<p>So I was wondering what are some good psychology schools?
what jobs can you get with a degree in it?</p>
<p>For a liberal arts major, you need to separate the career from the major. Of course if you are interested in becoming a psychologist it may be a good start. Your question is actually deeper than it seems, for it cuts to the heart of a debate that is still ongoing – what is college for? </p>
<p>On one side you have the vocational camp, on the other those advocating the “life of the mind”. For the former, think nursing, engineering, journalism, accounting, etc. These majors are just a step or two removed from the days of apprenticeship. Ask someone from one of those majors what they will be doing after college and the answer is obvious. To the vocational school of thought, college prepares you for a job, a better job than you get out of HS. </p>
<p>Just as earnest, on the other side of the debate, are those that argue that college should prepare you for precisely nothing! Well, they don’t put it exactly that way, but thats mostly the intent. In years not so far removed when college was largely the province of the rich, one went off to college to enrich the mind or to become a clergyman (most old US colleges were founded as divinity schools). Those studying the liberal arts divorced themselves from the practical world in favor of the academic life inside the ivory tower. After the undergrad degree one could cement this relation with a PhD or switch to the grubby commercial track by going to a professional school such as medicine or law. </p>
<p>These days, of course, the world has changed. Vocational-oriented students are required to take take liberal-arts courses. And while the liberal-arts curriculum has not changed in goal all that much (although you don’t study the trivium and then the quadrivium), colleges these days tout it for its preparation of the mind. Liberal-arts majors are not generally intended to prepare you for a specific career. You learn to analyze, to argue, you are exposed to many points of view (well, on some campuses anyway), and to reason. </p>
<p>What you emerge with to sell to employers is potential. This is where the game gets a bit unfair. Employers don’t assess the potential of every student the same. The more reputable your school, the more likely employers are to have some interest. Hence the obsession you see with Ivy, top LAC, and similar colleges isn’t entirely unfounded. </p>
<p>Almost any career field is open to the liberal-arts grad outside of the ones that require specific training (engineering, nursing, etc), and for almost all of these you could go to grad school anyway if you really wanted. That’s why books like “jobs for the english major” are too limiting; you can do almost anything but the question is how to get there? </p>
<p>Fortunately there are things a student can do to become more attractive to potential employers. I’ve already mentioned go to a school that has a good reputation. After that the things to do are get a good GPA, the second is to take some business-related classes, lets not forget networking with family and friends, but the most important is internships. First off, its better to take a peek at what its like in a law firm/accounting/marketing/etc. rather than start your career and find out you don’t like it. And even if an internship is in field A you will encounter people at work doing B or C, things you maybe didn’t even know about, and find you like them even more. Internships help open a student’s eyes to all the possibities that are out there in a way that grabbing a handful of brochures from the career center can never do. In effect once you’re “in the door”, even temporarily, you get a longitudinal glimpse of people at various stages in their careers, from people in their 20’s to mid-career people in their 40’s, to senior people in their 50’s & 60’s. You get to see a broad range of possibilities for where you can go.</p>
<p>Most HS and college students probably can only name a handful of careers (how many can you name?) and at a very high level of abstraction, yet in the business world there are dozens and dozens of separate careers under some broad headings. I alluded to this by describing that longitudinal glimpse in the previous paragraph. You don’t just have to become a doctor or lawyer to have a career! To give just one example, most HS students might be able to name “accounting” as a career but this simple label glosses over the possibilities of the career. Depending on your interests you could work with non-profits, or in health-care, or on Wall Street, or in education, or insurance, or corporate finance, or in hi-tech, to name but a few. And there are sub-fields in accounting such as auditing or managerial systems. </p>
<p>The game of business is often confusing to HS & college students because it seems so random; it fact it is random! Starting in one area doesn’t mean you have to stay in it forever; one relative of mine started as a buyer for a retail store, after a few years went to work for a supplier of theirs that sold market research data, left at the invitation of a friend to join another firm running a management-information group, and is now a product manager for a multinational firm. Could he have predicted this in college? No way! To go back to the previous example, if your interests lie in non-profits you might start as an accountant but enter management after a while (who better to be a leader than someone who understands the books?) and then spend some time working for the government helping administer programs for non-profits.</p>
<p>BTW an excellent book that talks about how college students explore careers and parlayed internships into great jobs is called “Major in Success” by Combs. I really can’t recommend this book highly enough, it lays out the whole process of using the years in college to discover fields you would enjoy and how to prepare for getting a job after graduation. </p>
<p>So my advice comes in 2 parts: the first is to major in something that youlove. BTW don’t be surprised if you change your major in college; most students know little or nothing of the broad sweep of academic fields that are out there since they’ve never taken courses in anthropology, sociology, economics, etc and may discover they have a passion for one of these fields after taking a survey course. </p>
<p>The 2nd piece of advice is get Combs book and follow the process he outlines. There is no need to identify a career today, but it IS something you want to be working towards in college. If you want until spring of senior year you are at an immense disadvantage compared to your peers. Instead a student should spend the early years testing the waters and finding areas that are of interest, talk to alums of the college who are working in various fields (a service the career center is happy to arrange), etc. Do volunteer work, internships, whatever it takes to find out what areas are interesting and to get some real-world experience under the belt.</p>
<p>All of the above provides encouragement, but here is the directly to the point version: persons with degrees in psychology will find that their first job after graduation may well be waiting tables. It is one of the most popular college majors and one of the most difficult to place in employment after college. That is just the reality of it. Practically every university and LAC offers the major and there are a huge number that are good choices</p>
<p>To get a job in psych you need at least a masters but probably a PhD. It is a good springboard for other grad school programs as well. Agood place to start</p>
<p>a psych major, particularly with a good chunk of social psych-related courses, is excellent prep for just about any role in a modern corporation or large organization of any type; particularly good background for management, sales or marketing. It is also solid prep for law or business school.</p>
<p>Psych is by far the easiest major to get, maybe next to Ohio State’s Family Resource Planning major. It can be a nice springboard to grad school because Psych teachers give out historically high grades. But a far as getting a job with a bachelor’s in Psych, you might as well have just not gone to college.</p>
<p>Thank you for your honesty.</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, the #1 job for this major is non-profit organizations, of course I could be wrong</p>
<p>Not to put down psych majors, but all I hear is that it is the formal “undecided” major. Like others have said, the jobs available with just an undergrad degree are very hard to find. Yes, you get a very broad education but on the other hand it is not specific enough to get into any real job.</p>
<p>I would be interested to hear what type of jobs you can get with just an undergrad in psych because as far as I know there really aren’t any.</p>
<p>Anovice, maybe my first post was too long to read thru but when you write "you get a very broad education but on the other hand it is not specific enough to get into any real job you fall right back into the debate about what a college degree is for. Is it vocational training or to enrich your mind?</p>
<p>So when you write "I would be interested to hear what type of jobs you can get with just an undergrad in psych because as far as I know there really aren’t any" you are complaining that a non-vocational major hasn’t provided vocational training. Really, this shouldn’t be a surprise.</p>
<p>If you want a good job with a liberal-arts degree you need to do something besides simply get a diploma. My earlier post outlines these steps. For specific examples of what people have done with liberal-arts degrees see the book I mentioned by Combs, you can also look at <a href=“http://www.arts.cornell.edu/career/careersafter.asp[/url]”>http://www.arts.cornell.edu/career/careersafter.asp</a></p>
<p>I’m going to double major in college in Anthropology and Psychology. I’m more than likely going to become a professor, Indiana Jones, or some sort of all around nerdy person. But hey, I might end up a journalist, a lawyer or something else I never know, I just know I want to study these things.</p>
<p>Psychology… the undecided major? I thought that was history? I guess Psych would work though as the undecided major… it’s becoming one of the top 5 most popular majors.</p>
<p>Physc is by far the easiest major…</p>
<p>what about sociology?</p>
<p>I suggest you do Biological Psychology or Mathematical Psychology, a little more difficult but you will learn more important things.</p>
<p>Maybe not a little more difficult, but you learn a whole lot more important things and it should make getting a job, or graduate school easier.</p>
<p>I concur, psych is just too broad for it to really help you learn</p>