in real life - so a Physicist would need high Logic (8 or 9), high Mechanical (7 or 8), and moderate Creativity (3 or 4). An Artist would need high Creativity (8 or 9), high Mechanical (7 or 8), and moderate Body (3 or 4).
But they haven't done that. Presumably to try to make sure that the different majors "feel" different to the players, they've picked a somewhat arbitrary collection of skill points that the sims must achieve in order to maximise the academic potential bar so that their performance in class & term papers counts for something. (Does that make sense? I could show you what I mean on the screen in about 5 minutes of gameplay, but it sounds horrendously complicated in print). Thus, to graduate with a high grade in Physics, you need Mechanical 5, Logic 4, Cleaning 4 and Creativity 3 (Yeah, right!). As they've forced the Cooking and Cleaning skills in, and picked a daft number of subjects, then the actual match-up of majors to careers is, unsurprisingly, also a bit daft.
So, Drama major (which Mitch did) matches best to Show Business, and also to Politics and Athletics. A job came up in Show Business on the first day, so I put him in that obvious career. Physics major (which Max did) matches best to Science, and also to Medicine and the Paranormal. The reason why he ended up in Medicine was basically because of a combination of a) There weren't any Science jobs on the first day they moved in, b) I'm utterly sick of the Science career track because one of the other Maxis premade families, the Curious family, has 3 guys who are all Scientists (http://pics.livejournal.com/baratron/pic/00027tt1/g9), and the job titles are entirely unchanged from Sims 1, and most of my Sims 1 sims were Scientists! and c) I didn't think Max was the sort of person who'd enjoy Paranormal. He's a bit too level-headed to deal with the woo-woo, and I'm planning to put another student, who interestingly enough grew up in a household with an extensive graveyard & lots of ghosts, through the Physics major & then into the Paranormal career.
In further proof of Maxis' total misunderstanding, I present the fact that Mathematics major matches best to Natural Scientist (a Biology career if ever I saw one), and then to Science and Life Of Crime. Uh-huh. Not Politics or Business, then? No wonder governments have trouble making their numbers add up!
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The main issue is the skill system in Sims 2. The 7 skills are: Cooking, Mechanical, Charisma, Logic, Body, Creativity and Cleaning. They are all learned skills and any sim can in theory max out any of the skills. However, some sim personalities find it easier to learn some skills than others, e.g. very Outgoing sims learn Charisma more easily than very Shy sims. (The difference is like a 10% boost or decrease in rate, not something that would be too annoying in gameplay).
What they have done with the 11 majors is to make it so that your sim requires a moderate skill level in 4 out of the 7 skills for each major. But, in the real world, almost all academic subjects require Logic and/or Creativity, while practical subjects like creative arts & lab sciences also require Mechanical and/or Body. Cooking & Cleaning are virtually irrelevant, and Charisma is important only at the high levels, when you're applying for funding or speaking at conferences. To me, it would make sense just to work on the skills that are actually relevant to the career in real life - so a Physicist would need high Logic (8 or 9), high Mechanical (7 or 8), and moderate Creativity (3 or 4). An Artist would need high Creativity (8 or 9), high Mechanical (7 or 8), and moderate Body (3 or 4).
But they haven't done that. Presumably to try to make sure that the different majors "feel" different to the players, they've picked a somewhat arbitrary collection of skill points that the sims must achieve in order to maximise the academic potential bar so that their performance in class & term papers counts for something. (Does that make sense? I could show you what I mean on the screen in about 5 minutes of gameplay, but it sounds horrendously complicated in print). Thus, to graduate with a high grade in Physics, you need Mechanical 5, Logic 4, Cleaning 4 and Creativity 3 (Yeah, right!). As they've forced the Cooking and Cleaning skills in, and picked a daft number of subjects, then the actual match-up of majors to careers is, unsurprisingly, also a bit daft.
So, Drama major (which Mitch did) matches best to Show Business, and also to Politics and Athletics. A job came up in Show Business on the first day, so I put him in that obvious career. Physics major (which Max did) matches best to Science, and also to Medicine and the Paranormal. The reason why he ended up in Medicine was basically because of a combination of a) There weren't any Science jobs on the first day they moved in, b) I'm utterly sick of the Science career track because one of the other Maxis premade families, the Curious family, has 3 guys who are all Scientists (http://pics.livejournal.com/baratron/pic/00027tt1/g9), and the job titles are entirely unchanged from Sims 1, and most of my Sims 1 sims were Scientists! and c) I didn't think Max was the sort of person who'd enjoy Paranormal. He's a bit too level-headed to deal with the woo-woo, and I'm planning to put another student, who interestingly enough grew up in a household with an extensive graveyard & lots of ghosts, through the Physics major & then into the Paranormal career.
In further proof of Maxis' total misunderstanding, I present the fact that Mathematics major matches best to Natural Scientist (a Biology career if ever I saw one), and then to Science and Life Of Crime. Uh-huh. Not Politics or Business, then? No wonder governments have trouble making their numbers add up!