libeach

My son is a H.S. Jr. English and history are his strong suits, but I'm wondering about career paths.

The bigger question is what colleges/universities are best know for their English depts.?

He currently has a 98.56% GPA, in a humanities/honors programis,is taking 3 AP classes (& is scheduled for 4 as a Sr.), and has excellent extracurriculars.

Thanks for opinions, ideas, advice.

GetAccepted

Check out this,
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsa...hools/rankings

but this is for graduate schools, so I'm not really sure.
Hope that helps.

JamesGold

Any top university will have an excellent English department. It's a bread and butter major.

ashleysara

Humanities are making a comeback so don’t worry about careers too much

unicornjam

What has he said he wants to do?

AuburnMathTutor

People who actually want to do liberal arts do fine. It's the people who go with liberal arts because they know they should "go to college" but they don't have any real interest in learning anything that end up giving liberal arts a bad name.

The same happens in engineering, business, and the sciences. The reason it seems more prevalent in the liberal arts is because there is a general prejudice that the liberal arts are "easy" whereas, say, engineering is "hard". Clearly this is completely misguided thinking, but the perception persists.

Go for English, all the way. The best schools for English are probably going to be the Ivies... after that, any well-respected state school with a large liberal arts department will be fine. You may even look at small, private LACs as these can have more specialized training and provide a better environment for some students.

URichmond2010

What they said ^^.

Ivys should have great English Departments as should top state schools. If your son is looking for smaller class sizes, spend some time looking at LACs, but you might want to narrow them down by location and other qualities first, too, since there are so many.

You'll want to look at how large the department is (re: number of teachers and number of genres/periods taught), curriculum (is it more free form or structured--there's no right or wrong here, just his preference). You might also want to consider the college's focus on career development, internships, externships, etc.

cluelessdad

There is a Death of Liberal Arts thread here if you want to be scared away from an English major I think that thread amounts to alot of fearmongering from tech majors who are a bit full of themselves and simply not familiar with the broad range of career paths English majors actually achieve.

An English degree is fantastic -- for the right kid. That means a kid who is passionate and will actively engage. Kids who mail it in really do end up with a worthless degree, more so than other majors which largely amount to digesting lots of facts (you at least have to cram for the exams; hard to cram for depth of thought papers etc.). But the critical and creative thought, writing and communications skills that result from an engaged English education -- awesome.

English also sets up well for a double (or dual) major, that's the nature of the liberal arts; so a concentration on something "more practical" can marry up well if that ties to an interest and helps ease th fears of a "pure" liberal arts major. (But if I had it to do over again I would have doubled with history.)

What colleges? As an ideal, I think the LACs are optimized for English majors: small classes, tenure track profs grading the work and leading Socratic style discussions, engaged classmates probing ever deeper into the material .... (God, I so want to do it all over again!!) But the great news is high quality English departments are avaialbe at many colleges. Outside the Ivies/LACs, Texas (Michener endowment), Iowa (increasingly tying undergrads into top grad writing program), UWash - Seattle (another major endowment coup, but emerging overall funding/prof pay concerns), Wisconsin (Lorrie Moore et al) come to mind. Your S will have fun exploring!

There is also an issue of cost to consider: great careers can result from the BA degree itself, but English majors tend to be true scholars and interested an grad/professional programs down the road. Blow big bucks on a LAC or reserve ammo for grad/professional studies? I emphatically do not think the kid should carry a major debt load with that BA degree, just so distorting on what career paths kids then feel they must pursue -- its OK if YOU take on the big debt though

OK, I've rambled enough.

jingle

People with English majors are qualified for the same jobs as anybody else who has taken a nontechnical degree. My students have gone into journalism, human resources, finance, insurance, law, teaching, politics, fiction writing, the ministry, college administration, etc. Many have gone on to graduate school, though not necessarily in English.
Some have completed premed requirements, either alongside the English major or afterward, and then become physicians.

When I was a junior at an Ivy League school lo these many years ago, I was doing quite well in terms of my grades, but finding myself increasingly unhappy and stymied in a "practical" scientific major. When I switched to English, a field in which I had greater natural talent and interest, my engineer dad was absolutely horrified. He remained upset for six years, during which time I finished a PhD and got a tenure-track position in the English Dept. of another Ivy League school. Then he relaxed :-) He was right to be worried, however; the job market for English PhDs has long been dreadful. I absolutely love my job but rarely recommend this career path to others.