4.0 GPA Harvard grad working a retail job

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
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<p>The vast majority of law school student body is comprised of humanities grads, who chose law school due to lack of other options. Where I was getting at is that law school shouldn’t be viewed as the “Plan B” for humanities grads, since the employment prospects of large chunks of law grads are very poor.</p>

<p>The most fundamental problem with law is that ABA doesn’t control the supply of law schools, and hence, the supply of lawyers in market. Even when the economy was great, most law grads from lower ranked law schools struggled greatly with employment. What the recession changed was that it now impacts the employment outcome of law grads from very top schools, also.</p>

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<p>I can see your side of argument. However, if your degree is in a quant-heavy and technical discipline, worst comes worst even if the economy absolutely crashes and you encounter that cycle you mention, you can still leverage your B.S in engineering or CS to head to grad school in eng/ CS, buy some more time and gain more skills, and try to coincide your graduation with improving economy. Or, like I mentioned earlier, you can leverage your technical degree to get into other industries that may be doing better than your specialized fields, such as quant finance (these employers really care about your mental math/ quant ability and aggressively recruit high-performing engineering students)</p>

<p>Another option could be that, with engineering/ CS background, you can head to law school. A BS in engineering / CS combined with a JD from a top law school = license to print money, even in this economic climate. (IP/ Patent law is the most lucrative area of law, and there aren’t many lawyers with engineering backgrounds, hence, the supply of lawyers with these skills are limited)</p>

<p>Most of liberal arts grads won’t even have that option, since the job market for the vast majority of liberal arts grads are not very good, regardless of economy.</p>

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<p>Ah, yes. But the majority of those IB jobs at bulge bracket banks go to the very top students. What happens to the middling students who majored in humanities?</p>

<p>B.A. in humanities from a top Ivy = high upward potential, yet severe downward risk. Even if you are a government major at Harvard, if you crush your GPA and get killer internships, you can land a six figure I-banking or top consulting job. However, in case you graduate with a 3.0 (or in some cases, even 4.0) or got unlucky with finance/consulting recruiting or what not, you face a significant risk of graduating unemployed.</p>

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<p>I think you don’t have sufficient perspective to say what you are saying. When I look at the elite-college humanities majors of my cohort, and people I know in their 30s now, I don’t see the “severe downside risk”. The person I know who has struggled most is an engineering BS and OR PhD, but that’s because he’s been chasing the big IPO score and never found it. (I’m not counting the mentally ill.)</p>

<p>I will admit to not knowing a lot of people who ONLY have humanities BAs. But they include my sister the sometimes-C-average Spanish major, who has been continuously employed – and for most of the last couple decades it has generally been at astronomical compensation levels – except for the year she took off to go trekking in the Himalayas. And a whole bunch of people who are employed – still! – as print journalists (and sometime authors). One former ad-man who has a video production company. A few teachers, and someone who owns a high-end catering company with her husband.</p>

<p>I didn’t suggest a Harvard grad could waltz into PwC and claim a job. He would have to do some qualification work, and in any event it’s hard to get a Harvard grad in the door at PwC. It’s not like I even interviewed with AA back in the day. I used my few accounting courses, my grades, some extracurriculars, and a great internship to get myself job offers from Morgan Guaranty and Salomon Bros. (once two of the strongest names on Wall St.), and didn’t take either. My Art History major roommate went to business school and became a Silicon Valley real estate developer; he has one kickass art collection, I can tell you that. And people didn’t expect to score big the day after graduation. My sister started in the mail room, literally. The successful 30-something journalists I know all had some lean, lean freelancing years before they got traction.</p>

<p>When I look at my kids and their friends (mostly humanities and non-economics social science majors), they don’t look so different. The ones who graduated recently are scuffling, looking for their place in the world. The ones who are a few years out generally have some real traction. So sure, some “graduated unemployed”. Big deal. Their careers will last 40-50 years; a few months of un- or under-employment isn’t a crisis.</p>

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<p>Stop trolling boomers and gb2/XO/, lil’breh.</p>

<p>Money as an end doesn’t justify the means you propose.</p>

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<p>Some people are unrealistically optimistic, while others are unrealistically pessimistic. I guess the advantage to being pessimistic is that you’re never disappointed.</p>

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<p>The YouTube video shows a glimpse of her Harvard diploma. It shows she graduated “cum laude.” One would think that with a 4.0, she would have been Phi Beta Kappa and a “summa cum laude.” You can actually graduate from Harvard with less than a 3.0 and still graduate “cum laude.” Again, if she was this smart, why is her degree just merely passable? Did she fail to write her honors thesis? Something just doesn’t feel right here.</p>

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<p>In my experience engineering B.S. and M.S. degrees are completely fungible in terms of employment although I will allow that it may not be the case in all disciplines. So going on to grad school is an expensive way to wait out a bad economic cycle. If I were a young unencumbered graduate in that situation I think I would have preferred to go backpacking across Europe and Asia instead.</p>

<p>As to going into quant finance, that is a route that is only available to an engineer coming from a top school and it is as competitive as the IB jobs you refer to in post #42.</p>

<p>The patent law path you suggest probably applies mostly to certain engineering disciplines much more than others. I would imagine in today’s economy it be a better path for a biomedical engineer than a civil engineer. And now you are talking about another three years and >$200,000 investment (not to mention the opportunity costs).</p>

<p>I still believe that the best engineers are those that want to be engineers. The best patent attorneys are those that want to be patent attorneys rather than engineers. And I suspect the best quant finance jocks are those that want that career. These alternative careers that you suggest truly are not available to the vast majority of engineering graduates. Supply and demand still rules.</p>

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<p>As my old man used to tell me, “better be safe than sorry”.</p>

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<p>1) This is a legit topic that deserves serious consideration and discussion,
2) I am not talking about landing six figure job right out of college; for many liberal arts grads even from Ivies, the question becomes “Can I even get a job that requires a college diploma”
3) You will soon realize that having a roof over your head and bringing food on table are way more important concerns than “chasing your dreams and studying what you love”</p>

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<p>Look, you are missing the whole point here. The point is that someone with a BS in engineering or CS has a lot more options to go with, in case economy goes sour or things don’t work out right out of gate. Also - most engineering folks I know from my college are employed in a decent job. Even those with obscure GPA’s - many times they were able to secure a research-driven job or management rotational programs at F500 or mid sized companies. Engineering folks have it much better than humanities or sciences grads, this can’t even be disputed.</p>

<p>Regarding law school or grad school in engineering: yes, it is an expensive credential to pursue and incurs heavy financial & opportunity costs, but at least with an engineering/ CS background, you have a very high chance of securing a good job with strong career outlook at the end of tunnel. The same can’t be said for those masses with a BA in Philosophy.</p>

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<p>I understand that “following your passion” is nice and all, but for many people in real life, this becomes a second distant priority. You have to do what you’ve got to do, given your background, economic climate, and other circumstances. Unless you are born wealthy and have cushy fallback option to rely on your daddy and mommy for a long time, you have to provide somehow.</p>

<p>And, let’s face it - many people in real world don’t exactly love their jobs. Nature of the beast. The sooner you realize it, the better. Those 17 million college grads who work in retail jobs - do you think these people do their jobs because they like their jobs? I don’t think so. It’s called “having a roof over your head and having stuff to eat.” If you were born 100 years ago, or at any point during human existence before the recent human history, the chances are very strong that you would’ve become a farmer. And yet, how many men cried themselves to sleep because they didn’t like their jobs or they weren’t following their “passion”?</p>

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<p>“The same can’t be said for those masses with a BA in Philosophy.”</p>

<p>Your advice is well intentioned and applies to many, but not everyone. I’ve lived long enough to see firsthand if you are talented enough and ambitious, it does not matter what you major in, and even for some, if you have a degree at all. I’ve seen someone with no degree at all head hunted by a fortune 100 company. I knew a Citibank division head with no college degree. I’m not talking one in a million like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But, you would be surprised what raw talent can accomplish. Would I advise a young person to get a degree? Yes, but there are many paths (and majors) to success.</p>

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<p>I’ve seen several of these types of discussions on CC and have a few observations.</p>

<p>There are two schools of thought:</p>

<p>1) College is about learning a skill or skills that will enable one to get a job upon graduation.</p>

<p>2) College is about pursuing your passion and following your bliss.</p>

<p>I think the reality is that people need to consider both - but it’s even more complicated. First of all, what does a 17/18 year old really know about working as an engineer, theater artist, or anything else for that matter? Second, studying something in college tells you little or nothing about that thing as a career. Most engineers will never have to solve a differential equation but guess what gives many engineering students major headaches?</p>

<p>So that being said, the best suggestion is to either study something where those majors are getting hired or if you’re studying something with few employment prospects, go to an inexpensive school so you won’t be up to your neck in debt and start thinking hard about your plan B.</p>

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<p>The thing is, there aren’t that many things with concrete employment prospects. So far we have what? engineering (some of it), computer science, nursing, accounting, and maybe math as a path into something like actuarial science. And teaching, but I think the OP and his ilk turn their noses up at that, because it’s seriously limited financially. If everyone started going into those fields, there wouldn’t be enough jobs for them when they got out of college either. (And lots of the engineering jobs seem to be migrating to Asia, where engineers seem to be plentiful and hence not so well paid.) Meanwhile, there are millions of jobs that need to be filled by sentient human beings that don’t match up with those (or any other) specific majors. We are clearly going through a bad time now, and there are also long-term trends in employment (not so many farriers or coopers needed anymore, and true teamsters are a rarity), but in general there are places in the world for almost everyone.</p>

<p>(It’s not so clear that there are positions that really require a college degree for everyone who graduates from college. But as many people have noted a college degree is really replacing the high school degree as the minimum qualification for any job requring any amount of judgment. High school degrees are no longer a reliable indicator of basic skills, but college degrees mostly are.)</p>

<p>What many people seem to do is to major in pseudo-training “business” programs, which really amount to lite versions of introductory courses in other academic fileds plus some business acculturation. It doesn’t qualify students to do anything, but at least it makes them look eager and talk the talk, and students think it makes them employable.</p>

<p>Subject to occasional exceptions, mostly self-inflicted, the set of kids who attend elite colleges – all of whom are within the top 1% of their age cohorts in terms of intelligence and drive – are not going to be digging ditches or mucking stalls for a living unless they want to. These kids don’t have to take “business” to be employable, and generally can’t, because their institutions don’t recognize it as a legitimate undergraduate academic field.</p>

<p>Lake Clouds has it a little wrong, though, or at least so I think. If you are going to college someplace like Harvard – this is a Harvard board – you can major in anything you like, even though Harvard may be expensive, because with a little effort and forethought you can get a decent job regardless of your major. If you are going someplace cheap like your local fourth-tier directional public university, you need to do a lot more to signal your employability, including selecting an appropriate major.</p>

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<p>The average time spent in the same job, or field, is about four years – that’s down from seven years a while back. So, everyone, regardless of major, needs transferable skills. That’s especially true for Liberal Arts Majors, wherever they went to school:
[10</a> Transferable Skills You Learned During Your College Education](<a href=“http://timmathisen.hubpages.com/hub/10-core-skills-developed-from-a-liberal-education]10”>http://timmathisen.hubpages.com/hub/10-core-skills-developed-from-a-liberal-education)
<a href=“http://www.aacu.org/leap/documents/LEAP_MakingtheCase_Final.pdf[/url]”>http://www.aacu.org/leap/documents/LEAP_MakingtheCase_Final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also see: [Liberal</a> arts majors are very hirable](<a href=“http://wcfcourier.com/news/opinion/guest_column/liberal-arts-majors-are-very-hirable/article_51793bc4-79b5-11e1-9bb6-001a4bcf887a.html]Liberal”>Liberal arts majors are very hirable)</p>

<p>"Philosophy majors are No. 1 on the LSAT; business majors are No. 24 on the LSAT.</p>

<p>Philosophy majors outperform business majors by a margin of 15 percent on the GMAT.</p>

<p>Philosophy majors, on average, do better than all other majors on the GRE, LSAT, GMAT, and MCAT."</p>

<p>"Why do employers prefer to hire students with liberal arts majors? In a national research study of 2,300 college students, summarized in the groundbreaking book Academically Adrift, students majoring in business, education, social work and communications show the smallest gains over four years in critical thinking and analytic reasoning. The big winners in college are liberal arts majors who, over four years, show “significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills.”</p>

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<p>Agreed.</p>

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<p>Where I would disagree with the spirit of your argument is that regardless of your raw intellect, talent, or work ethic, you will make it that much harder on yourself by majoring in humanities or life sciences in getting your foot in the door on many of desirable career tracks. Like I mentioned, many hot-shots on Wall St were humanities majors, and after you get your foot in the door and have your career established somewhat, I would agree that your recent work experience, talent, connections, or being able to play politics at work play larger roles in shaping your career success than what your college major was.</p>

<p>Put it another way, you can be the best poker player in the world, but if you can’t get a seat at the right table to begin with, it doesn’t count for much.</p>

<p>The valedictorian from my high school went to Princeton and graduated with a degree in Philosophy, two years ago. That guy was brilliant in all subjects, and was taking multivariable calculus and organic chem at a local college as a junior in HS. Why he chose to major in Philosophy in college, despite his talent in quant subjects, is beyond me. I suspect he fell as a victim to those cheer-leading camps that tell naive, clueless 19-year olds “study what you love, follow your passion and the money will follow”. This guy graduated unemployed and has been tutoring SAT as a freelancing job, living out of his parents’ basement. Talking about the waste of such potential…</p>

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<p>I have a theory. If you go to your Directional State U, and you’re just an average student - you probably end up in ‘Business’.</p>

<p>Who ends up with liberal arts degrees or philosophy degrees? Kids who go to LACs: Amherst, Middlebury, etc. I don’t doubt they have more upside potential.</p>

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<p>It is exactly this kind of assumption and mentality that ends up screwing with many young people’s future. Thanks to the cheerleaders that endlessly tell high achieving students “you are at a top college, you are the best of best, study what you love and follow your passion and the money will follow”, many naive young students just assume that as long as they made it to a good college and since they have the sufficient raw intellect, the rest will take care of itself. Nothing could be further from the truth.</p>

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<p>I don’t see that happening. There is a reason why the supply of engineers or computer scientists are drastically lower than the supply of history or poli sci majors. It is because engineering or CS require much more intellect and hard work to go through than those soft majors. A random Joe, with horrible study habits, who struggled with basic Trig equations in high school won’t likely to handle the rigor of engineering, math, or CS, and hence, would resort to political science or philosophy. As a result, I predict that the supply of engineering/ CS/ Math grads will be under control.</p>

<p>However, as you mention, the students who get into an institution such as Harvard or Princeton are, by large, very intelligent and hard working. Maybe these students are better off using their intellect and hard work in pursuing those ‘harder’ majors instead of ‘pursuing the passion’. Maybe these students aren’t the types that can get 3.8 GPA in electrical engineering from MIT, but with their raw intellect and work ethic, they could graduate with a reasonable GPA in a quantitative discipline from a state school.</p>

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<p>In engineering at least there is also a supply limitation in that the schools need to be ABET certified (I’m sure someone will argue this but 99% will agree). Getting ABET certification takes time and money - actually even Harvard is now trying to get this for their Mech E and other programs. Liberal Arts are a lot cheaper and quicker to set-up.</p>

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I see this uninformed opinion often on CC; those degrees require different intellectual skills than the so-called “soft” majors.</p>

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<p>And I can assure you that your prediction will not hold up. Listen, I went into chemical engineering not because I knew what they did, but because I loved chemistry in high school and I wanted to be employable with a four year degree. The point is, I am sympathetic to the view of being utilitarian with respect to choosing a major. But what I have learned through my >30 years in the working world is there is no such thing as a safe major that will ensure job security. As I said in my earlier post, demand for engineers, accountants, nurses, etc. all go through cycles. Yes, we have gone through a very rough few years in terms of jobs and certain fields have held up better than others, but there is no assurance that the same fields will be in high demand when the high school student who is looking for advice on these boards actually graduates from college. I agree that these will still be good fields for many to go into, but the economy will need a broad selection of workers with a broad set of skills. My real objection is that you are painting with too broad of a brush.</p>