<p>I know the market is bad for liberal arts students, but I was just wondering if anyone can give me an idea of how these students are faring at "top universities" in the job search, especially from schools that are dominant in their region. I'm a sophomore at a top 20 majoring in English and am trying to do anything and everything to make myself more competitive. Any extra tips (such as smart electives to take, internship advice, etc...) would also be appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>You should be fine. You’ll definitely have at least some on campus recruiting and many companies won’t care what your major is. Go on your school’s job board and see how strong your opportunities are.</p>
<p>Do you know what you want to do with your English major? Internships are essential. Start making friends with your career center’s advisors now. </p>
<p>I am a 2010 grad (um, from Richmond, which is ranked at 32 this year) with a B.A. in English. I graduated with honors, three internships and several years of professional writing and editing experience. I came in knowing I wanted to be a magazine editor and I’m very resourceful, so I knew I needed internships and connections to get a job when I graduated.</p>
<p>As someone who just went through OCR at Harvard, twice, I would say the news is mixed.</p>
<p>Being in English won’t keep you out of good jobs; only being in English will. What do I mean by that? Major in whatever the hell you like, but take classes that give you skills employers might want. For example: if you want to do business (strategy, analysis, consulting), make sure you take (and do reasonably well in) economics. If you want to do banking, take finance if you can. For either, demonstrate some basic calculus abilities, and/or basic statistics. I’ve listed a maximum of four 1-semester courses here.</p>
<p>If you’re targeting tech jobs (i.e. Google) but not in the programming division, and want to do sales, still take a basic computer science course to prove to yourself you definitely want to do sales instead of programming (it’s kind of a silly choice, career-wise) and to prove to Google that you love technology. That sounds counterintuitive but it turns out to be necessary.</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, you’re targeting a job for which an English degree makes sense (journalism, publishing, teaching) – good luck; those are actually quite hard to get. You’ll have to have the appropriate internships (for journalism or publishing) and campus leadership (for teaching/TFA). You’ll need to network. And you’ll still, without question, earn less after graduation than in the ‘quant’ jobs.</p>
<p>FWIW: I’m a international development major, writing a thesis in sociology that is mostly theory and a tiny bit of cultural studies. Total “BS” by employer standards. But I aced second-year economics, have mid-level calculus & statistics under my belt, and demonstrated leadership on my resume – so I am working for a top-3 consulting firm next year, which is completely typical of the kinds of people hired by such firms. You can major in anything you want, as long as you still make time to develop the right skills to be useful for employers.</p>