My daughter is definitely a science kid and is going into her senior year in high school and will likely graduate in the top one or 2 spot of her class. She is planning on some sort of pre-med track wherever she chooses to go to college and has thought Biology would be the major she chooses. However, after reading a lot lately about people with Biology degrees having a hard time getting jobs, I am wondering if there is a stronger major that would fit her interests just in case she does not choose to go on to Med school and chooses to pursue a masters, the workforce, etc. after undergrad. I am not a science person myself, nor is my husband, so we are just wondering what the trends are and what would be smart options for science fields in case she chooses not to go the doctor route. thx
Read http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21632292/#Comment_21632292
The best “backup” route is to quit premed early to focus on student’s real strength.
Premed needs premed ECs. CS needs CS ECs. Other employable majors also need their own ECs So mix-and-match is not ideal. I would say the risk that students get killed by their “backup” major is much bigger than the benefit of eventually using the backup. Of course, there are exceptions. If someone is so good and interested in one’s backup, the person probably changes its mind and quits premed already. Successful premed these days need dedication (hundreds of hours of ECs and have fun doing it). If it does not seem to work out, move on to your backup by the end of sophomore year and do well on it.
The order of importance is GPA – MCAT – ECs. If GPA does not work out, dwelling on others is futile.
Post college employability for bio major is quite poor (unless your D is Ok with a job for which any college degree is required). Even with a MS or PhD in biology, job prospects are bleak.
Chemistry and biochemistry also have poor post-graduation job prospects, though somewhat better than biology. (Let’s just say both my Ds–at 2 different high schools in flyover country–had PhD chemists from brand name programs teaching high school chemistry and math.)
My go-to suggestion is mathematics/applied math & statistics.** This offers many opportunities to go in many different directions–biostatistics, bioinformatics, engineering (BME chiefly but also other engineering fields), epidemiology, public health (MPH), healthcare policy & planning, medical & health physics–are some possibilities if she wants to stay in a general healthcare area. Plus she’d have the background to pursue a variety of non-health care jobs in consulting, banking, investment analysis, business, computing, insurance, city/government management & planning, teaching (demand for math teachers is significantly higher than for bio/chem teachers, teaching at a community college is a real possibility with just a math BS), etc.
Other potential alternative majors–BME (though this can be tough on the GPA for a lot of kids), public health (though only a few programs offer this an undergrad level–and jobs for undergrad PH majors tend to pay poorly). Any field your D has a strong interest in, be it a hard science, humanities or social science field.
**Full disclosure–both my Ds had math as one of their undergrad majors.
Theoretically, they would make better money as high school teachers than using their PhDs in a college lab as researchers. My guess is 30k in college lab vs 60k + 3 months off as a high school teacher.
Math does allow one to explore computer related or finance related fields. Chemistry PhDs get paid well if they can get private sector cutting edge research jobs.
Biostatistics and bioinformatics are in high demand and retain some biology. They do require aptitude for the subjects though (math, informatics).
Biomedical engineering or chemical engineering but it can be a GPA killer .
@texaspg You’re bring overly generous in your estimate of what our local teachers make. To earn $60K/year, a teacher here needs a PhD AND 35+ years working in the school district. (Teaching experience outside the district doesn’t count toward total years teaching, btw.) A first year PhD can expect a salary in the $35-40K/year range. Only slightly better than a full time lab tech.
wowmom - I live in a major city with several universities. Our school districts seem to reward the teachers with advanced degrees much more than the universities. I googled our school district payscales and they seem to be starting at 52k (can’t see any degrees). I know for a fact that my kids high school music teacher, only one with a doctorate (referred to as the only doctor in the entire school with 200+ faculty), retired a few years ago making more than 125k. Local universities dont pay music faculty anywhere close to that as far as I know unless they are endowed faculty.
Average salary in my school district (public school - google search to get average) is $75,600. Median income is 55K for elementary, 62K for middle school, and 54K for high school. Our high school has a lot of newer teachers probably skewing the median. Older and more educated teachers definitely make more.
And in other districts they make 32-40k. So if teaching were a backup major, op would need to know exactly what the policy is in their state and then district per district process as well as the post-BA process.
@creekland - How does your school district treat people entering with different levels of education?
PhD Chemist here…
I just want to make sure you all know that there are multitude of reasons for PhDs to go into high school teaching and most of them don’t have to do with poor job prospects.
A lot of people go into PhDs thinking they’re going to be professors, where they’ll get to influence and feed young minds. During the PhD, you’ll learn that academia isn’t just that. The pressure, the politics, the luck involved in getting science to work, etc. drive a lot of grad students (especially at top universities) to constantly re-evaluate their career choices. Some realize that they really enjoy purely teaching, engaging in pedagogy - and that that’s best accomplished in teaching high school. From my Stanford cohort, there are 3 high school teachers. They chose that because they loved doing outreach and teaching younger people, and started tailoring their grad school experience for that line of work well before graduation.
The other thing is that a lot of PhD research positions, academic or industry are not very portable. If you work in pharma, you’ll work in Boston, New Jersey or California, maybe Indianapolis or Chicago. That’s about it. If you’re in petrochem, you’re in Texas or Oklahoma. There are huge swaths of the country where they only employ a handful of PhDs. In academia, you go where the job is. There’s a lot of competition and each department hires in earnest maybe once every 3 years - you don’t really have any say over where you land your first job.
With a family or SO, PhDs have a hard time finding the right job in the right place. It’s one of the reasons I’ve delayed having a family. Now I’ve landed a permanent job in the middle of nowhere. It’s a great job, I love it, and I intend to stay for a long time. That’s where I’ll start my family. But if you have a 2-body problem, there are more location-flexible jobs you can do with a PhD. One of those is teaching. You can also go into patent work (can involve more school).
PhD chemists starting at large companies make ~$80-100k plus signing bonus, depending on industry. Semi-conductor industry pays more, but then you have to live in pretty high-COL areas. Assistant professors at research universities and staff scientists at government facilities are paid similarly. Small LACs pay much worse. This is the most recent freely available salary survey: https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/careers/salaries/new-graduates-cen-2013.pdf
Keep in mind that about half of PhD earners go on to a postdoc (either to expand skillset for industry or in hopes of landing a professorship) where the going rate back in 2013 was probably ~$30-40k, which makes the median earnings figure skew low.
For the OP, I started college thinking I would be a medical doctor. By my sophomore year, I was no longer interested in becoming an MD. A lot of college students go through this and make it out with solid careers. Of my friends who started pre-med and changed their mind, most of them started re-tailoring their degrees after sophomore year towards a different career. You can do that by changing ECs, looking for internships, adding a 2nd major or a minor, etc. The prereqs for med school overlap with other health care related grad programs. What it says on your degree isn’t the be-all and end-all. One of my friends has a biochemistry BS and got into architecture school - she just decided that’s what she wanted and focused on making a good portfolio.
@geraniol - are these chemistry PhDs who chose high school teaching?
Your last sentence about postdocs triggers the memories about stories I read about how too many people are stuck in post doc positions waiting for that break in industry or assistant professor positions. I have to say this is not just for sciences. For a sample of n=1, the lab my daughter researched in at Standord had a postdoc with bioengineering from Harvard/MIT and worked for almost 4 years before getting an assistant professor position.
Microbiology, not to be confused with biology
Honestly, unless you are really interested in chemistry/biology research and don’t care about its job aspect, you have better looked elsewhere. A large number of those jobs have been outsourced to China. Check out http://www.wuxiapptec.com/ as one example. It is fair to say that you don’t need a Ph.D. to be a good teacher. Ph.D. is to learn how to do independent research.
Well, I guess you could go to China or other places to get a procedure. But most people don’t even have a passport and you might not survive the 14/16 hours flight before the procedure.
Well, there is medical tourism, at least for non-urgent/emergency procedures where the patient is able to travel. For people in the US, the motivation is often cost (often much lower, even after including travel costs), but there sometimes the motivation is that the condition or procedure is better known elsewhere, with more knowledgeable and experienced providers there.
@texaspg Yes. A lot of people go into a PhD with a romantic notion of becoming an educator in academia, especially at a small LAC. If you have a love of something enough to go on to a PhD, chances are you love learning and love school and think you can make everyone love learning as much as you do. People don’t usually go into a PhD for the money, though after experiencing the spartan lifestyle of a grad student, some change their minds and decide that they’d rather go for the money. Just as I know 3 high school teachers, I also know a good handful of McKinsey managers and partners. My class also has people in totally non-science jobs, government policy, etc. There’s also a growing number of assistant professors that I know, and tons of industry and government lab scientists from my PhD class. Everyone makes a comfortable living. Or maybe because we’ve all had the experience of living in the SF Bay Area on a student stipend, we’re all comfortable by comparison.
Also a 4 year postdoc in biology is not considered long. It’s normal. I don’t think anyone going into a PhD with the intention of academia is under any illusion that there are a lot of professorships out there. It’s a risk, and people decide what they’re willing to lose. However, many 22 y.o. college grads do overestimate their skill and luck. Just like in any lottery.
Good research remains in North America and Europe. It’s the boring grunt work-type research that goes to China and India (and there are plenty of contract research companies in the US too). Honestly there is a glut of PhDs in some areas in the US, and as you go down the school rankings, the PhD becomes less valuable. But if you’re a good scientist, you can still find great jobs here.
A biology degree doesn’t mean you have to be a biologist or a biology teacher. You probably won’t be an engineer, but there’s a world of rewarding careers out there. The bridge between classroom education and meaningful career is not always a direct one, and in a fast-changing world that values adaptation, nor should it be.
This is no longer true. Read https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-big-pharma-is-targeting-chinas-deadliest-diseases-1499252401
Let’s face it – the only guaranteed career path after graduation is physician. The majority of those premeds have no clue whatsoever what is involved. It is just a fashion word. (my favorite example https://fox61.com/2017/04/20/two-connecticut-students-get-accepted-to-a-list-of-ivy-leagues/ , I am really curious how they are doing on their premed journey) For a large number of people, reality quickly sets in. So you feel lucky you got into some great school you don’t even know why? If you are premed, you are likely to feel sorry for your decision to go there a year later. I would say the backup route is to go to a school where you feel you have the best chance to be a top student. (but if you are above 2nd standard deviation and you are not at a top school, you choose the wrong school.)
I met a young biomedical engineering PhD recently who said he works for McKinsey. Some current medical school students are considering joining McKinsey instead of doing a residency. McKinsey supposedly pays above 150k for an MD without a residency.