<p>In trying to help my D come up with a workable list of good colleges, I am having a hard time finding info about career centers/job assistance after graduating. We are using Fiske, and it is thorough, but why all the info about food and nothing about how to actually get a job once you graduate? So can anyone give me an idea if the following colleges have good assistance with careers:
Macalester, Vassar, Tufts, Brown, Reed, Clark U, Amherst, 5C Consortium, U of Rochester, Carleton, Emerson, and feel free to add others if you have knowledge. I am aware of colleges such as Northeastern and Drexel that make working part of the college experience.</p>
<p>Also, is there another guide book that has this type of info?
Advice appreciated.</p>
<p>Some campus tours will make a visit to the career center optional. When on campus, talk to students at random about their experiences and their friends’ with the career center.</p>
<p>The most helpful thing for my child who graduated was the alum network. You could check how easy the access is to some network of alums as mentors, but the truth is that if your child can get into Brown you’re not going to go to Clark because you heard they have a good Career Center. (are you?) You could also check whether the school allows credit for internships and whether they have any pass/fail options that might allow such credit (Vassar has both of these, for example) because it’s often just building up the resume with those things that leads to something later. Many schools also provide stipends in the summer so that students can afford to do unpaid internships. (Middlebury, for example). That’s a good thing to look at. </p>
<p>That is a big IF, Hitch123:-). Brown is a real long shot, Clark should be a safety, but in fact it sounds very interesting and does have a good career center, as well as an amazing 5th year Master’s program FREE, with a certain GPA. So Clark is currently quite high on the list. I am a little leery of the LAC’s she is interested in because I feel that universities carry a little more credibility when it comes to establishing careers. Please, anyone, disabuse me of that notion if I am totally wrong. Anyway, all colleges seem to have career centers, but it is so far hard to,figure out which ones actually are effective and truly helpful. </p>
<p>The career center is a good resource but it’s summer jobs/internships, networks and relationships that get graduates started on their careers. </p>
<p>Summer jobs and internships have a huge impact on resume building which is in turn the key to finding a job after graduation. Some of these positions are filtered through the career center, and some are generated by individual departments. The strength and breadth of the opportunities are often directly related to the strength and breadth of the department.</p>
<p>Firms and organizations recruit at colleges that are known feeders to specific fields, so name recognition among perspective employers is also important. </p>
<p>The involvement of alumni/ae in mentoring and placing students in their firms and organizations can really help graduates get a leg up in their job search. Again, the strength and accessibility of the alumni/ae network can vary greatly by department as well as by school so you have to evaluate based on your daughter’s specific interests.</p>
<p>My son found both internship and post graduation job through Williams career center, mainly because his area of interest – art/art history/architecture – has a large network among alumni/ae and employers. </p>
<p>Also, find out how connected the full-time and part-time faculty in her major are to their professional fields (not the academic world unless it’s a major leading to academic work, but to folks in jobs outside the school). </p>
<p>Every college has a career center. I often think that the biggest difference isn’t in the career centers themselves, but in whether the student avails themselves of the services offered there. If your kid isn’t likely to go see them for resume help, brushing up interviewing skills, researching careers in their major, seeking specific internship opportunities or websites, etc. – then they aren’t going to get much out of it. I am sure there are some colleges where the career centers aren’t the strongest, or at least a few individuals who work there aren’t. But an awful lot of it is getting your kid to go and use them, not worrying about the center themselves.</p>
<p>I would not be surprised if on-campus recruiting depended a lot on factors other than the quality of the career center. A small school in a remote area may have more trouble attracting recruiters than a large school near many employers, unless the small school is unusually attractive in some way for employers to recruit at (e.g. high concentration of students of a certain major that employers are looking for).</p>
<p>At least one consortium has a shared career center arrangement, so that students at four small LACs can benefit from the career center at the larger UMass - Amherst.</p>