When you've been out in the work force for a while, your experience will carry more weight than your education when an employer is considering you for a job. However, if you are a recent graduate, a prospective employer will want to know a lot about your education, and in general, the time you spent in school. So the interviewer will ask you about your course work, your extracurricular activities, your grades, and even about how you chose your college and your major.

Tips for Answering Questions about Your Education

Be prepared to not only talk about the courses you took in college, but also what you gained from them. What skills did you develop in the classroom? Were there any projects that were particularly helpful in cultivating some of those skills? For example, if you had a project that required you to work as part of a team, discuss what you learned from that experience.

The interviewer is interested in how you make decisions and may ask you how you chose your college and your major. Be prepared to discuss the process you went through when making your choices. It will put you in a better light if your choices were deliberate rather than random. For example, it probably isn't a great idea to say you chose your college because the campus looked nice.

If your college major is different than the field in which you are now seeking employment, the interviewer will probably ask you about this. Explain how you made your decision to change fields, again being sure to seem deliberate in your choice. Also talk about how your major helped prepare you for your current field.

People change careers somewhere between three and seven times in their lives. Clearly it is not that unusual for someone to look for a job in a field other than her college major. The employer may not be daunted by the fact that you changed careers as long as you put serious thought into your decision.

Sample Questions about Education

Why did you choose to major in … ?

Don't forget that your choice was deliberate. You explored your options and decided based on your research that this was the right one for you. You want the interviewer to see you as someone who makes decisions carefully and not haphazardly. Even if you are seeking work in a field other than the one you majored in, you can explain what your thinking was at the time you made your decision and how you came to change your mind.

What extracurricular activities did you participate in?

You don't have to list every extracurricular club you joined. Choose those in which you had leadership roles and from which you gained important skills. If you participated in few activities outside the classroom, try to think of something (but be truthful). Extracurricular activities make you well rounded. It is in your best interests to show you did something other than schoolwork.