What I see from the study is that those degrees that people are most satisfied with have defined career objectives. Assuming that those who make it through engineering school want to be engineers they are more likely to be happy with their degrees. The same with nursing I suppose. Those with pure science degrees may like what they study but in general would need advanced degrees to really utilize what they learn. PhDs to be researchers, professors etc. or professional degrees to be doctors, vets, etc.
I think liberal arts degrees can be valuable but the students must work harder to communicate that value to employers. There isnât a job called an âEnglish or History or Philosophyâ job. You must sell yourself to employers. That can be hard and expensive if you are seeking advanced degrees in those fields. If a student has difficulty establishing their value it could be that they would say they are dissatisfied with their degree. Once they have proven their value then they will probably have plenty of upside because they are good at what they do and donât have a standard career path.
I was speaking to dh about this thread and while he would have preferred DS19 to have chosen Engineering or Math over Physics he did say he doesnât know what his response would have been if DS had wanted to major in English or History instead. Dh works in banking operations and frequently does hiring. The problem he outlined for the humanities majors is that while they may have strong communications skills and requisite soft skills (but it is by no means assured that they do), unless they also have some kind of quantifiable skills they are not going to be considered when competing with a business or finance major. Similarly a marketing major maybe chosen over an English major or someone with a degree in HR over someone with a degree in Classics. Yes they can always go on and get an MBA but itâs going to be much harder for the English/Classics/History graduate to get their foot in the door and land that first job unless something more quantifiable sticks out on their resume. If they do get hired itâs going to be at a very junior level (think branch csr/teller) and they will have further to go to work their way up. Their fellow applicants with quant skills are going to have an advantage over them.
No doubt. Rails at the top end tend to also influence normal distribution, particularly in math SAT. However, the point was there are likely very few 1500+ scores. Suppose there are actually 3-4% students with 1500+ scores as you guessed, instead of the <2% that would occur in a normal distribution. Thatâs still not a large portion of students. Only 6% of students scored below 1200 in the class of 2023. So itâs still not a good example of 1200 SAT students in a class full of students with 1500+ scores. Instead score differences are generally far less dramatic.
Being discouraged is certainly one factor in dropping out of pre-med, but it is far from the only factor, and combined SAT score is often just one small contributing factor in to whether is student feels discouraged or not. There are also plenty of students who donât feel discouraged when they are not the big fish in the class. Some are even inspired when a larger portion of the class is composed of like-minded persons who work hard academically â often choosing studying together for the exam(s) over partying, making strong contributions to group projects, genuinely interested in learning material, ⌠â allowing themselves to reach higher levels of achievement than they would with a class of less academically focused students. Many colleges also have special programs to help students with weaker math/science classes be successful in their freshman classes, including multiple sequences of intro math/science and placement tests to help determine which of those sequences is the best fit for their specific HS background. In any case, if being discouraged is a big concern, there are lot of more effective ways to address that concern than trying to mismatch combined SAT scores with the CDS reported profiles .
Important caveat: There are serious problems with the sampling (at the very least) methodology of the study in the original post, as raised upthreadâso I donât think you can really make that claim with even a low-end-of-reasonable level of certainty.
@Data10 My estimate of 3-4% at ACT 34/SAT 1500+ was for my Dâs college, where perhaps 40-50% of students are at ACT 25/SAT 1200 or below. Pitt has much higher stats, so I expect more than 3-4% have ACT 34/SAT 1500+. Iâm sure there are high merit schools in the middle where you may well have 10% SAT >=1500 and 40% SAT <=1200 in a class. My first guess at a school like that would be Alabama (ACT range 23-31).
@gwnorth Would be interesting to look at the undergraduate degrees of the nations top CEOâs. Many are not in fact going to follow your husbandâs logic. Many hyper smart people are intellectually very curious and follow multiple paths simultaneously. Also, many people who rise to the very top are people who can make connections across divisions, lines of business etc. This is a skill which humanities teaches well.
Having been in four major types of business, I have seen that people who have excellent interpersonal and writing skills and are solid in the basis of that particular business do best. The techies rise to about director or VP and the communicators only rise to about the same. One needs both the soft skills and the hard skills. ( Thatâs assuming one even wants to be CEO).
The people I have seen who rise about VP level are the ones who have the big picture view and also understand the underlying fundamentals (whether techy or other) but donât get caught in the weeds.
Personally, for an entry level Iâd hire the classics major over the marketing major in a NY minute. Tells me that person is not a rule follower is willing to learn big things and wants to learn about human connections. The marketing major is likely not to know much except a couple of terms they learned in school. Then again, Iâm more of a big picture person who has worked at very high levels so Iâve seen more intellectual diversity than is found in many HR offices.
I certainly do also understand that many kids need to balance a job which earns money with a career path. Kids choose based on a number of factors. And there certainly is a trend toward college as a trade.
@Twoin18 Pitt doesnât publish specific percentages, so we donât know the exact value. It sounds like our guesses about the what the actual value may be differ, but what is clear, is itâs a small minority of students. What we do know from published information is only 6% of students have <1200 SAT, so itâs a very different low end distribution from UAlabama or your daughterâ school. And a good portion of the top SAT students are part of Pittâs honors college, who often take different classes than standard for several of the pre-med requirements, such as chemistry.
Fortunately, many major companies, including major financial companies, donât follow the same hiring preferences as your husband.
Fidelity Investments is one. Looking into their Emerging Leaders Program which specifically targets liberal arts majors - see description copied and pasted below. Other huge employers like Apple seek out liberal arts majors as well. The value of a liberal arts education isnât lost on employers.
"Are you a highly motivated self-starter graduating this spring with a liberal arts degree? If so, Fidelityâs Emerging Leader Program is interested in you.
The Emerging Leader Program is an innovative 18-month cross-functional rotational program for graduating seniors with a liberal arts background who are eager to explore different career paths and fast track their job experience. During the 18 month program you will be exposed to a robust, customized experience that includes; structured networking and coaching, formal learning, and opportunities to gain knowledge and technical skills from various Fidelity businesses. This program is focused on developing the following capabilities in our associates: Understanding Financial Services, how Fidelity makes money, working in a matrixed environment, understanding our unique culture & values, influencing outcomes, identifying alternative solutions and finally, relationship and personal brand building.
REQUIREMENTS
⢠Majoring in a liberal arts field (will accept a dual major as long as one is liberal arts based)
⢠The Emerging Leader Program requires you to be available to work in Westlake, TX with post-program placement in that site.
COMPREHENSIVE BENEFITS DESIGNED TO HELP YOU ACHIEVE A BALANCED LIFE
⢠Student loan assistance and tuition reimbursement for eligible employees
⢠23 days of paid time off per year plus 8 Federal holidays
⢠Opportunities to volunteer and contribute to the local community during work hours
⢠Onsite fitness & wellness centers as well as company subsidized healthy meal options at onsite cafeterias
⢠To learn about additional benefits, click here.
At Fidelity, we are focused on making our financial expertise broadly accessible and effective in helping people live the lives they want. We are a privately held company that places a high degree of value in creating and nurturing a work environment that attracts the best talent and reflects our commitment to our associates. For information about working at Fidelity, visit FidelityCareers.com"
@gwnorth Yes, that is the Louise Brown article I was talking about.
I am shocked that only 1.4% of Queenâs poli sci students get A grades. Are they trying hard to discourage students from law?
I am not surprised that Classics give a lot of As though. It is usually small departments that are so generous, trying to hang onto every student they can. When I was an undergrad, it was linguistics in my school.
You donât happen to have grades for Western, do you? In my part of the woods, friends generally feel they made a mistake by not sending their love ones to Western instead of staying home and attend you know where.
I donât have much to offer your son. The closest one I can think of is a sibling that majored in psychology (quant methods) and a minor in physics. She went for a co-op MBA to get much needed work experience, and because she was able to write off all the intro quant courses, she ended up graduating with two majors- management science and finance. By all accounts, she is the most successful of us all.
Maybe those optimistic about the employability of liberal arts degrees could post helpful info like the Fidelity program. Tho Apple is often cited as a place for liberal arts majors, of todayâs 60 internship openings, only 3 do not require a STEM or business degree.
Well I canât dispute the findings with regards to Fidelity. All I can say that is not the hiring landscape at the bank my husband works for. To play devilâs advocate however what if the specifics of the job requires the ability to do financial statement analysis or the validation of loan/mortgage calculations? Why would you train someone to do that when you could hire someone from a business/finance/accounting program who already knows how to do it and can hit the ground running?
Because it really isnât hard to learn if you are a bright, motivated person and analytical skills, critical reasoning skills, and writing skills are actually much harder to teach. Learning how to do financial statement analysis doesnât require a 4 year degree. On the flip side, the majority of business/finance/accounting majors arenât going to do it in a skilled way the day they walk in the door. They still need training.
I find it very unlikely that Fidelity is the only large company to see the value of liberal arts hires.
which should give you the information youâre looking for. If you click on the faculty tab and then the department tab youâll see a further tab labelled Undergraduate Grade Distribution.
