4.0 GPA Harvard grad working a retail job

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
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<p>[Harvard</a> Graduate from Fresno earns 4.0 GPA (the followup) - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NLI1XDZZPs]Harvard”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NLI1XDZZPs)</p>

<p>This woman graduated with a 4.0 GPA in Psychology from Harvard. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to do much good for her career, as she works at a Blockbuster Video store. (who plans to attend law school - probably due to lack of real job options)</p>

<p>This confirms my speculation that the choice of your major >>> the brand name of the college you attend.</p>

<p>Discuss.</p>

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<p>That’s a ridiculous read of that story! There is no indication the woman had any interest whatsoever in a career-track job, or that she was applying to law school for want of any better options. It sounded like she was completely focused on law school. She was working part-time near her home while she took an LSAT prep course. And by the time this story aired, a previous story identifying her as a 4.0 Harvard grad who planned to go to law school had led a local law firm to offer her a full-time job as a legal assistant – a job she was going to start the Monday after her LSAT. If anything, a big part of the story is the enormous power of the Harvard brand.</p>

<p>There are a few odd aspects to the story. Her first choice law school is Pepperdine. That pretty much tags her as a serious evangelical Christian fairly far outside the Harvard mainstream. (Even serious evangelical Christians with a 4.0 GPA from Harvard would be expected to aim for Stanford if they planned to stay in California.) A glimpse of her transcript in the story supports that hypothesis, as there are a couple of courses on Christian history and theology there. Honestly, with her Harvard 4.0, and SATs good enough to get into Harvard to begin with, if Pepperdine was really her first-choice law school I don’t know why she was even bothering to study for the LSAT. (Of course, maybe she secretly IS aiming for Stanford.)</p>

<p>Among my kids’ cohort, I know one Harvard history major (with a secondary concentration in painting) who is working for one of the big consulting firms at an outrageous salary, and another who is living with his Mom and working part-time as a janitor while he puts his PhD program applications together. They are both doing exactly what they want to do at this point. The janitor isn’t complaining about the job market, because he never looked for a job, other than one that would give him some spending money without making him think or work too much or be supervised closely. Is he entitled? Maybe letting himself go a bit slack? Sure. But what he’s not is a desperate kid unable to find employment despite his Harvard degree.</p>

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<p>@NYU, that’s an absurd interpretation of this story.</p>

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<p>"Discuss. "</p>

<p>Discuss what? Other than when society can perhaps get a chance to knock a brand like Harvard, they will. And people will flock to the soapbox.</p>

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<p>I believe it is important that more prospective students are introduced to the reality called ‘job market’ after college. Many are led to the (false) belief that top educational credentials = career success. I know many people who attended schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, majored in humanities, and graduated unemployed. (with much bitterness)</p>

<p>Perhaps, the take home point is that more students should focus on building a marketable skill set to employers, choosing a marketable major, aggressively seeking internships, and networking with working professionals, more than worrying about getting a 4.0 GPA in psychology, government, or biology after they get into Harvard.</p>

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<p>To be frank, landing a job as a legal assistant doesn’t take a Harvard 4.0. Maybe the reason she was even able to land that job was due to her being on the news and grabbed the employer’s attention. (and sympathy)</p>

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<p>For law school placement, LSAT >>> college GPA. Maybe she didn’t do so hot on LSAT.</p>

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<p>How do you know that the Harvard grad you are referring to, who is working as a janitor, isn’t seeking an employment in a real job with career growth? Is it because he never explicitly mentioned to you that “I want a good job, but can’t land one”?</p>

<p>Outside of few industries - namely investment banking, management consulting, and biglaw - the pedigree of your educational degree doesn’t matter much. What matters more is your choice of major, personality (interviewing skills), and work experience. </p>

<p>FYI - I happened to be a law student. I met lots of Ivy grads at my law school (I myself an Ivy alum) and I can confidently say over 90% of the people I met came to law school precisely due to lack of real job options after college. I met lots of Harvard, Yale, or Dartmouth grads with degrees in humanities or economics, who didn’t know what to do with themselves after college and resorted to law school. Fortunately for them, they attend a top law school so landing an employment wasn’t that big of a hassle. However, for those less fortunate, landing a job as a lawyer is a formidable challenge in this economy. (at any law school outside top 10)</p>

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It might make more sense to tell us about some of them rather than the person in the article, who doesn’t really support your thesis at all.</p>

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<p>Outside of inv. banking or management consulting gigs, your BA in history or government from Harvard doesn’t carry much weight in job market. (good luck getting a banking or consulting gig, btw) Seriously, you should do some research on this. </p>

<p>Anecdotes don’t account for much, but my roommate is a Yale grad in political science. He was unemployed for a year after college and the best job he could get was a 35k/yr non-profit gig or some PR type of gig. He came to law school as a result of lack of job options.</p>

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I’ve never heard of a Yale poli sci major who wasn’t planning on going to law school.</p>

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<p>Brittney Lane definately attended pepperdine</p>

<p><a href=“http://law.pepperdine.edu/admissions/viewbook/Pepperdine-Law-Viewbook.pdf[/url]”>http://law.pepperdine.edu/admissions/viewbook/Pepperdine-Law-Viewbook.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>As a current law student, I can say that it is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea to treat your college years merely as a stepping stone to get into a law school.</p>

<p>I attend a top 6 law school, and 30-35% of recent grads graduated unemployed from my school, loaded with six figure school debt. Guess how much worse it is for lower ranked law schools.</p>

<p>Law is not a healthy nor robust industry now, and won’t be for long time. There is a very serious over supply of lawyers, and not enough jobs. If you hedge 100% of your bet on a career in law, you risk getting completely screwed later on.</p>

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<p>Here are a couple who never went to law school: [The</a> Glover Park Group :: Carter Eskew](<a href=“http://www.gloverparkgroup.com/our-team/carter-eskew/]The”>http://www.gloverparkgroup.com/our-team/carter-eskew/); [Mead</a> Treadwell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead_Treadwell]Mead”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead_Treadwell). There are others. But, yeah, I’m a little suspicious of hearing that a political science major was “forced” to go to law school, since most of them have that in their plan from Day 1.</p>

<p>There’s a difference between not being able to get a job and not being able to get the kind of master-of-the-universe job many Harvard and Yale graduates believe they deserve. A “35k/yr non-profit gig or some type of PR gig” can be the foundation of a great career (see Carter Eskew bio, above). My wife came out of Yale in the middle of a recession with a joint degree in Psychology and American Studies. To make rent while she looked for a meaningful job, she sold wholesale jewelry and worked evenings as an intake clerk at a hospital ER. By November, she had a VISTA job with a tiny nonprofit, and that turned into a decent-paying job within a year (as she helped the non-profit grow). If she had stayed with that job, we would be on Easy Street – a few years later, the management team did some for-profit projects on the side, had some luck and some smarts, and all of them wound up seriously wealthy. As it was, she has had a very satisfying career with some high-profile, high-impact jobs</p>

<p>EDIT TO ADD: Looking at the dates, this was happening in September 2008, i.e., a time of total free-fall in the economy after the Lehman collapse. And when word got out that there was a local girl who had graduated from Harvard with great grades, an employer came to HER with a job that fit her personal growth plan. That’s pretty bad evidence for the proposition that your major matters more than your alma mater, if you ask me.</p>

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<p>JHS,</p>

<p>I know far too many Ivy grads, just within my social circle, who got a degree that only teaches skills in “how to think critically” and struggled a great deal with employment before and after graduation. The problem is there aren’t enough jobs for people with degrees in psychology, biology, chemistry, government, or history, even for Harvard grads. </p>

<p>While I am not an alum of Harvard, I am an alum of another Ivy college. One guy from my fraternity graduated with a biology major two years ago, and wasn’t able to land a job. Last time I heard, he became a truck driver, literally driving trucks across states for food manufacturing companies. In addition, I knew many other Ivy grads with not so marketable majors who had to settle for sales jobs at horrible companies, due to lack of other options. </p>

<p>From many of prospective students heading off to college, I see too many who are concerned with “how do I get into x,y,z college?” or “how do I get into x,y,z law school?” I think this is unfortunate. More prospective (and college) students should be asking “what should I do to maximize my employment potential?”, or “what are some of the sought-after majors from employers?”</p>

<p>Bottom line: pursuing a major in humanities (or life sciences such as bio & chem) is a very risky proposition for your career, even if you attend a top college.</p>

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<p>NYU, is that axe sharp enough yet? You sure seem to be grinding the hell out of it.</p>

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<p>Yes. Thx for asking, brah</p>

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<p>What’s your point, NYULawyer? Why post this stuff? Harvard is a great 4 years for the people who go there. It’s not a ticket to anything and anyone who thinks differently is delusional. What’s so bad about going there if you get in? You mean you have to do well and make good choices, too? Wow. Thanks. CC is better for your wisdom. P.S.: love the top 6 law school allusion. That’ll make all the difference in your life. The people who go to law school #7 are losers and everyone knows that, haha.</p>

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<p>Reading comprehension fail. The point has been to highlight the fact that the choice of your major at college is more important than the college you attend, for career purposes. Nothing against Harvard, as this rule applies to any other school for that matter.</p>

<p>And yes, law school blows hard but at least I was able to get a good job out of it.</p>

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<p>So what are the most lucrative majors in your opinion?</p>

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<p>I have a relative who majored in Philosophy, finished his first year of law school, and after interviewing this past August for internships for next summer was given 5 offers from major law firms in 2 big cities, Chicago and San Francisco. He had a hard time choosing which one to go with. Talented guy, top schools, Philosophy major.</p>

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<p>1) Computer Science: </p>

<ul>
<li>You can get a developer/programmer job at a top tech company, if you are good. I heard the starting pay at Amazon/facebook/google/youtube type of firms for developers was 100k with 40-50k bonus. (with 45-50 hour working weeks)</li>
<li>You can leverage the CS degree to get into a quant-driven finance, such as algo trading or high frequency/quant trading, at top hedge funds or prop trading firms. (Citadel, Getco, Jane Street, etc) I have a friend who majored in CS at University of Illinois, killed it, and got a job at one of the top hedge funds in NYC as an algo trader. His starting comp was around 250k + year end bonus, although I don’t know how much that bonus would be. Heard from my friend that the future of trading is CS, since many trading firms are looking to move towards algo trading, which means that those with strong CS backgrounds will be in great demand.</li>
<li>Even if you miss out on those two options as a CS major, you still have a massive amount of employers willing to hire you as long as you went to a decent school and are competent enough. With a CS degree, you can go IT consulting, programming for F500 companies, becoming programming architects at mid sized companies, etc.</li>
</ul>

<p>2) Petroleum Engineering:
-Great demand for those with this major. One of the highest average starting salaries even among engineering majors. You can work as an engineer for an oil company. I have a friend from University of Illinois who got a job as a petroleum engineer at an oil & gas company. I don’t know exactly how much she makes, but judging from the fact that she bought a 3 bedroom luxury condo in Houston and a BMW M3 just after two years of savings from her work, I’d say she’s pretty balling.
-With this major, you can leverage the strong quant background to head to a quant-heavy finance role, which will net you top dollars, as well. </p>

<p>3) Electrical Engineering & Chemical Engineering:
-Again, very high market demand for those with these skills/ backgrounds. You can work in industry as an engineer in these fields, or you can work in a number of other corporate fields with this strong of a quant background, including quant-heavy finance.</p>

<p>4) Other engineering degrees, Math, and Statistics

  • With a degree in one of these majors with strong GPA to boot, you will be heavily recruited from finance firms, F500 firms, research firms, consulting firms, etc. </p>

<p>5) Accounting & Finance

  • Not as high-paying as other majors mentioned above, but a BA in Accountancy is almost a guarantee to a 60k/yr white collar, professional job at an accounting firm, given that your GPA is decent.
  • Very high demand for accounting majors
  • With accounting & finance combo, decent GPA, and decent internships under belt, you would be also eligible for corporate finance positions at F500, etc
  • Accounting & finance are both considerably easier than those other majors mentioned above, so this is a huge plus.</p>

<p>Other Careers:</p>

<p>1) Investment Banking:

  • Choice of your major doesn’t matter
  • These firms only recruit at top schools (Ivies, Duke, Stanford, MIT, Michigan, Berkeley, etc)
  • High GPA, finance/relevant internships, and strong interviewing skills are crucial to break in
  • However, not too many slots open for I-banking, as this industry has been shrinking and is still in turmoil
  • Another downside: very competitive to break into this industry, since they accept applications from all sorts of majors at Ivies and thus, hundreds, if not thousands, of students apply for each analyst position, meaning unless you are a stand-out student (absolute top GPA and strong finance internships), you aren’t likely to touch this job even if you come from Harvard
    -Another downside: brutal working hours (80-90 hours a week) and thus, very high turnover</p>

<p>2) Management Consulting

  • Again, your major doesn’t matter, since these firms hire diverse majors
  • High GPA and attending a top college is crucial, but you also need to ace those “case interviews” to get an offer, which are pretty hard (lots of brain teaser questions)
  • The downside is that each top consulting firm (Mck, BCG, or Bain) maybe hires 5-7 new analysts out of each top college, so they don’t hire that many, and hence, it is very tough/competitive to break into this industry
    -Downside: 70-80% travel</p>

<p>3) BigLaw

  • 160k + bonus comp starting out of law school
  • To get a Biglaw gig, you pretty much need to attend a top 14 law school, or rank top 10% of your class at top 25 law school
  • Downside is that it requires 3 years of law school after college, which is a lot of opportunity costs, as well as financial costs (law school tuition & living expenses = 70k a year)
  • Another downside is that much like Inv. banking, getting BigLaw is pretty damn hard for most law students and slots for these positions are severely limited</p>

<ul>
<li>Regarding law = if you were an engineering major in college and do a top law school on top of that, you are golden. Not only do law firms love to hire people with those backgrounds (you will have significant advantage in getting law firm offers relative to other law students) but some of the most lucrative areas of law are IP/ Patent prosecution, which require lawyers to have B.S. in engineering or computer science.</li>
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