I’m having such a difficult time picking a major. I really really enjoyed Biology in high school (both AP and IB) and passed with an A in my bio classes. I’m taking AP Environmental Science at the moment and I’m liking it, too. I’m just wondering if majoring in Biological Science would be a good idea - if it opens up a lot of opportunities for jobs post- undergraduate studies, if it’s worth it. I’m also thinking about getting a masters in Environmental Engineering afterwards.
I’m not looking to make stacks of cash, but just enough to get by in life; pay my bills, have a little spending money. I just fear that I will graduate with a degree but not be able to find a job afterwards and end up wiping down tables for the rest of my life.
If you look at career surveys at universities that have them (e.g. Virginia Tech, Berkeley, Cal Poly, MIT), you will find that biology graduates’ job prospects are not among the highest paid ones. If you tend to live a low cost lifestyle, that may be fine.
Career growth in biology may not be that great, though. Remember that there are huge numbers of biology majors graduating every year, due to the popularity of the major. You may have to consider seeking jobs and career directions in other areas, like many other college graduates whose majors do not lead to well defined strong job and career prospects.
If environmental engineering (which is a subarea of civil engineering in many schools) interests you, you may want to major in environmental engineering (or civil engineering at schools where environmental is a subarea of civil) as an undergraduate, rather than plan it as a master’s degree major. If you do major in biology with the intent of doing an environmental engineering master’s degree, be aware that the latter likely expects undergraduate work not covered in an undergraduate biology major, such as two years of math for engineering majors, physics and chemistry for engineering majors, and some additional physics, chemistry, and applicable environmental or civil engineering courses.
^I was going to say the same thing as @ucbalumnus. Environmental engineering is still engineering, and if you want to go into that field you probably want to major in an engineering field - civil would be best, but any area of engineering could work. But a biological science major won’t prepare you with the proper prerequisite engineering (and physics, and math) classes required for the master’s.
It’s my contention that overall, your major in and of itself doesn’t determine your career prospects. It’s the skills and experience you gain while in college. However, it is true that some majors teach you more skills and lead to more experiences that are in-demand. I just think that that list is broader than most people think it is. Is it possible to get a career that supports a middle-class lifestyle with a biology major? Of course it is, but you’ll have to think more creatively and do a little extra legwork to build skills that are in demand. For example, a biology major who minors in computer science or statistics might land a job at a biotechnology firm; a biology major who does summer internships in sales and marketing may end up in pharmaceutical sales. A biology major who works as a research assistant in a professor’s lab can become a research lab technician or a quality control specialist at a bio/biotech/chem firm.
(By contrast, computer science is the new hot field, and engineering has always been pre-professional in nature, so those lead to good jobs…mostly. You still need to do internships and learn the appropriate skills).
Also…most college graduates regardless of their major find jobs that don’t involve wiping down tables and provide a good middle-class lifestyle.
Note that pre-professional majors do not necessarily lead to good job prospects.
Sometimes, economic or industry cycles affect job prospects (e.g. petroleum engineering job prospects tend to closely follow oil prices, civil engineering job prospects went down during the last downturn due to the real estate and construction crash, and computer science job prospects crashed in the tech bubble crash).
Sometimes, there may just be too many graduates of the pre-professional major relative to the number of jobs that the major is aimed at, although the relatively high barrier of entry due to program rigor makes this less of an issue for engineering and CS.
You probably won’t be a millionaire but you will probably make a middle class lifestyle. Majors aren’t all about the money remember. I definetly have trouble with that as growing up in a top 1% household I’ve always looked at the money in things which I think isn’t a good thing because I don’t know how to live or make money in less than the top 1% because I’m accustomed to that kind of life and i don’t know how to not live like that so I look at the money in majors which really isn’t a good thing.
My Dd is graduating this Spring. She told us we would get 4 tickets to the graduation. When I asked her why, as we have a large family that would like to go, she said that there are 1000 biological science majors graduating (with her small major.). There’s no room for the families! That’s at one school!
Why so many? She said a lot of them were hoping to go into medicine. The large majority of them won’t because they find out, too late to change majors, that their grades and activities aren’t getting them into med school. I’m sure they’ll come up with a middle class income somewhere, but it probably won’t be what they expected.