<p>I was just wondering, as far as the cost v.s. pay off conversation goes, where do the prestigious public schools rank? like UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc. I was thinking of being a math major, so it is probably good that I’m reading this thread, but it’s still kind of scary. x|</p>
<p>Additionally, are there any masters/PhD students out there in a similar situation?</p>
<p>PhD student in the earth sciences here, finishing up in a month or so and just took a full-time job offer (and moving to Manhattan??). I’ve been in school for a long time now, and I can only think of one person who graduated from my (very large) department who moved back home - she was leaving the field of geology and opening her own printmaking business. Everyone else left with some kind of job offer in hand, either postdoc, academic, or oil, for the most part.</p>
<p>Although the unemployed PhD in some obscure field is a popular trope, the fact of the matter is that graduate school generally improves career prospects (speaking as someone coming from the STEM fields here, I don’t have as much experience with other departments). Actual employment statistics are a little patchy, but NSF did a study a few years ago: [nsf.gov</a> - NCSES Unemployment Among Doctoral Scientists and Engineers Remained Below the National Average in 2008 - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf11308/]nsf.gov”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf11308/)</p>
<p>The most recent figure there is 1.7% unemployment (in 2008) for doctorates in the science, engineering, and health fields (at a time when general unemployment was hovering around 6% - back in the golden days, haha). Point being, both of those numbers may have gone up since then, but the fraction of unemployed PhD-holders is probably still pretty small.</p>
<p>it’s all about net income. If you go to an expensive school for a long time, your debt load will, in all likelihood, crush you even if you have a good job. The parabolic rise in loans over the last 2 decades as now made the news on a daily basis. Making 2 mortgage payments per month is tough. One for the house. The other for student loans. The stress it causes can be enormous. So choose wisely.</p>
<p>I’m currently in ‘limbo’ (not living in parents’ basement, but not yet started a full-time job). B.S. in Biology/Political Science, M.S. Biotechnology. </p>
<p>Had a job offer after graduation from UG but didn’t feel prepared to carry out job duties. Was ensured offer would be there after grad school, so it seemed to be an easy decision. In September, found out that offer was gone due to a hiring freeze, so I began applying for jobs in both pharma and government as I have an extremely unique resume. I heard zilch from pharma, even with help from my mentor and contacts at various companies…that industry is a black hole right now. Went through the interview process at a large DC consulting firm and accepted an offer in January. Graduated a month ago with my M.S., but the consulting firm still doesn’t know when I would start. So I put my resume up on a few job boards and received 2 more offers from DC area consulting firms. I accepted one recently with a midsize DC firm, and we’re hoping for me to start late-July/August once their contract comes through.</p>
<p>Thus far, the job search has been stressful (when is it not?) but a lot easier than I anticipated. I lack the patience you need to deal with government consulting, but I’ve been successful finding positions there. I also have a very unique resume, so that doesn’t hurt. </p>
<p>I do have friends that had majors in things like sociology, psychology, etc. that are struggling to find jobs. I think if you’re willing to relocate and are flexible with what you want, you can find jobs <em>relatively</em> easily.</p>
<p>Was one of those Bates White?</p>
<p>it’s definitely helpful to be flexible… I wanted a pretty specific job and I was having zero luck after undergrad. An [almost] graduate degree and 4 internships later (moving progressively toward the job I wanted), I am finishing my graduate thesis and working fulltime at the job I wanted =)</p>
<p>Nope, Booz Allen Hamilton was one</p>
<p>My sister is back home after graduating with a BA in communications. She doesn’t have a job currently and will be looking for one (she doesn’t plan on going to graduate school) Im starting college this year though and I don’t plan on living back home, besides summer perhaps because I definitely plan on going to graduate school either for biomedical engineering or going to medical school to become a doctor.</p>
<p>My son took a gap year and is a rising senior. He observed that his friends who just graduated from his college (highly regarded LAC) all had jobs before the end of the school year but his friends from HS (affluent burb) almost all don’t have jobs and have moved back home – the one exception went to his LAC and does have a job. There was an English major, an environmental science major, not clear what the others were. One of his HS friends who took a gap year with him will not have difficulty as he is a computer / graphics whiz and was earning over $50K per year on his gap year. Some of his HS friends applied for jobs during the year but didn’t get anything whereas others decided to wait until the summer to start applying – and apparently that is not uncommon. My son wonders whether his HS friends were less desperate because they knew they could come back to stay at their parents’ houses until they found a job.</p>
<p>Student loans from top tier schools? Are you kidding?</p>
<p>The top tier schools have something called Financial Aid!</p>
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<p>@shawbridge - what kind of job’s did they get? I was looking at one LACs placement report and many of the students were doing quasi-volunteer jobs, like Teach America, or working in labs at Universities/Hospitals prior to applying for med school. What LAC did your S go to?</p>
<p>I don’t know his friends who are seniors except for his GF and two kids from our town, so I will can just recall conversations, but the jobs were pretty strong: Red Hat (software consulting), some other software consulting company whose name I don’t remember, Goldman (could be MS but I think GS), Bain or BCG (in Asia), Deutsche Bank or Citibank (can’t remember which, just remember that they had to iron out a visa issue), an analyst job at a prominent Boston law firm (although it took longer for him to get his job), I’d have to ask about the rest. One friend is going to a PhD program at Yale. </p>
<p>I didn’t hear about T4A among his friends, but since he’s a rising senior, the kids I know well except for his GF and the kids from our town will hit the job market next year. There are some psych and history majors among them, for whom the job market may be tougher. I also don’t know the majors of all of the graduating kids mentioned above. The one working for the law firm is history or political science. The computer jobs, computer science. The others I’d guess are math or econ as my son is a math/econ major, but that’s just a guess.</p>
<p>One relative lives back with her folks. She puttered around for a while after getting her psych BA – took some courses toward a teaching certificate & then after several years of that decided she didn’t like the field. She’s now working for the county as a clerk & finds it a very comfortable setting. My sister says she was born to be an administrator. The job doesn’t pay much but it is full-time & has benefits.</p>
<p>Another relative double-majored at uber-private U in math & chemistry or bio. Waitlisted for med schools & re-applying. He is doing research over the summer as a volunteer intern.</p>
<p>The rest of our relatives remain in school, so haven’t tackled the work world yet. </p>
<p>D’s friends who graduated in the spring are figuring out what they want. One was hired as a lab assistant in Harvard; she’ll work there while applying for med school. Another plans to go & live in Boston while she figures out her next steps. Another majored in biology at JHU but doesn’t want med school nor research. She wants to live on the East Coast, get a job & figure out her next steps, even tho her folks would prefer she come home to live while sorting things out. She’ll likely go to grad school. Haven’t heard what D’s other friends plan–one has two more years of PharmD and one has one more year before she graduates with a degree in Physical Therapy.</p>
<p>Another relative graduated with a BA in communications. She lived with her folks for decades while working as a clerk in an insurance company, making barely over minimum wage. She’s still working there but moved out into her own place, got married & now lives with hubby & her MIL in a small house.</p>
<p>Graduates are fortunate if their parents’ home is big enough to accommodate them. </p>
<p>I have been reading a book entitled “The Accordion Family,” which describes contemporary situations in which graduates live with parents until their 30’s. This generation has loans, a lousy economy, and the effects of globalization to deal with. The book has anecdotes from European and Asian countries as well as the US.</p>
<p>I am transitioning from being in a position to house my kids to no longer being able to, and this discussion makes me wish my college age children had the choice, once they graduate. It may be more likely that I live with one of my kids!</p>
<p>In HI, it has very long been common for many young (& even not-so-young) adults to live with their parents at least until they find a partner & get their own place to live. It is also common for them to move back with their parents to help care for them as the parents age. It is partly the extremely high cost of housing in our state as well as tradition and culture which make extended families living situations common and accepted. People generally do not find these living arrangements “strange” or think poorly of folks who have them. They can be high, middle or low income in many areas of our state, including some of the most exclusive areas.</p>
<p>I am glad our home is large enough that our kids feel comfortable returning for visits. Would probably have to remodel and expand if either decided to move back with a partner and/or raise a family.</p>
<p>My DD was on track to graduate a year early with a BA in English when she decided last September that her long-term plan to be a lawyer wasn’t what she wanted. (The job market for lawyers is too crummy and the ROI is too low and risky.) She crammed many pre-nursing pre-reqs into her last year and graduated in June. She moved home and is finishing the final pre-reqs at the local junior college and will apply to nursing schools next year starting in July. Since she already has a BA, she can apply to accelerated BSN 1-year programs or directly to MSN programs that award an RN, BSN and MSN at once. She is also completing a Certified Nursing Assistant program in the break between summer and fall term, so she will be able to work part time in the field before accepting an nursing program admission. </p>
<p>She still isn’t very happy about living chez mere et pere and finds it limiting. She’s great about doing her own laundry, and she cooks and cleans and walks the dog …since she lived in an apartment for two years, she knows what it’s like to be responsible for everything. We’ve decided that she can take over the basement TV room in August when her brother goes back to college. And when she goes to nursing school, DS will probably take her place in the basement as he applies to med or grad school. He will also graduate 1 or 1.5 years early but plans on grad school of some sort.</p>
<p>Not living at home, but another in-limbo here:</p>
<p>Graduated this May (major in bioengineering, minor in global health, typical engineering GPA, stellar ECs) from a top-20 school. I landed an unusual 2-week travel internship with a newspaper that prevented me from taking on another summer internship, but as soon as I got back in the country I got a 3-month gig at my university in a department relevant to my major and a second virtual internship with a government agency. Applied to easily 50+ jobs during the school year; in an unusual situation because I have a very technical degree and am more interested in jobs focusing on global health and international development. Did not apply to consulting or oil companies (where most of my friends are working) on a matter of principle. Turned down an offer from GE’s entry-level leadership program and two from oil companies.</p>
<p>I’m currently hanging around in the city my school is in, taking a year off before grad school. The plan is to work here for the duration of my internships, land a fall internship in DC (app currently being considered), and take a travel fellowship abroad for next spring & summer before heading to get my master’s. </p>
<p>Points of note for anyone who may be in a similar situation, now or in the future:
- The hardest part of being in limbo like this is finding a decent apartment. Short-term leases are hard to come by, and buying furniture is a ridiculous investment when you don’t know where you’ll be in a few months. Subleasing a furnished apartment is the way to go. If my mother lived anywhere remotely close to a job I was interested in, I would do that in a heartbeat for the sake of saving money.
- Taking a job you want vs. a well-paying job that’s made you an offer is a very personal decision and save either complete financial ruin or having your soul completely crushed by the man, you shouldn’t let yourself be pressured here.</p>
<p>Ponypal’s kid is smart. I have a kid who graduated law school and will be taking the bar next week. The job hunt will then be 60+ hour a week job.</p>
<p>The legal job market for new grads is terrible (not Yale or Harvard, obviously), with no turnaround in sight. I was talking to a young patent lawyer today who went to a T14. He guessed that legal employment among his friends from law school is about 40%. My kid’s top regional law school has reported legal-employment stat for last year’s grads was about 50%. </p>
<p>My kid wants to live independently, but I don’t see it happening soon. Too many unfunny movies about guys living in their parents’ basement have just added to my kid’s stress about having to live at home. I’ve heard that it’s very embarrassing to tell someone of the opposite sex that (a) “I’m unemployed”; (b) “I live at home.” DUH.</p>
<p>We’ll see if this changes when it’s by choice to save money for a down payment on a condo or house vs. as a result of being unemployed.</p>
<p>I graduated last spring. I’m not currently living at my parents’ house, but I lived there the summer after graduation because I hadn’t secured a job yet.</p>
<p>I studied two of the most infamously “useless” liberal arts fields, psychology and anthropology, at a large public university in Texas. I guess I should clarify that I actually did have a job offer before graduation, but ended up declining it for various reasons (looking back at it, I was just being foolish). So, I spent the entire summer working a full-time unpaid internship at a small anthropology museum near where my parents live. I didn’t have much extra money to spend, but the extra time I had to think about my career, future, and all those good things, paid off. By the end of the summer, I had two job offers in a city that I really wanted to live in, and the museum I was interning at offered me a paid position. I loved the museum, so I ended up taking the offer there, which allowed me to move out of my parents’ house (although I still live close enough to visit).</p>
<p>I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, so I planned to take this past year off to focus on graduate applications. Next month I’ll be starting a PhD program in anthropology, fully paid for plus a teaching assistantship stipend. Since the university is in the same metro area that I live in now, I’ll be able to continue to work with the museum some. I’m happy to say that the next 2-3 years is looking pretty secure and exciting for me.</p>
<p>So, all in all, living with my parents for a few months worked out pretty well. I won’t say that it directly influenced where I am now, but it did give me some time to get some things situated after the chaos of the final semester of college. I was able to work on my resume, make valuable professional connections, refine my career goals, etc. Being able to concisely market myself and my interests proved to be very important, but I wouldn’t have been able to do that without some time (and experience) to gain perspective. And more practically, it was just more likely that I would find better fitting jobs over several months rather than just over the few months before graduation; you just never know when a good opportunity will arise. </p>
<p>Just a side note, my parents were so happy to have me back home. Our relationship had completely evolved from where it was when I was a high schooler living at home. I also have two young nephews, and being near them meant so much more to me than finding a job immediately and moving out of state. That being said, it was certainly a goal of mine to be out of that house by the end of the summer. I was already used to living on my own, I wasn’t about to revert back to a roommate situation of ANY kind.</p>