what do you do with a Humbio degree?

Colleges and Universities Stanford University
#1

<p>My s loves biology and all related bio type classes. When we visited during admit weekend we came across the HumBio major. It appeared to be the perfect major for my s. My concern is what do you do with this degree when you get out of school? Its not a BS but instead a BA. I understand its an interdisciplinary major and a lot of schools are now starting to dabble with this new concept, I'm just not sure what you have at the end of the day (or at the end of 4 years). What kind of jobs are there for students graduating with this type of degree. And for the record, nope my s doesn't want to go to med school, which I understand a lot of kids do with this major.</p>

<p>Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks</p>

#2

<p>law school, graduate programs in the sciences or social sciences, education, non-medical health services, public health (MPH), business school</p>

<p>i wouldnt say that there are specific careers, but it opens up to other graduate programs just as well as it does to medical school</p>

#3

<p>What would you study in grad school? After all you don't have any specific concentration, so thats where I'm confused. I'm honestly not trying to put this major down, I just don't understand what you can do with it. My s isn't interested in law or medicine and I'm not sure if he will want to go to grad school. Kids change theirs minds all the time. So I would like to think that once he graduates he would have the option of going to grad or getting a decent paying job. So does anyone out there know of any jobs that one can be considered for with this major?</p>

#4

<p>
[quote]
After all you don't have any specific concentration, so thats where I'm confused.

[/quote]

Humbio majors have an "Area of Concentration." Not quite as intense as some concentrations for other majors, but a decent one nonetheless. I'm not sure how grad admissions works entirely, but I can guarantee there is a route to many disciplines in grad school from the humbio major. Conceivably one can get a grad degree in anything biology related, and likely psychology, anthropology, public policy, sports medicine, and a few others I'm blanking on.</p>

#5

<p>I'm considering a similar major at another college, and I'm thinking about science writing. So that's another potential career path. I would second (third?) the public policy thing as well.</p>

#6

<p>people do change their mind all the time, even here, which is why some people like HumBio. you can concentrate in anything from youth education to health policy to neuroscience to children's advocacy. as Senior said, this can lead to just as diverse a set of graduate programs. however, i wouldn't expect that many useful job-related skills to be acquired through the HumBio major - mostly just intellectual growth through classes. if you want job-related skills, i would say english, CS, engineering, and econ are the main job-track majors, but even they sometimes need a masters.</p>

<p>the reality is there are just not that many jobs that want people with just a bachelors in human biology. in my opinion, these will likely be the same jobs that take people with a BA in sociology, IR, psych, english, etc. (general skill jobs). if you want a decent paying job with just an undergrad degree (which i would consider ~50,000, but this number would seem ridiculous to most stanford students), this would probably suffice. for a well-paying job above that, i would recommend graduate school or an engineering major.</p>

<p>career counselors at Stanford often say that majors are very slightly related to eventual career paths. while this is true, i personally think it's because of a lack of planning or direction when the students chose the majors. they probably didn't consider what jobs, if any, actually related to their major, so when they graduated, they looked at jobs that would accept a wide variety of majors. this is part of a wider movement among institutions to promote less professional-track majors, so they instruct students to major in something they enjoy. (unfortunately, i think it's become a cycle of telling students to major in what they enjoy because previous students that they told weren't able to find a career in their majors)
[this is just my own observation]</p>