Which College Majors Lead Graduates to Their Parents’ Basements

Parents Forum
141

@blossom, I totally agree about Math majors. We must have been writing at the same time. see my post right before yours. I think I might have a few potential Math majors in my house, and it worries me a little. I would encourage them to do Math, but would also encourage them take a decent number of CS courses, or Stats courses.

Any parent who allows their kid to go away to college thinking they’ll be a shoo in at Medical schools (or worse, a specific Medical school), is just a bad parent.

There’s no way of completely recession-proofing your college graduate. You just never know what will happen. Double majoring could be a little bit of a hedge, but you can’t completely protect against downturns. I’m not sure the Arts and Humanities kids do any better in recessions than the Finance and CS kids, even when the downturn is specific to those fields. It’s more typical for multiple sectors to fall together anyway.

I don’t want to start a STEM vs non-STEM war here, because as I said in my first post, I think the non-STEM kids should absolutely follow their passions, but in a bad economy, when the CS kids can’t get jobs in CS, I think they still probably have a leg up in the fierce competition for general business jobs. Let’s say a trainee program at a bank or an insurance company. Because of the difficulty of the major, I think they might have a better shot than an English major, for example. For an entry level job at a magazine, of course the English kid will have the advantage. But there are probably more general skills jobs than there are jobs at magazines.

It sounds like you have ideas on how you could protect a kid against downturns. I would love to hear them. And for the record, I have nothing against Philosophy majors. I know you didn’t say that. I almost minored in Philosophy, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around it :slight_smile: Actually, I just didn’t have the time with all of those STEM courses I had to take.

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“I knew who were doing those majors were PreMed or PreDental. I don’t think my English major friend thought she was PrePurchasing.”

My Bio major sister didn’t have an inkling her first job out of college would be as a purchasing agent, either.

143

I think it’s better to have an incorrect idea, as long as there are good plan B’s you can implement using that major, in case plan A doesn’t work out.

I’d feel a lot better having a 21 year old preMed kid living in my basement than a Humanities kid, assuming both had no plans what to do next. The preMed kid could look for jobs in a research lab, jobs selling medical equipment. The Humanities kid could find jobs too, but I’d be more worried about their plan B’s.

Let’s say both kids didn’t get the grades to move on to the next level. Grad school or law school for the Humanities kid, and Medical school for the preMed kid. Who do you want living in your basement?

Again, I’m not in any way saying that I would force a kid into something he didn’t want to do, but after the follow your passion, explore your world phase is over, which kid are you going to be more worried about - the preMed flunky or the Humanities flunky?

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Don’t worry about the humanities flunky- who do you think is going to ace the interview … That would be the kid with the communications skills- and my money is on the English major…

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Lol… you think humanities people don’t work in research labs?

Personally? I’d take the humanities kid. S/he isn’t going to rack up hundreds of thousands in medical school debt. PhD programs worth anything will pay for grad school.

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“in a bad economy, when the CS kids can’t get jobs in CS, I think they still probably have a leg up in the fierce competition for general business jobs. Let’s say a trainee program at a bank or an insurance company. Because of the difficulty of the major, I think they might have a better shot than an English major, for example. For an entry level job at a magazine, of course the English kid will have the advantage. But there are probably more general skills jobs than there are jobs at magazines.”

Seriously? Why would you think there are more jobs at banks or ins cos than in the gazillion other types of businesses out there?

Anyway, a CS kid had better have OUTSTANDING interview/ interpersonal skills for me to even consider him. There’s very little about a CS major that’s relevant to what I need. Math major, sure. CS? I buy stuff off the shelf, I don’t need a CS major in the least.

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I agree with the last sentence, but disagree with the first part. They might not end up where they expect, but they have a plan, and if they’re my kid, they have a plan B as well.

I agree that the world is interdisciplinary and that there’s overlap and all of what you said, but I think it’s naive to think that most employers are going to have such a holistic approach to hiring. Should they? Of course they should. Do they? Absolutely not. At least not in most fields.

Do I think a kid who is at the top of his class in Philosophy or English from an elite LAC can talk his way into almost any job? Sure. But for the average kid coming out, it won’t be that simple, and I think it’s kind of irresponsible for parents not to prepare their kids for the reality of the job market.

These companies aren’t Liberal Arts Colleges. They want very specific skills for a lot of the jobs. And again, a magazine - that’s a whole different world. But what about the kids who have to fight for a job at a typical company? I think they’re going to be at a big disadvantage if they don’t have some specific, hard skills. Unless it’s a job that requires a lot of writing. That’s a whole different world, and a whole different story.

I disagree with this, and I think it’s a dangerous thing to tell kids. Of course people change careers, and you’re not locked into what you majored in during college, and kids should know that. But saying your major means nothing is a bit of an overstatement. If I had chosen to major in Philosophy instead of what I did study, there’s no way I would be in the job I’m in now. Would it have been impossible? No, but I’m very confident I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had studied Philosophy.

I think in many cases your major absolutely does get you a job. When you’re 21, most of your skills and experiences are the courses you took in your major. Sometimes specific courses can get you a job. As time goes on, your major obviously has less of an impact on your career, but it’s a huge factor when you’re coming out of college.

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I obviously never said that. I’m sure there are some, but you’re not going to find as many Humanities
people as you will preMed types at the type of lab I was thinking of - bio and chem research labs.

I wasn’t talking about who you would want to send to grad/medical school. I was giving a scenario in which both kids had ruined their chances of grad/medical school, and had to implement a Plan B.

I agree, though. I’d much rather see a kid go to graduate school than med school. Not that either is better than the other. Just a personal preference.

149

Whew! What a thread!

To answer the question in the title…

Any major can lead to a kid living in their family home. Any major. All that has to happen is that kid can’t find a job, I can’t find a high enough paying job.

Or on the positive spin side…for some grads, living at home gives them a chance to save some money.

And for the record…just because you major in engineering doesn’t mean you will for be an engineer. DD has an engineering degree…she will never work in that field. Or so she says.

150

Got to agree with you there. No doubt that the English kid will probably interview better, but if they’re looking for science knowledge, the English kid is going to be SOOL. If it’s a writing intensive job, my money’s on the English kid too.

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Not sure where you got that from. I never said that. I thought you Humanities people were supposed to be good at reading comprehension. Everyone keeps misquoting me :slight_smile: Joke, joke joke. Just kidding really, let’s not start WWIII.

What I said was:

“But there are probably more general skills jobs than there are jobs at magazines.”

Do you agree with that? What I mean is that there are probably more jobs that require general business skills than jobs that require excellent writing skills. I think writing skills are very important. It always helps to be a good writer. But in most jobs, it’s not an absolute requirement. Writing skills make you sound more articulate and more intelligent - both very important, but they’re not a deal breaker in most business jobs, as long as they’re above a certain level.

One thing I should clarify about my hypothetical CS major. I’m not talking about the ultra nerdy socially awkward type. I mean a CS kid who has an outgoing personality.

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That’s not what my friends in insurance or banking fields have observed from working or for the older ones…doing hiring.

If anything, the corporate/institutional cultures of many banking/finance firms friends and I’ve worked in would be such that negative stereotypes about CS/engineering/STEM majors being “too nerdy” and “lacking good social and written communication skills” would be such that the English major will likely have a better shot unless the position is heavily technical and/or quantitatively oriented or the hiring manager/teams see past their preconceived stereotypes. Even then…there are non-STEM majors who could demonstrate he/she has the quant/tech skills covered. Plenty of such cases about…especially those who attended STEM-centered public magnets like the one I attended, BxScience, or TJSST.

And what of STEM/non-STEM double majors? Know of many who majored in say Viola/Chemistry(Conservatory/College double degree at my LAC), Electrical Engineering and History, English Lit and Physics, etc who’d be equally at home writing topflight essays or wrestling with math/science lab problems in school and the workplace.

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DS was working in two labs in two years. For the first year of these two years, the yearlong lab and an end-of-year research paper were parts of the graduation requirement for his major so essentially all students in his major do it. I actually did not know how he got this research job (maybe his department has a designated person who would make sure that every student will get a research position?)

The way he got his job in his second research year could be more interesting. As far as I know, in order to be fair to all students who apply to his lab, the PI mostly relied on the GPA to select who got the job (most applicants seem to be from the same college.) However, I did hear that the PI did give some preference to a kid with a science major (but does not care what science major), but a non-science major still has his/her chance if s/he is an excellent student.

@cobrat, Regarding the communication/writing skills for a science major, in the past year, it seems DS had to write a lot even though the contents appear to be very science oriented. Not sure how much his core course writing requirements in freshman and sophomore years (called distribution requirement at his college) would help him about this task. (It would be his third year doing research even though he was no longer doing it full time like his 2nd time doing research.)

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If you are assuming that the failed pre-med was a biology major (about half of medical school applicants and matriculants are biology majors, but that means that about half are other majors), then the plan B for such a graduate is probably no better than that of a humanities or social studies major, since biology-specific bachelor’s level jobs are not exactly plentiful or well-paying these days. So the biology graduate who does not go on to medical school likely needs to expand the job search to non-major-specific job areas, just like many humanities and social studies graduates.

Going back to http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html , we can see surveyed mid-career pay levels for various types of majors:



Major           10th %ile       median          90th %ile

(humanities and arts)
Drama           36,700          56,900          153,000
English         33,400          64,700          133,000
Film            33,900          68,500          136,000
Music           26,700          55,000          134,000
Philosophy      35,500          81,200          168,000

(social studies)
Anthropology    33,800          61,500          138,000
Economics       50,600          98,600          210,000
Geography       40,000          65,500          156,000
History         37,000          71,000          149,000
Political Sci   41,200          78,200          168,000
Psychology      31,600          60,400          127,000
Sociology       30,700          58,200          118,000

(science)
Biology         36,900          64,800          135,000
Chemistry       45,300          79,900          148,000
Geology         45,000          79,500          156,000
Math            45,200          92,400          183,000
Physics         56,000          97,300          178,000

(engineering/CS)
Chem Engin      71,900         107,000          194,000
Civil Engin     63,400          90,500          148,000
Computer Sci    56,000          95,500          154,000
Elec Engin      69,300         103,000          168,000
Ind Engin       57,100          94,700          173,000
Mech Engin      63,700          93,600          163,000

(business)
Accounting      42,200          77,100          152,000
Business Mgmt   38,800          72,100          147,000
Finance         47,200          88,300          195,000
Info Tech       44,500          74,800          129,000
Mgmt Info Sys   45,300          82,300          146,000
Marketing       42,100          79,600          175,000

(health pre-professional)
Health Care Adm 34,600          60,600          101,000
Nursing         47,600          67,000           98,300
Nutrition       33,900          55,300           99,200
Physician Asst  66,400          91,700          124,000

(other pre-professional)
Agriculture     36,300          71,900          150,000
Architecture    50,600          76,800          136,000
Communications  37,500          70,000          143,000
Criminal Just   32,200          56,300          107,000
Education       29,300          52,000          102,000
Hospitality     37,000          71,000          124,000
Religion        29,700          52,000           96,400

In summary, the common assumption that STEM majors automatically have better job prospects than H/SS is not necessarily true for some of the most common STEM majors. The engineering majors do have higher 10th percentile and median mid-career pay levels, but that may have more to do with the rigor of ABET-accredited engineering majors “weeding out” weaker students from those majors before they graduate.

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Most colleges do have frosh writing skills or course requirements. These are typically H/SS based, though some offer courses writing about various subjects like science. Some schools do have in-major writing or communication requirements. An example is MIT, where all students need to take two lower level H/SS based communication-intensive courses and two in-major upper-level communication-intensive courses (for H/SS majors, the in-major upper-level courses are chosen from different lists from the lower-level courses).

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We’re talking in very general terms here. I’m not sure what kind of jobs you’re talking about when you say “unless the position is heavily technical and/or quantitatively oriented”. Maybe you’re talking about HR, Public Relations, Advertising, or Marketing. If that’s the case, I would agree with your comment. But I would think most other jobs at a Financial firm are going be somewhat Math oriented, or they’re at least going to prefer some level of Mathematical ability so you can understand the business. Finance isn’t Calculus, but it’s not a walk in the park for someone who is Math phobic, either.

Let’s assume you were advising a kid who had aspirations of working on Wall Street, and not in one of those obviously Math lite areas I mentioned above. Let’s say the kid was trying to decide between English and
Computer Science/Electrical Engineering. Would you advise that kid to major in English?

Have your friends that you mentioned who work at banks actually hired any English majors? If so, what kind of jobs were they?

I have a friend from college who works on the equity side of one of the large banks. He has a son who’s looking like a Math/Science kid. He told me that he plans to encourage the kid to study Engineering, because it’s actually valued more than a Finance degree by many of the hiring managers.

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Seems like applied math with economics/finance, statistics with economics/finance, economics with math, or industrial engineering would be the typical quant finance prep majors.

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I agree about Bio. If one of my kids wants to go preMed, I would encourage them to choose a different major, or maybe do Bio and double major in a Plan B major.

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Yeah, those make sense to me. I think they probably just like to see any Math-heavy major beyond Finance.

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That’s interesting @mcat2. What kind of lab was it?