Practical Science (non-Physics, Biology or Chemistry) major (bachelor)?

jjwinkle
Thu, 21 May 2015 17:02:21 +0000

It is not really hard to get work with a bachelor’s in chemistry, at least not in the region I’m familiar with (Northern California). My B.A. in chemistry has gotten me a lot of opportunities. But I will say this, because it’s really important: If you do want to work directly with samples (i.e. be a “bench” chemist), get hands-on experience with the sophisticated instruments that are used in industry a lot, i.e. GCMS, HPLC. Essentially all the bench jobs in my region for bachelor’s chemists are in analytical work, and the premium jobs for both prestige and money are the ones operating sophisticated instrumentation. Experience with these instruments is hard to get at most universities, but there are exceptions like the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which has about 15 instrumental courses that undergrads can take, so it pays to choose your university on the basis of actual courses offered. If you make sure you do a few such courses, you will have no trouble getting a job.

One sees a lot of people with chemistry bachelor’s degrees doing peripheral work as, e.g. project managers, quality assurance officers, laboratory document managers, technical salespeople, but this may be because they are at least as happy doing that as doing bench chemistry. And the work they do also is critically important. Bench chemistry is almost always routine/repetitive. In fact, I have worked in labs where a lot of the people doing manual bench chemistry have no degree at all (and doing the same work as someone who skipped college altogether can be somewhat exasperating). I think the boringness is more of a problem than whether you can get a job.

Science bachelor’s degrees with really great prospects for employment are clinical lab technology CLT) and, of course, nursing. There are colleges that offer bachelor’s in clinical lab technology and provide the practical experience in it for one to readily get a CLT license. I found universities offering it at mymajors.com.