I’m 19 and live in Virginia and I haven’t started college yet. I’m interested in microbiology, specifically parasites and viruses. Academia or clinical work both seem interesting, but I hear clinical/technical is better paying when it comes to scientific jobs. My question is what to major in so I can get good job opportunities and decent pay? I was looking at a MLS degree since I hear you get vast job prospects and can work in micro, but unfortunately no colleges in my state near me offer MLS. There are MLT programs available to me though. And there’s reallyno general or specific micro degrees either, but I hear just getting a degree in micro is bad for a career anyways. All I know is I want to be in a job where I can get paid at least decent money with decent work, work with viruses/bacteria/parasites in some way, and have a degree that can keep my job prospects somewhat open.
Oh, also any advice or suggestions for anything schooling wise is welcome. Not just what major, but like whatever path to take in general (classes to take, programs to look at, certifications and how to get them, etc.)
What are you doing now?
Perhaps you should look into epidemiology as a course of study.
You can do an MLS as a post-bacc program (sometimes known as a 4+1), or as a completion program after starting in another degree path (sometimes known as a 3+1). Either way, you need to understand the prereqs.
So one possibility is just start as a regular Bio or Chem major somewhere suitable, and make sure you are doing the MLS prereqs. Hopefully you have a pre-health advisor at your college who can help out planning your courses. I note you may end up wanting to go in a different direction, which is fine.
One daughter was a biology major. At one point due to a change in major (into biology as her new major) she needed to take four lab courses at the same time. At first glance this seems like too much, but she discovered that she was good at lab work and liked it a lot. She spent as much time as she could for the rest of her undergraduate education in a lab. While many of her friends from the same biology and science classes were doing premed shadowing, my daughter was in a lab helping with biomedical research. This was available at her university and would be available at a very wide range of other universities.
Then after getting her bachelor’s degree she actually did pretty well with getting a job doing lab work for biomedical research. The pay was not as good as someone might get with a bachelor’s degree in computer science or engineering, but was closer to this than I had expected.
Strictly speaking you might want to look at immunology also. When there is a war going on, you might want to look at both sides. Immune systems have been fighting parasites and viruses and bacteria for way, way longer than humans have existed.
She happened to graduate when the COVID pandemic was still going on, so quite a few of her interviews were either via zoom or telephone. This means that I happened to be in the next room listening for multiple of them. They went into a lot of detail regarding what she had already done in the lab. The research-based lab work that she had done, mostly on-campus, while she was an undergraduate student seemed to be quite important in terms of getting a decent job afterward. Her degree just says “Biology”, but the lab experience that she gained as an undergraduate student seemed to help quite a bit. I am pretty sure that this was also listed on her resume.
So one option is to just get a bachelor’s degree in biology, but attempt to get significant lab experience while you are a student.
Some form of graduate school is quite likely. As such when deciding what university to attend you might want to budget for the possibility that you might for example end up continuing on to a one or two year unfunded graduate degree (ie, funded by “the bank of mom and dad” and not funded by the university). Some students do jump straight from a bachelor’s degree to a fully funded PhD, but it is probably more common to either get some relevant work experience or a master’s degree or both somewhere along the way.
Parasitology and virology are advanced sub-fields of biology, especially microbiology. Microbiology would be a good undergraduate major to explore. Some universities have a biomedical science degree with concentrations in micro and infectious disease. You would likely need an advanced degree - MS, PHD, MD, or DVM, but there are some jobs in diagnostic laboratories for someone with a BS. Considering whether you prefer studying human or animal hosts may lead you in certain directions.
Wisconsin Madison has excellent programs in microbiology and all the life sciences. Microbiology, BS (CALS) < University of Wisconsin-Madison
Look at your state schools. There are good options there, too. For example:
Are you specifically interested in pathogens affecting humans, or do you just like the science? If the latter, you could also consider studying agricultural pathogens, which opens up a whole different range of career opportunities but still involves laboratory research. For example, at VT, you could study Soil & Crop Science, and consider their graduate programs in plant pathology. You might find this to be a less crowded field than something human-medicine-adjacent, but with the same sort of intellectual and research challenges.
Another tack would be a biotechnology major - here are a couple of examples:
Environmental Health might also be of interest:
SUNY ESF can be a good place to browse interesting bio-adjacent majors, in general. It’s also relatively affordable for OOS students, although Virginia isn’t one of the states in their formal Tuition Match program.
Speaking of tuition matching… the SREB (Southern Regional Education Board) offers discounted tuition for majors that aren’t available in one’s home state. You’d think the VA public U’s, combined, would have everything, but there are still some niche majors that aren’t offered. For example, you would qualify for the reciprocity rate in the undergrad Immunology major at UAB. Between this discount and the merit that the UA system offers, this could be quite affordable, and it seems well-matched with your interests.
Some colleges may have broad general biology majors within which the student can choose to focus on a particular subarea. But that can take some digging into course offerings and faculty research areas to determine whether the desired subarea(s) are well represented within the department.
I found a university I could attend online for a MLS post bacc program, however I would need to complete a MLT program beforehand. Would that be doable/advisable then and work for my goals? I also have biochemistry&molecular biology, biotech, general biology, biomedical sciences, biopsychology, and chemistry degrees available to me.
Should I look at classes/programs offered for immunology when getting a degree? And Do you know how one should go about getting sufficient lab experience? I’m not well versed in college and how it all works tbh
Generally, you either reach out to professors at the university or speak to a professor whose course you’ve taken and done well in. For this reason, it can be very beneficial to attend an in-person research university.
Get a bachelors degree in health sciences or something related. Then apply to the Tufts masters in Epidemiology and Global Health. Check out that program. It sounds like what you are interested in.
For sure that is a very normal progression. As I understand it, a lot of people get the MLT, work for at least a year or two, then do the MLS. Again as I understand it, online MLS programs designed for this purpose are not inherently a bad idea, indeed part of the point is to allow you to keep working while getting your MLS.
Whether that is actually the best path for you is a complex question. Doing a four-year bachelors in one of the other majors you mentioned would potentially open up more possible alternative paths. On the other hand, it could be a lot more expensive, both out of pocket and in terms of delaying when you can actually start working for good pay.
To be very frank, as a stranger on the Internet, I don’t feel comfortable giving you that sort of comprehensive career advice. But again, I am relatively comfortable with just passing on the information that this path (MLT, work, get an online MLS) is considered a viable route to the sorts of careers you can get with an MLS.
If you are interested in microbiology, that could be a strong major for the kinds of careers you mentioned. It is not “bad for your career” as you stated in your original post. Microbiology provides a solid foundation for work in virology, parasitology, infectious disease research, biotechnology, and clinical laboratory science.
To become a virologist or parasitologist, you will typically need a bachelor’s degree in a life science field, followed by advanced training to specialize. Many professionals in these fields earn a PhD for research careers, while many have MD or DVM degrees.
Degrees such as MLS (Medical Laboratory Science) or MLT (Medical Laboratory Technician) prepare you for laboratory-based careers. MLS programs are typically bachelor’s-level and qualify graduates for more advanced clinical laboratory roles. Most MLS/MLT jobs are in clinical or diagnostic laboratories within hospitals and healthcare systems, although opportunities also exist in biotechnology companies, public health labs, pharmaceutical industry settings, and medical research environments. Some positions may allow you to work alongside academic researchers or principal investigators studying viruses or parasites.
Your likely first step is earning an undergraduate degree. Any of the majors you listed (microbiology, biochemistry and molecular biology, biotechnology, biology, biomedical sciences, or chemistry) should provide the scientific background and laboratory experience needed for graduate study or laboratory careers. Most of your core science classes will have labs. If you already know you are especially interested in microbiology-related sub-specialties, prioritize coursework at the micro level such as microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, immunology, cell biology, and biochemistry, rather than classes at the macro level such as ecological biology, or zoology.
As you progress through college, your courses, labs, internships, and research experiences will help you discover your strengths and clarify which areas interest you most. You’ll have academic advisors and professors who can help guide you as well.
What you say you have available to you can get you where you want to be.
If you are interested in parasites and viruses, I would think that as an undergraduate student you might just look to see if one introductory course in immunology is available wherever you attend. I honestly do not know whether this would be combined with a course in parasites and viruses, or if these would be separate classes. I would expect these to be upper year classes, and would be surprised if you were to do any of this prior to perhaps your junior year of university. Of course you can do some lab work earlier than this.
When I think of the ongoing continuous war between viruses and parasites and our immune systems, I will admit I am rather torn between a reaction of “Ew”, versus a reaction of “this is really interesting stuff”.
I think that my daughter started off taking courses that required lab work. Then she found she liked it. Then she talked to the professors for each of the courses that she was taking that required lab work. My vague recollection was that her first opportunity was not quite what she preferred, but was a chance to do some lab work. She did this well. Then her second opportunity was something that was much closer to what she wanted to be doing. This is all stuff that you can find after you get to university, and after you start your class work. Getting to know your professors can help in this regard.
Generally it might be easier to get to know your professors at a small school. However, even at a large school I am pretty sure that professors will have office hours, and the vast majority of students will not take advantage of these office hours. You could show up for office hours just to chat with your professor and express interest in what they are teaching and ask about how to get more lab experience. Also there should be lots of opportunities at a very wide range of universities. Large universities might have more opportunities, but also more competition for these opportunities. I think that you can look for a school that is a good fit for you, that is affordable for you, and find lots of opportunities at a wide range of colleges and universities.
My best guess is that a sharp focus on parasites and viruses is largely a graduate school thing.
There are different types of lab work. As examples, when any of us go to the doctor, there might be some situations where they take a blood sample and send it to a lab. The lab might look for cholesterol, or cancer markers, or something else. Some of us might have genetic tests. There are all sorts of routine lab tests that are done every day, and someone has to do the lab work. Generally the tests are things that have been done a million times and work with solid results each time (where the results help patients be treated effectively).
In contrast, there are scientists doing research. They might also be doing lab based research. However, their lab work might be at least somewhat less routine. They might be growing cancer cells and seeing what impact various chemicals have on the cancer cells. They might be growing parasites and human immune cells and seeing what the parasites (or viruses or bacteria) do to the immune cells and vice versa. If they are doing research, then in many cases something will go wrong with the experiment. Someone will goof up in some sense and kill of their cells. Then they will need to figure out what went wrong and why, and try again and hopefully do better. That is research. One researcher I used to work with defined research as “you might fail”. But then you try again.
I think that you can get relatively far into your bachelor’s degree before you get into all of this. However, I have to admit that I do not know how someone gets into the first type of lab work. To me the second type seems more interesting. Many years ago I was writing software for use in a physics lab, which is of course very different again and requires a somewhat different education focus.
I might be tempted to budget up front for five or six years of university on the basis that if you end up getting a master’s degree, in most cases a master’s is not funded. In contrast if you end up going on to a PhD then most STEM PhD’s are funded by the university. Fortunately you live in a state that has multiple very good in-state public universities where you can get an excellent start.
But I think that a lot of this is stuff that you figure out after getting to university, and I think that getting to know your professors will be helpful.
Your foundational lab skills will come from the course requirements for a biological science major. You’ll likely take something similar to the following to earn a degree:
Biology 1
Biology 1 Lab
Biology 2
Biology 2 Lab
General Chemistry 1
General Chemistry 1 Lab
General Chemistry 2
General Chemistry 2 Lab
Organic Chemistry 1
Organic Chemistry 1 Lab
Organic Chemistry 2
Organic Chemistry 2 Lab
Biochemistry
Biochemistry Lab
Microbiology
Microbiology Lab
Labs are an integral part of the courses.
Thank you for the help and knowledge!
I was just saying that from what I saw online people said having a microbiology degree is typically not very good for job prospects, unless you add other stuff onto it. Of that was wrong that’s good then lol. Thank you for the advice!