The flipside of this is that the flexibility of a smaller company where everyone knows almost everyone can provide scope for gaining broader experience/exposure and more rapid advancement if you are a self-starter. I felt the sweet spot was around 100 or so people (fewer than Dunbar’s number but large enough to have a degree of stability) - that’s the size of company I chose (in both my first and second jobs) and my S18 did the same. It worked out great and when I compared my progression with friends who went to 5,000 person companies for similar jobs, I got much more responsibility far more quickly. Similarly, my S gets to chat with the CEO, made friends with the office manager who knows everything about what’s going on, and when they are busy gets to pitch in on all sorts of things that would normally be for someone more senior (client proposals, solo site visits, etc)
Big vs small is also very industry specific. For industries/jobs that involve a progression in skills and responsibilities (can’t go from A to F) and/or where there are a few well known prestigious firms among many, many competitors, going Big initially is probably the better route – better training, more time to develop, broader experience, easier lateral moves. For younger, developing industries where entrepreneurship is at a premium, small is probably better.
When my D22 went to Georgetown, I thought that my job as a parent was almost done, but I was wrong. Yes, she was happy most of times and really enjoyed the whole college experiences for the last three years. She met many wonderful people, some will be her life long friends, and she really worked hard in the classroom as well as taking on two other jobs from the beginning. However, as we all know, things didn’t always go her way, and there were many ups and downs.
She was really down when her internship offer was rescinded early this year due to new administration although she was promised that she will still get a full time offer regardless. As you know, most internship applications were closed then, and she was struggling to find a new internship. It made worse knowing that she will be graduating in December and thinking about what to do after December.
Miraculously, she landed an internship at the last minute and she had great experience there for three months, learning a lot about the real professional world and honing her skills. To cap things off, she recently accepted an offer from one of MBB, and it is still surreal experience for her. More than a prestige or anything, I am just so happy that she will be doing what she wants to do.
Now, she has many things to do, some are from her bucket list, from December until she starts a new chapter in her life in Sep 2026.
I am glad everything worked out for her, and I am wondering about if my job is done. I hope I am done, but I may be wrong again. I
Congrats to your D. That’s a great update.
That’s an amazing outcome. Shows you how quickly things can turn around. Congrats to your D!
Anyone’s kids applying for a PhD or Master’s? That’s what we are debating now.
S22 is considering a 5th year masters but opportunity cost is too high so not sure what he will end up doing. i’d say <5% chance he applies. i’m curious if more people are considering masters given the job market.
Hi! I posted a lot during my D22’s college search, but I never really knew to post in this thread.
But, my D22 is at Rice and double majoring in linguistics and classics. She’s had an absolutely wonderful college experience, has met her people, and couldn’t be happier.
However, linguistics and classics doesn’t exactly lend itself to any obvious jobs, so yes, she’s planning to apply to grad schools. She’s really pondered for the last couple years what she wants to do, and she’s finally concluded that she wants to apply for speech language pathology master’s programs.
There’s a lot to know about this process – because she doesn’t have a background in SLP, she’ll need to do a “leveling year” of prerequisites, or she’ll need to find a program that has the prereqs built in (through an additional semester or year). Each school requires something different, some require the GRE and some don’t, blah blah. She’s looking at about 3 years to finish the degree, and then there’s a praxis exam to pass and a supervised clinical fellowship year, etc. with the goal of gaining ASHA certification.
So, she has her work cut out for her this semester figuring all that out and applying to programs.
@OctoberKate – I’m with you. D22 was home all summer, but she couldn’t WAIT to get back to Houston. Besides hanging out with family, there’s really nothing here for her anymore. Her sphere is really where her friends are.
Grad school definitely is a more nuanced process! I wish it were easier to navigate like college apps! With the funding issues, this whole process is extra complicated. He’s looking at Europe as well, but you need a master’s first. (Engineering).
Mine is doing the accelerated master’s program. He started this semester. His scholarship includes 5 years of tuition so adding it on made some sense. He is using it to specialize a little more in the type of mechanical engineering he hopes to work in.
My D fortunately picked a college with a 3 plus one accelerated program in her field, so she finished her bachelor’s requirements and will take master’s classes in her fourth year of college. Had she gotten into her “dream” school, the BS/MS would have taken five years and the tuition at that college is much higher, so it was a win-win for us!
S22 got some good news from his boss at the intramural league: If S22 doesn’t have a job lined up after he finishes in December, he can continue working for the league as a full-time outside contractor. S22 told us the hourly rate in our family text chat, and D19, who works for a prestigious but low-paying art gallery, joked that he should tell the intramural guy to hire her. A very nice fallback position for S22 to have — we’re relieved that he’ll have some income from a job he enjoys while he figures out his next move.
D22 is also looking into masters programs (Epidemiology). Ideally she would like to work two years first though. She has been researching programs in Europe as well.
My S22 is looking for a job, so not grad school. But he’s also prepping for exams. He needs to take the FE Exam (fundamentals of engineering, I had to look it up). It sounds like a beast, six hours long, 110 questions. He’ll take this, hopefully pass on his first go round, work for a few years, then take the PE Exam. His school has a course that seniors can take to help prepare for the exam, so he’s in that now (it’s a nice surprise, this is a random freebie, more like a club that professors attend and lecture at once a week). He’s hoping to take the exam over winter break.
And therein lies the slightly annoying timing issue. This is the one and only year both my children are college students. We were tentatively planning on taking a family vacation - a big one to someplace cool - that first week of winter break, before it gets super expensive as it’s before the K-12 kids will be on vacation. The FE exam is one that you take at a testing center on a computer, and it seems like you can almost pick a date, so he can choose to take it at the beginning of break (right after school gets out, once he’s gotten caught up on sleep and yet is also still feelin in the groove and prepared) or end of break (so he has time in the middle to study) but either way, I think early vacation is a problem. Either it conflicts with an early test date, or it would be during extra test prep time when he won’t want to be distracted. We can’t really do the trip at the end of winter break and have the same $$ break, as S25 has to go back pretty soon after the new year (so he returns before costs drop down). This isn’t a big deal at all, we just figured that next year, when S22 is hopefully working, he likely won’t have much vacation time. If he wants to be home for actual Christmas, he probably wouldn’t also have time for a week of vacation two weeks before.
Anyway, this isn’t an issue that needs solving, let alone solving today. We just do something different, or smaller, or nothing for winter break. But it was a germ of an idea that I’m having a surprisingly hard time letting go.
My S22 is!
He just graduated from Texas A&M this August, and will be leaving this week for University of Washington for his PhD. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me.
D22 is a ChemE and was initially very interested in her university’s 4+1 masters program. But now that she’s had a couple of internships, she’s decided that it’s not necessary. She’s also completely burned out and ready to be done with school … so there’s that.
Anyone’s kid(s) have recent good experiences with Career Fairs?
Get a job offer or moved onto the next phase because of Career Fair?
trying to see how son can “maximize” next week’s crazy career fair with ~200 companies
I also have similar questions about company coffee chats…
I volunteered at a Career Fair this week, and had time to roam around.
The students are stressed out, running around trying to find a printer to print out their resumes, or get a binder (to look more professional) to hold said printed resumes.
The recruiters/alums are stressed out, trying to speak with a huge line of students in a packed/loud/hot space.
What do the companies do with those physical resumes?
My son said that last year, every company that he spoke with told him to look on the company’s website, find a job, apply to it.
So students apply to the online jobs ==>> what is the role of the recruiter **AT** career fair?
My friend was the alum/recruiter for her company: MIT Lincoln Lab and she was talking a mile a minute trying to get through all these students, lined up halfway across the gym waiting to speak with her. She lost her voice that day.
I put this in the “Job Prospects for ‘24 ‘25 grads” thread this morning re: my kids experiences at career fairs yesterday (S22 is looking for a permanent gig, S25 is looking for a summer internship. Both had career fairs yesterday at their respective colleges (WPI and Clemson))
To follow up on my two kids who both happened to have job fairs today (but at very different colleges.) (FWIW, both wore blazers and ties with khakis.)
S25, the Construction Management major at Clemson, was seriously targeting two companies at the job fair for a summer internship. One of them invited him back tomorrow for a longer in person interview with their team. The other had a good conversation and took his resume, so who knows, that might become an option too. The one that invited him back was his top choice for a wide variety of reasons, so lets cross some fingers that tomorrow’s convo goes well.
S22 didn’t have as good luck. He had identified four companies that he was interested in. The one he was most interested in didn’t show up (this happened to him last year too). He’d disappointed, but has LinkedIn information for the recruiter who was supposed to come, so he’s going to reach out to him tomorrow to express interest. Two of the companies that came had interesting sounding work, but only for their Texas locations. This is a permanent job for S22, and he’s still hoping to find something somewhere on the East Coast. So he had good conversations with both companies, but what they are offering doesn’t appeal. He’s going to follow up with the recruiter from one company that has many East Coast sites to reiterate his interest for anything on the East Coast. The fourth company was a bust - they don’t do the type of work he’s interested in at all. So that was kind of a disappointing day for him. But the upside of this is that he spent a lot of time working on and refining his resume prior to the career fair, and practicing his pitch and thinking about what questions he’d want to ask if he were invited to an interview. So that was good prep work for him for whatever comes next.
Then someone commented about how they wished kids spoke to more people at career fairs, and i said this stuff (below) which kind of speaks to your “too many people, not enough time” thought.
S22 did a lot of research on the companies that would be at the job fair prior to going. A fair number of them weren’t looking for MechE’s, so that knocked a bunch out ahead of time and given the crowds and lines to speak to people, the reality is that there isn’t really time to talk to more than a few folks. So he targeted his spots and spoke with the four most likely. It seemed like a pretty solid approach.
S25 talked with more than the two he is seriously interested in, but mostly to gain information for future years. Since he’s only a freshman, he really wants to be able to live at home next summer - he’s not ready to have to be on his own and making his own meals. So he focused on the two firms that have a large presence in our area (he goes to school 9+ hours away and many of the construction management recruiters there were regional). If those two don’t go anywhere in the next few weeks, then he’ll need to start looking more broadly, but it’s still pretty early going for next summer plans.
S22 has one next week as well. He said the same thing after last year’s. Everyone just told him to look and apply online. No one really wanted much discussion. Whether he approached it the best way or not, I don’t know. This year, I’m suggesting he applies online this weekend to all that he is interested at the companies coming. And then pick a few he’s most interested in and make a point to talk to those and start by saying he’s applied to XX job online and he’d like to follow up with a resume and has a question about YY. Or something.
S22 found career fairs to be a complete waste of time. Required time away from other things like labs, mandatory discussion sessions etc.
He’s found the invite only events to be a much better ROI. He also shows up to the grab free food and talk to us casually events that a bunch of CS employers host at Cal.
He hasn’t been to a large college hosted career event since sophomore year.