I’m a current freshman at Notre Dame and am wondering how a poli sci degree would fare for general business jobs out of college? I have a good GPA (about 3.72) and am planning on getting minors in business-economics and Italian. I’ve been told by a couple of people that I should be fine, especially with the business-economics minor, but I wanted to get a wider scope of views.
Notre Dame is one of the many schools at which major companies recruit. While some of these companies - particularly investment banks - prefer business majors (finance is usually the concentration/major they hone in on), other companies will look at you just the same as they look upon someone with a different degree. Some companies actually prefer not to hire business majors, since majors in the social sciences, life sciences and humanities have earned different skills, which may help to add more value to the company as a whole.
I graduated with a political science major and a 3.12 GPA (3.48 in major) in December 2010, when the economy was not especially kind to job seekers, and though I had difficulty finding full time employment (it took until close to graduation to secure a job), I attribute those difficulties to my a) low GPA and b) lack of internship experience. Peers with the same major but higher GPA / better experience had almost no trouble securing a good job.
Your minor may be a decent conversation piece in an interview, but it will not help you get your foot in the door (I thought this too and was only convinced when multiple hiring managers told me explicitly that my minor didn’t matter at all). Italian will be potentially useful but only if you are fluent, and only of limited use - Italian isn’t one of the highly sought after languages in the workplace.
Thanks for your input. So what you’re saying is that my minor won’t help a whole lot but if I keep my GPA up and get some solid experience I should be fine once I graduate?
Yup, pretty much.
One thing to consider (a thing I was totally disinterested in for my first two years of college, so if you are disinterested, I don’t blame you at all), though being able to get a job is important, there is a lot more value that college can bring to your post-graduate life than just a job. I got a minor, and it cost my GPA since I got a handful of lower grades that I probably wouldn’t have gotten if I had just taken free electives, but if I do the math, if two of my Bs became As, it would have meant a difference of 0.07 to my cumulative GPA… in other words, it was entirely irrelevant to my career prospects, but it was enriching for me on a personal level.
If you’ve got interest in a subject but not enough to dedicate yourself to getting a major in it, a minor is a great low-risk proposition. It won’t help your job prospects, but it might help you develop a more well-rounded view of the world, which will help you in more intangible ways.