Choosing a major for money: help appreciated

College Majors
1

Hi. Just another rising senior here having an existential crisis about what to do with my life. As the time to start putting together my college applications approaches, I’m getting more nervous and confused. If you’re reading this right now, I would greatly appreciate some unbiased perspective.

I’ll cut straight to the point and say that I already know what I’m passionate about: English. Literature, creative writing, journalism, etc. The bad news is, I’m very realistic with myself and I realize that nothing in those areas of study is going to pay well.

It might sound awful, but having a secure, good-paying job is important to me. My mom is going to be sacrificing a lot for my college education (and she’s already sacrificed for my top-quality high school education as well) and I would like not only to make her efforts worthwhile, but to be able to secure a really good job in the future to make her proud and pay her back someday. I’d like to buy her a house and make enough income so I can support her. It’s the least I can do.

So, I’m currently considering going into something like engineering or computer science. I do have a great admiration for engineers/scientists but I have to be frank here and say that I’m considering these majors because of their return on investment and job outlook factors. My dad has been an electrical engineer his whole life and it pays VERY well. He lives in Silicon Valley right now. But engineering is what he loves to do, and I don’t know if I’ll like to do it. However, due to personal reasons my dad & I are not really on speaking terms.

I know that these programs are very competitive to get into, and to be honest I don’t know if I’ll even make it in because my math/science skills are nothing at all extraordinary. My English/foreign language/history grades were always the ones that stood out. But those skills are seemingly useless. The only other career I’ve ever considered was architecture. When I was growing up that’s always what I said I wanted to do. But when I grew up and realized I wasn’t the best at geometry and that the job outlook for architects was really bad, I let the idea go.

I’ve spoken about this with family and friends and most either tell me to do what I love or that engineering/science fields are good ideas. I feel more lost than ever and I’m not sure what I should be thinking anymore. If you took the time to read all of these awful rambles, I really appreciate it. If you have any insight or advice, I could really use some. I love College Confidential and I came to the forums because I just really felt in need of an outside opinion.

2

Get a degree in accounting followed by a cpa, series 7, cfa …

3

Major in what you love to study and where your strengths lie. Luckily for you, those overlap. You will not be poor. You may not be in the 1%, but you will likely be in the top 10% of earners in this country, even with an English Literature degree. Here are some figures from sample cities.

To live in Tampa, Florida, you need to make $122k to be in the top 10% of earners. Pittsburgh, $128k. Nashville, $138k. Denver, $152k. Chicago, $163k. New York, $172k.

Nationwide, it’s $114k.

You won’t have this income straight out of school. But there are many professions you can go into where you can reach most of those numbers within 15 years or sooner. I’m talking about without grad school (law school, MBA, etc.). Here are some examples:

Journalism (yes, journalism, if you are good at it and get experience on your college paper)
Custom content writing and strategy
Advertising account management
Advertising creative
Corporate communications
Public relations
Media environment – account management, business development, etc.
Entertainment companies

You are not aware of probably 90% of job types that are out there. Here’s an example. I have a relative who works for Google. He is not an engineer or computer scientist. He was a communications major at a large state university. I am not sure exactly what he does on a day to day basis, but he works with the clients. He makes A LOT of money (probably more than $200k) and has risen up the ranks. He is 30 years old. Who knew that this job even existed, or that this career path existed? He certainly did not. He just interviewed for the job on campus. They hired him, and everything just took off from there.

Major in what you are good at.

If you think it will help, minor in business. What will really help are good summer internships.

Most importantly, be your best self. That’s how you succeed. Will you be your best self if you major in engineering?

4

Just remember, you can’t buy happiness, especially with a low paying job :slight_smile:

Kidding!

I like what @brantly said. Find something you’re good at and interests you ( at least a little bit), and then find a job that pays well that utilizes your skill set.

5

@brantly Thank you so much for your help. You were right, I’ve never heard of those job types before. I’ll be looking into it! I really appreciate your advice. I know I should major in what I’m good at; I just feel hesitant about the money part. Thank you for your time!

6

If you really like writing, perhaps a major in Technical Writing and Communications would lead to a better job than being an English major.

7

@CheddarcheeseMN I’ll look into that! I’m open to many options. My mom has told me though that writing should be more of a hobby. I feel as though she’d be more proud of me if I did something more successful (i.e. engineer, lawyer, architect). She’s in accounting/finance and she wishes that she’d chosen something like engineering, and doesn’t want me to make the same mistakes. However I’d love to check out professions like the one you suggested or try to major in what I do best. I’m just torn.

8

I agree, major in what you like with a minor in business is a good idea. Good communication skills never go out of favor. My kid with a Poli Sci degree started out as a research analyst at a consulting company. Her communication & people skills has helped her get promoted a couple of times, and at age 26 she makes in the high $70s as a manager at a job she really likes. She didn’t have the business minor, but it would have helped, too.

9

If you don’t have the mind set for engineering, please don’t do engineering. Stick to what you know and what feels right.

When you get to your sophomore and junior years, investigate internships in several areas that apply English skills. Advertising, yes journalism, as per @brantly’s list.

My husband’s engineering firm employs English majors, at high rates of pay, to review, create and negotiate contract language. You would be paid similar to an engineer.

10

Comp sci is great. If you do major in something in the humanities/social sciences, going to grad school (possibly for free) will increase earning power, also.

11

Do you like and are you good at math and science (especially physics)?

Would you like to apply math and science to design problems? (i.e. engineering)

If not, then going into engineering may be a bad idea.

For CS, you may want to go through http://cs10.org/ to get an overview of what CS is about. (And you need to be able to think logically, like you would when doing math.)

12

@“aunt bea” thank you for your advice! I’m definitely looking more into advertising and journalism now. I think something in the communications area would be a good idea.

@ucbalumnus I’ve always been average at science and good at math. Physics is a huge part of engineering and I wasn’t super great at it, so I agree, it might be a bad idea. CS is a better option for me, thinking logically is something I’m good at. Thanks for your help!

13

No. Disagree strongly. It’s way too narrow and shows lack of imagination. I am a writer/journalist and have worked in a lot of different writing environments. I would be much more impressed with a degree in English, Philosophy, or History. College is not training school for a specific job. Major in English. You will forever have a degree in English and be an educated person with a lot of flexibility. English applies to everything.

Here’s advice for discovering different career paths: Browse through LinkedIn. Search various titles and industries. See what people’s career trajectories have been. Read their job descriptions.

14

Would there be something wrong with a degree in English with a CS minor?

Technical communication jobs might drop out of the sky for that.

Also, I remember reading an essay several years ago by someone whose name I recognized (not Dvorak or Ritchie, but someone of that caliber) who said he’d had excellent results hiring English majors to do programming.
His reasoning went like this “they spend 4 years figuring out how to wrestle with hugely abstract ideas and reduce them into well organized, logical, and cohesive sentences, paragraphs, and essays. THIS is what programming aspires to do.”

15

http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/06/01/why-i-was-wrong-about-liberal-arts-majors/
From the article:
“Looking back at the tech teams that I’ve built at my companies, it’s evident that individuals with liberal arts degrees are by far the sharpest, best­-performing software developers and technology leaders. Often these modern techies have degrees in philosophy, history, and music – even political science, which was my degree.”

16

As you try to identify careers that combine your strengths with high salaries, you might want to check out ONet Online (http://www.onetonline.org). ONet allows you to search for careers, find out the skills needed, the daily tasks, the educational training needed, and expected starting salary. You can also list your strengths/skills and it will give you a list of careers that rely on those strengths/skills.

17

I can’t stress enough the importance of letting your career unfold over the long run. Yes, it is exciting for the Wharton undergraduates and the Michigan engineers to get that first job with five-figure signing bonuses and $70k salaries. But for the English major, whose first job might command $35k (no signing bonus), it’s the long game that matters. Play the long game.

18

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being pragmatic and choosing a major because you know that it’s going to offer you a lucrative career. For some people, that’s very important - they want a lifestyle that requires an upper-middle-class salary. That’s okay. But two things.

First of all, I highly doubt that your mother is expecting you to pay her back for your college education and buy her a house, much less support her. Those things are nice if you can do them, but most parents pay for their kids’ college because they love them and want to see them succeed without expecting anything back. You may need to be able to support her when she’s much older and unable to care for herself any longer, but with any luck if that ever happens it’ll be 20-30 years into your working life. So I think that’s a really big burden that you’re putting on yourself, especially right now as a high schooler.

The other thing is that for some people, the grass is always greener and someone always has an idea of what a ‘better’ major may have been. For example, the fact that your mom majored in accounting/finance and wishes she majored in engineering is a perfect example, Accounting and finance have two of the highest average starting salaries of any majors out there - only engineering majors, computer science majors, and a few scattered other ones are higher. A lot of that is simply zeitgeist. When your mom when to school, engineering and computer science were quieter fields with less press. The new tech industry didn’t really start taking off until the late 2000s. But nobody can predict the future! We don’t know what’s going to be the ‘hot’ field 10 years down the line. So we do our best and study what we like and what we think might help us make some money.

Technical writing/communications was the first thing that popped into my head - a great way to combine your love of writing with your desire to make good money and maybe work in tech. But you don’t have to major in technical writing to do it - you can major in English and minor in computer science.

But there are lots of writing careers that don’t involve writing novels or poetry, and involve steady 9-5 jobs with decent pay and benefits. You could be a marketing/advertising copywriter; you could write copy and content for companies’ blogs or websites (I got interviewed by a guy who does this full-time just last week - he was a political science and philosophy major in undergrad); you could write grants for nonprofits or hospital systems or schools or universities that need grant money.

I also 100% agree with brantly. There are some career fields that are booming right now and offer students ridiculous amounts of money very early on on their careers. The first thing to remember is we can’t predict what the job market is going to look like; remember, that’s what the law and real estate markets (and finance) looked like back in 2004; 10 years later, the law market is ROUGH and finance has contracted since several really big banks went out of business. No one knows what’s going to happen to this gigantic precarious tech industry in the next 5-10 years*.

The second thing to remember is while engineers and computer scientists start out strong and big in salary, there are lots of other majors that have bigger salary increases over time. [url=<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html%5DThis%5B/url”>http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html]This[/url] chart from the WSJ shows percent change of salary from starting to mid-career; there aren’t any engineering major in the top 15, and only 3 in the top 20. Now - that’s at least partially because some of those majors have much further to go (film is on there; film majors start out making around $38K, so they have more room to grow) but also because likely some careers necessitate some time to find your footing (math and political science majors have salary growth of 103% and 91% respectively, likely because while they may work lower-paying jobs in the beginning while they figure out what they want, their skills become more in demand as they get experience and realize what they can do) or some time to gain experience and move into the higher-paying management positions (I imagine that’s what happens to economics and international relations majors, who start out in lower-level analyst positions making lower salaries but quickly rise through the ranks into management and director positions that make more).

In the long run, you may be a lot happier 5-10 years into your career when you are doing something you really like and getting paid well for it.

19

Doing it for the money is fine. However, don’t do it solely for the money.

20

Major in a writing-related field (English, Journalism, etc.) and take some business-related classes as electives: Econ, Accounting, Marketing, Finance, Business Law. That way you’ll be able to develop and pursue your passion while secondarily gaining some general business knowledge, which will be very helpful should you ever end up working in a corporate environment or as an entrepreneur (perhaps as the captain of your own PR agency, advertising agency, or publishing firm).