YES!! to @blossom . So many students don’t advantage of career services. And it"s not like that office doesn’t do a whole lot of out reach, often starting with first years.
I think, though, we, as parents, could do more for pre-professional, too. We need to get our kids into the workforce. Summer and part time jobs in high school give our children the work experience that can make getting hired for that internship a little easier. And so we should stop excusing our kids from finding paid employment (they’re too busy with ECs, traveling, “enrichment”).
I enjoyed my on-the-job-training in Germany. For three years I interned with a company who trained me in all of the departments of their lab. I also attended vocational school where I took job related classes like chemistry, physics, technical math and writing and a computer class. Then I sat for the diploma at the chamber of industry and trade examination and became a full fledged chemical lab technician.
I got paid a modest amount while training, but eventually the company hired me full time after I got my diploma. They already knew I was fully trained and what kind of employee I was. Win-win situation for us both.
I think my D’s college path here in the US is pretty pre-professional. For two years in prepharmacy she has Bio and Chem with labs, Ochem, psychology, econ, English composition, Calculus, statistics, all things relevant to her major. A few electives like foreign language, etc she takes for her own interests.
Once in the 4 yr Pharm D program all the students take the same classes like Biochemistry, Anatomy and Physiology, several pharmacy classes. They also have experiential learning experiences and need to do a certain number of intern hours in the summers. The whole P4 year is a series of several weeks long rotations of advanced practical learning at different sites (from hospitals to community pharmacies, FDA, etc). Then they sit for state and national licensing exams.
Let’s not pretend that taking advantage of career services is a panacea. There’s no question it can be useful for getting a clueless kid going, and developing some momentum. But they don’t have many miracles to deliver.
When my daughter was in college, she took full advantage of career services, visiting early and often. She was their darling. They presented her case as a model of how a humanities major can use extracurricular activities and internships to build career qualifications and a network, and they also used her resume (very impressive – it was modular, and she could reshape it by pushing a few buttons to emphasize different sets of qualifications) and cover letters as models for other students. None of the career-services-type things she did, however, led to anything like a job in the field she was pursuing at the time.
She was fine – she always has Plan B, Plan C, and so forth, and she got lucky with one of them. And, to be fair, this was 2009, and the field in which she was most interested was in total crisis. She is demonstrably a great job-seeker. She has changed jobs twice since her first post-college job, and each time she developed a campaign plan of practically military dimensions and wound up getting a great position for which there was lots of competition. She probably didn’t need career services in the first place. But the career services arsenal didn’t do anything for her.
And D’s BF is in an IST program and an internship is required. He was lucky he got the one he wanted and works there a few hours during school and during breaks and gets paid.
He says he gets to use a lot of the things he learns in the classroom and apply them in the real work world.
So he expands his learning, gains work experience for his resume and earns money.
“For example, could a summer job in beach patrol count as a relevant internship for a student with a major in theraputic recreation, exercise science, or athletic training (all of which are offered as majors at Longwood)?”
Why are you asking this board? How would we know? If you are so curious, call Longwood and find out.
There are organizations starting to do longitudinal studies on how the graduates of 2009/2010 are going to fare long term due to the job market they graduated into. The initial data (I think from the Fed) is not promising.
JHS- your D sounds amazing. I know young people who graduated in 2009 who still haven’t launched.
But focusing on a field in total crisis MEANS you need Plan B and C… companies develop their hiring targets well ahead of time, but since the October 2008 meltdown happened before the 2009 offers went out, they were able to retrench (meaning cut their targets to the bone) very quickly.
I’d venture that the career services arsenal gave her the template for the “campaign plan of practically military dimensions”. Or she’s a natural. Or both.
We noticed, when college shopping for the youngest, that institutions had a different focus. One, for instance, was very focused on research and had a high placement rate in graduate and professional school. Another was very focused on global experiences and study abroad. It had a lot of international students enrolled. Youngest D chose a school that pushed the internship experience. It’s not just career services but each individual department that pushes kids to get those experiences. But, it is something that happens parallel to the classroom experience. Classes are still pretty typical college classes and don’t have a pre-professional leaning.
My son used the career office at his college, but they were not particularly helpful for someone with his skill set. (Running conferences and the summer dorm reservations system), four years of Arabic, and an interest in security and nuclear disarmament. He worked summers and had great recommendations, but he got his internships on his own. His colleges listings were all with banks and lawyers - stuff he wasn’t interested in. Of course it turned out NGO work didn’t actually appeal to him that much either! He’s on to Plan B, also something the college career office didn’t help with.