Internal and External Motivation Factors Affecting Students of SMA Negeri 2 Kabanjahe in Determining the Selection of Departments Further Study

As is known based on a survey conducted by Indonesia Career Center Work (ICCN), 87% of students in Indonesia admitted that the majors they took were not in accordance with their interests. The majors in high school are different from the majors when going to college. This makes students have to make decisions in choosing majors for further education. Interest and potential are internal motivations that come from students in determining majors selection decisions. In addition, external motivation is also one of the factors that influence students in determining the decision of the major to be chosen. This study was conducted to determine whether the interests, potential and income of parents have an influence on students' decisions in choosing majors for further studies. In this study, the researcher observed the students of SMA Negeri 2 Kabanjahe, and then the researcher gave a list of questions to the respondents to fill out the questionnaire. The results of the quality of the model, if feasible, will proceed to the next stage, namely testing the research hypothesis. Partial testing (t test) shows that the variables of interest and self-potential have a significant effect on the decision to choose majors, while parental income has no significant effect on the decision to choose majors. Furthermore, the results of the simultaneous test (Test F) showed that the three independent variables had an effect on the dependent variable. Adjusted R square obtained is 0.570. This shows that the variables of student interest, self-potential and parental income are able to explain the decision to choose majors by 57.0%, while the remaining 43.0% is influenced by other variables not examined in this study. Keywords: Interests; Potency; Income; Department.