career path

Graduate School
1

<p>hey guys, I'm currently a senior in high school and am going to be applying to colleges in the fall. I know that one thing that can make a college search a lot easier is if you have a general direction that your shooting for.
I'm looking for a career in which you can make around 90K from the start and make around 250K by the age of 30. I'm not shooting for the million dollar a year salary, and in the long run, id be happy with around 250-300K. I completely understand that money shouldn't be your only motivation for choosing a profession, and i wouldn't go into a career path that I'm going to hate, but money is definitely going to be a factor in my decision. </p>

<p>One particular career path I've thought about is pharmacy. One question i have is i know the cap for a clinical pharmacist is around 150K. Where i could i try to move on to in this field if i wanted to make more then that, and what kind of degrees would i need for that kind of mobility.</p>

<p>Also, what career paths other then medicine, banking and pharmacy would fit the criteria i described?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

2

<p>Wow… 90k start and 250k+ by 30? That’s a pretty tall order.</p>

<p>90k start: There are only a handful of fields in which you can see that kind of money with just an undergraduate degree - certain specialties of engineering (notably petrochem) and finance being the only ones I know of. Bear in mind that this is often school and rank-in-class dependent - there are top MIT grads getting 100k with EE’s degrees.</p>

<p>250k by 30: While you can definitely make that kind of money in medicine, you generally won’t see it by 30 - college+med school+residency = age 30 before you can even hang out your own shingle. Still, you could do it by 35. The only other jobs paying that kind of money are jobs working with large amounts of money - investment banking, tax or patent law, private equity, etc.</p>

<p>Please bear in mind that achieving that level of success in any of these fields is astonishingly difficult - in all probability you might personally only have the talents to achieve that level of financial success in one or two fields, and they pretty much all require an all-in level of committment. What I am trying to say is, you had better be sure what path you really want, because without a lot of talent, hard work, and luck you could very easily be shuffling papers for 40k a year, or collecting unemployment.</p>

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<p>Oh, and pharmacy - your average drugstore pharmacist never gets anywhere near 250k, I think the only one who do are the research chemists who create new drugs and are in demand enough to command big bucks.</p>

<p>EDIT: My 666th post. I am the devil.</p>

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<p>Have you considered nepotism? That is the only realistic way to be making 250K by age 30.</p>

5

<p>Get a degree in chemistry, then become a meth kingpin ala Walter White (pretty sure if he started earlier he’d be raking in millions by 30).</p>

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<p>haplo - I admit I had completely overlooked the criminal professions. There are several with that kind of earning potential.</p>

7

<p>Only way you are going to make 250K per year by age 30 is if you run your own business or you work in a sales field that is hot and makes killer commissions.</p>

<p>Expecting a job from a company where you make 250k a year is highly unrealistic, for somebody under 30. You’d have to have some AMAZING skill set to garner that amount of money.</p>

<p>I think you need to divide your expectations in half (45K to start, 125K by age 30 if you’re lucky/skilled), including earning an advanced degree to help you reach the 125K range.</p>

8

<p>If you are thinking clinical pharmacy, you are going to need a PhD in Chemistry…if you obtain that degree by age 30 you will have accomplished something. I’m not sure what the going rate for a postdoc in Chemistry is, but I’m assuming it is not 250k per year…probably around 150K less than that in reality.</p>

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<p>^post docs don’t make 150K [Everyday</a> Scientist Graduate School Money V – Return of the PostDoc](<a href=“http://blog.everydayscientist.com/?p=590]Everyday”>http://blog.everydayscientist.com/?p=590) They make about 38K.</p>

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<p>I think you misread what I said, I said they make 150K less than 250K…and even that is pushing it.</p>

<p>38K seems low for a post doc in Chemistry. Why anyone would want to go to school for 9 years to make 38K is beyond me. Maybe most of those postdocs are going directly into academics, which would pay less than the business field.</p>

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<p>Didn’t you know, chemistry postdocs are meant to be exploited. They cost a fraction more than grad students, but are ten times as productive.</p>

<p>38K is actually pretty decent, I’ve heard stories about 20K postdocs.</p>

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<p>OminousRun - those of us in the sciences are wondering the same thing. Why go to grad school for 5 years when you’re going to pay me $40,000, maybe $50,000, in my first job? Argh. That’s not low for a post-doc position; that’s average, although I think it SHOULD be considered low. And that’s the going rate for a post-doc regardless of whether you are going into industry or academia.</p>

<p>This is, of course, speaking of a post-doctoral fellowship, which is like a 2-5 year apprenticeship you do after you finish your PhD. They don’t pay a lot. A starting professor (which is virtually impossible to get unless you HAVE done a post-doctoral fellowship first) can make anywhere from $55K to $80K depending on the school, the location of the school, and whether it’s “soft money” (majority of income generated by outside grants) or “hard money” (majority of income paid by the school). PhD holders in the sciences who go into industry usually make a lot more to start out with; they can make anywhere from $70K to $100K or more.</p>

<p>To the OP - So I’m going to ask the obvious question. You’re in high school and you likely live with your parents and don’t have to pay your own bills. Do you know what the purchasing power of $250,000 per year is? How do you know you won’t be happy with left?</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong; I consider myself semi-materialistic and I, too, want to make a lot of money - enough that I can live a comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle. So I’m not criticizing your choice; in fact, I think it’s good that you are being realistic about money and I actually think this is a better approach than those who just major in whatever and trust that a comfortable life will come to them (I was actually discussing this yesterday with a colleague, and we concluded that college is wasted on those younger than 25! Lol.)</p>

<p>But what I’m saying is - as a person who is currently living on my own and supporting myself, $250,000 for one person is a LOT. You can live very comfortably even in the most expensive parts of the country on even half that. Furthermore, even in the most highly-paying careers you won’t make that much, realistically, by age 30. Which brings me to my next question, which is at age 18, do you realize how young 30 is? I didn’t when I was 18 but now that I’m 24, I’m realizing how truly young that is. In this day and age of lots of career building and education done during the 20s, you really are beginning your life at 30, and you’ve likely got another 50 years of life ahead of you at least!</p>

<p>If you went to medical school straight from college you’d probably finish your residency around age 28, but with that you’d only be able to go into primary care specialties and you’d probably make between $150,000 and $250,000 depending on where you work. The higher-paying specialties like surgery, cardiology, etc. take more time. You’d probably hit the salary you wanted, but maybe by age 35 or 40.</p>

<p>After law school, you might make 90K from the start but seeing as you’d likely finish law school at age 24-25 or so (assuming you go straight from undergrad), you probably wouldn’t make $250,000 by age 30. Think about it - that’s doubling your salary in just 5 years. There are few firms that are willing to pay you that much after such a short amount of time. And this is only if you went into some kind of business law - you won’t make that as a prosecutor or working at a nonprofit or even as a defense attorney unless you represent high-profile clients. Perhaps if you go into entertainment law and land a really rich client, but with only 5 years of experience no one is going to hire you to represent them.</p>

<p>Basically, if you are making $60,000 out of undergrad you can count your lucky stars. Most BA graduates make between $30,000 and $50,000 in their first few years out.
Investment banking, securities, management consulting and all that you could probably do it - but only with an MBA. Even the top firms don’t pay business analysts with just a BA $90,000 out of the box. To get an MBA from a top field, you need to work for some years first, typically 3-5. Assuming BA by 22, 3 years of work by 25, and MBA by 27 - you’ll probably start off in a great firm making around $150,000 a year which is still a lot of money but you likely won’t make it to $250,000 by 30.</p>

<p>Someone suggested engineering. I think with engineering you can start off higher but your salary won’t necessarily climb to the $250K-$300K range. You could be a professional entertainer - a singer, an actor, or a sports player - but of course with the latter you have to start from a young age doing that, and the first two you may never make it and if you do you can spend years trying to get big.</p>

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<p>buy lotto tickets</p>

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<p>Forget about college. Study plumbing and start your own business. Everybody needs a plumber at times, and you can’t call one in India. You should make a lot of money rather quickly.</p>

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<p>This is a very interesting thread.</p>

<p>FWIW, I own my own business. As a real estate (appraisal) business, it was GREAT for about 4 years (2002 when I opened it until 2006). I was in my mid to late 20’s pushing close to $200K per year, for a couple of good years. Great money, but obviously didn’t last because of the collapse of the housing market. While $200K doesn’t make you “rich”, you can live very comfortably. </p>

<p>If you can build a good small business where you are consistently making $200K+ per year, you are doing something special. It’s very hard to do, especially in this economy.</p>

<p>Most people I know who make over $200k per year (lawyers and doctors aside), either 1) own their own business, 2) have worked in a highly skilled field for over 30 years (defense contractor/engineering) or 3) work in sales (including brokerage/investment sales). </p>

<p>The $200K salaried jobs are few and far between, and are typically reserved for company Presidents/CEO’s/CFO’s, etc.</p>

<p>If you get a job making $250K per year+ (salaried), and you don’t own the company/have any liability in the company, consider yourself extremely lucky and hold onto that job as long as possible.</p>