This may be a silver lining in an otherwise very gloomy comment page? When I was in HS (though not in the US), popularity was highly correlated with wealth and/or political activism.
There were some extremely smart people in my high school that ended up being sold that siren song of humanities major in small expensive new england private school, only to end up in an an irrelevant career due to a lack of networking opportunities. Those that made it out alive had a fund in their name set up at birth.
My advice is to take active steps to improve your chances. You want an opportunity, so go where there is more of them for you to chase at a large school in a large city to increase your odds of running into one of these opportunities, both within the school or in the local economy. It also makes it easier to pivot into another field if you really don't like where you started. Chances are, that niche liberal arts school in rural Maine might only be really strong in that one department, but the state school will be decent in 10 because larger state schools have an easier time securing funding for more departments (unless the private school is Harvard).
I hate to come at it from this angle because I'm so exasperated by the parents who write off all degrees without a clear economic angle as worthless. Passion matters. But so does prudence. Choose your path carefully, and then figure out what you need to do to make it happen. The vast majority of degrees aren't get-a-job-for-free cards.
