Best Ivy for the undecided

jonri
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:16:33 +0000

Well…it’s hard to get tone across on a message board, but I think you’re going about this all wrong. That’s not meant to be rude.

Unless your D wants to apply to a business, engineering or similarly vocationally-oriented program, it really doesn’t matter which college she goes to in terms of finding a “marketable” major. That’s because the first job out of college rarely has much to do with the subject you major in. It’s just not on the top of the list among employers. It is true that they don’t like to see “gut” majors, but it makes little difference whether you major in English, poli sci, or biology for MOST jobs. Moreover, when a school has excellent academic advising, that doesn’t mean it has good vocational advising–they are two vastly different things.

If what you’re really worried about is her ability to earn a living, then the thing to do is to do a little research about what recent female athlete alums are doing. I know that at the college my kid attended, there was a truly wonderful network of former varsity team members who gave employment to team members during the summer if they wanted it and helped with that first job after college. It really didn’t matter what the heck the kid’s major was. As I understand it, most of these jobs are in business, particularly in marketing.

My own kid had a major that sounds less than marketable, but she took a few econ courses and did very well in them. She had good grades and she spent a lot of time on ECs–none of which were sports, however. She had NO trouble landing an internship for the summer after junior year in the financial sector paying a very high salary.It wasn’t about her major at all. It was about her grades, the fact that she has an aptitude for math, as demonstrated by SAT scores (yes, they asked) and grades in econ courses,her ECs, and her personality during interviews. She decided business wasn’t for her after the summer program, but that was her own choice, not one forced upon her. One of my young neighbors, who majored in Latin, went into one of the two year training programs at one of the top financial firms. A young woman who is doing quite well at Goldman Sachs, and who is now about 30, majored in French literature at all female LAC.

Many of the Ivies have ECs that are business oriented. Investment clubs have surged in popularity in recent years. There are entrepreneurial societies that sponsor business plan contests–and often give seed money to the winners. There are summer employment programs. Kids who are interested in business participate in these and it’s things like this that often leads to jobs.

So, if I were you, I’d be looking to see what the recent alums in her sport are doing now and how much help they got from the school’s network. To me, it sounds like that’s really what you’re worried about.

I’m still not sure that should be the deciding factor. How much she likes the coach and teammates are probably more important. As long as she does the OTHER things necessary to make herself marketable–summer internships and jobs, leadership positions, etc., she’ll be just fine.