<p>@dietz199 - I could have written your post 2 years ago about my own daughter: accounting grad of a top 60-ish business school (“only” top 60) who had multiple job offers before graduation. Today she works for a Big 4 firm, completely self-supporting in a high-rent city. Loves her city, loves her job and loves accounting (even during busy season.) I never would have thought she’d choose accounting for a career - in high school she was a quirky kid who was into emo music and the alternative music scene. </p>
<p>She definitely stepped into her job with the right skill set (a skill set that including soft skills) and started contributing on day one. </p>
<p>oh, and just because she’s an accountant doesn’t mean she’s a humorless drone with no intellectual depth. I’m a little touchy about that perception of CPAs! </p>
<p>Interesting, Canuckguy. I think these pre-professionals enter Wharton with a focus and drive, maximize their college years with internships, and always have their eye on the future. </p>
<p>I think the majority of college students explore different fields, shift majors, & try out summer internships to see what “fits”. For many of these less-focused kids, they lament that they don’t have a clear direction or a passion. It is not that they are partying, they just haven’t gotten that ah-ha moment.</p>
<p>Canuckguy: Penn is the ONE place where you don’t have to “wonder” about those things. They publish really comprehensive data, including data by major. They are supposedly preparing to start publishing 10-year-out data, too.</p>
<p>This is the elephant in the room. We do not need any more highly educated Starbucks baristas, living in groups of 10 or at home with Mom and Dad because they can’t afford their school loans.</p>
<p>This economy is horrible and nothing is being done about that. </p>
<p>My son knows what he wants to do. Unfortunately his freshman year grades brought down his GPA and none of his A’s from junior year are factored into his Tufts GPA. I’m still trying to persuade him to figure out a way to calculate a combined GPA. He’s got a job this summer - same campus job as the last two summers, he’s the head student supervisor so I think it’s decent experience, but it’s not an IR job. He applied last week for a position that would be perfect for him - if only 1999 other people hadn’t also thought so! We hope he’ll have something by the end of the summer, but who knows. The jobs are out there, but there just aren’t enough of them yet.</p>
<p>I graduated from architecture school in 1982. The week I graduated one of the most well known firms in NYC laid of 300 workers. It took me six months to find a job - and even then it was not actually in architecture. They laid me off then hired me part time. I think it took a full year before I had the job I’d been trained for. </p>
<p>Thanks, JHS. I guess the bottom line is that your major do matter. No surprise there.</p>
<p>While we are still on the topic of accountants, the dean of the business school where my kids went to college once told the graduating class that he could place twice as many accounting majors as the school was producing; he was hoping more of them would have taken the plunge.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, I know several accountants who completed requirements to sit for the CPA exam as post-bacs, after graduating with another major and failing to land in the job market. (Not counting second career accountants.) Some are fairly recent grads, a couple already retired after a long career in accounting. I also know other adults successful in a variety of fields who returned for post-bac work or a graduate or professional degree when the initial major (sometimes a STEM major) did not lead to stable employment.</p>
<p>Obviously, this is not an option if a student has already maxed out on their college funds or has hefty loans to repay.</p>
<p>Penn is one of several places (others include Berkeley, Cal Poly, CMU, MIT, and Virginia Tech) that publish relatively detailed career survey information. However, one should use caution about comparing survey results from different schools, since survey and reporting methodology may differ. But a number of trends relating to majors can be noted from these and other schools’ survey results.</p>
<p>Scout59 -
I can relate to your statement. My daughter is an accountant and she’s heard many times, “But you have too much personality to be an accountant!”<br>
:-)</p>
<p>Looking at dd’s HS friends, I also saw a girl (all I remember was that she was into modeling/acting) who did accounting at a small good Jesuit college in CA and a 1 yr MS taxation and a CPA and stint at Big 4 and now a VP and Manager in some Financial Services area and just 25, boy was I surprised. There do seem to be a lot of jobs in the tech sector and I see 2 HS friends with humanities degrees working in Google People Operations.</p>
<p>From the far side of accounting, my D2 will be getting her BFA next week and has already started at her job! But yes, she’s always been a go-getter and her school takes career services seriously too. </p>
<p>OTOH, I remember architecture from the late 1980’s. I worked at a very small firm in DC and we would get swamped with resumes from Texas and other parts of the “oil south” where the recession started. Then it crept slowly across the whole country. The Washington Post had an article a few years ago about how there were few architects in their late 40’s because so many dropped out in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A professional degree you can count on… hmmmmm. There is always something outside your control. </p>
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