I’m going to attend a small liberal arts college next year. I am really leaning towards international relations with a focus on economics and less on political science/history. My dad wants me to go into engineering because it makes lots of money for women. I understand his concern but I know it’s something I would be miserable in as the sciences/maths are hard for me to grasp. My dad believes the degree would be useless because only people living in countries outside of the USA can realistically get a job.
I’m trying to save as much money as I can now for unpaid internships in the field, look into NGO’s I can volunteer now and during college, and even get ideas for making my own. And I know this offer would be competitive, but there’s even job offers on Amnesty International that offer over $60,000 a year.
The problem is that I know he would pull me out of this college because he sees college as an investment and he wants to see his money worth something. I love this college I’m going to but I would rather go into something I’m passionate about than something JUST for money/prestige.
Econ is pretty practical. But do not think you are going to pull down $60K working for Amnesty or a NGO. Your dad is not wrong that your pay will be low. He probably doesn’t just want a return on his investment, he wants to be confident that you can support yourself (and even your kids some day if need be). Life has unexpected twists and turns, and you can hardly blame a dad for worrying and wanting his daughter to be self sufficient.
I’d say that Econ and IR could lead to a career in international business, too. But you would have to look for business related internships (not NGOs) to expect a job in that after graduating, My D’s boyfriend was an Econ major at a small LAC – works for Deloitte now. What if you established yourself in that field, and made a move to non-profits later after you built some skills in the workplace?
I always tell my students this:
You will spend approximately 40 hours a week, for the next 40 years, at your job. That adds up to 80,000 hours, or the equivalent of 9.13 years.
Is there any amount of money on earth, any amount at all…that I could offer you, which would make it acceptable to torture you, 24/7, for over 9 years solid?
No?
Then find a better reason to do what you’re going to do with your days. Find what you would do with your life if you won the lottery. Then figure out a way to get paid a reasonable wage for doing that.
The balance I always look for is to look at all the economically feasible majors (e.g. underwater basket weaving is out) and out of those, pick one that you reasonably enjoy. The exact balance of practical and enjoyable is really a choice to be made, but at the end of the day you cannot emphasize one over the other too strongly - it will end badly. If you think STEM is bad for you, then you’re probably right. It’s tough even for people who are certain that it’s the path they want in life. If it isn’t, then that makes it even worse.
However, as another note, I would say that your dad’s cynicism is more in line with the real world than your optimism. It is important to choose a profession that will give you a living because passion fades quickly with poverty. At a young age it’s hard to see that, but once you turn 30 or 40 and you still are worried about paying the bills because your “passion” didn’t provide for you as well as you’d hoped… you probably know how that story would go. Passion doesn’t pay the bills and in the long run, money really matters. Nor is it a magic panacea that will somehow make the money come - “do what you love and the money will follow” is simply untrue. Engineering and other high-paying fields have paid, rather than unpaid, internships, because the companies have to pay that money. No company or organization pays more money for people than they have to to find the workers they need - what do you think that unpaid internships mean?
Find a reasonable balance.
Agree that if the career path you are looking at has “entry level jobs” that are unpaid internships, you can expect it to be difficult to get a paid job in that area due to the heavy competition, and the pay is unlikely to be that high. Consider other career paths, at least as backup plans.
While some viable career paths are closely tied to specific college majors, some others are not.
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I'm going to attend a small liberal arts college next year. I am really leaning towards international relations with a focus on economics and less on political science/history. My dad wants me to go into engineering because it makes lots of money for women. I understand his concern but I know it's something I would be miserable in as the sciences/maths are hard for me to grasp <<<
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You’re going to Wellesley. While I think W offers a few Eng’g classes, I don’t think you can get an Eng’g degree there. Does your dad know that?
Eng’g is out, either way, because you have no interest and are weak in math/sciences. To be an eng’g major, you have to be strong in those subjects and have an eng’g brain.
But, you have to satisfy dad, to some extent, since he’s paying the bills. Looking at W’s website, it has at least a couple of soft Eng’g courses that have no prereqs. Would taking any of those interest you just to satisfy dad?
The suggestion of Econ is good. In the meantime, I would drop the talk about IR, because that scares dad. It appears that being an Econ major at W can mean a future career in int’l development. If you just say that you’re majoring in Econ, would that satisfy dad?
<<< Recent graduates who majored in economics are now involved in business, law, finance, medicine, international development, <<<
With excellent grades and an econ major from a top school such as the one you’re going to, you should be able to get a job that enables you to be self-supporting right out of college. My daughter did it five years ago. You can do it four years from now.
But there’s a catch. Econ is more mathy than you may realize. So you might decide against it after your first few econ courses.
I’m sure you can double major in IR and econ.
Econ requires math, but the main thing is whether you enjoy wresting with econ problems and questions. If you have a desire to solve a problem, you will learn the tools.
True story. My DD majored in engineering as an undergrad…and got her degree in that and biology. She NEVER plans to be an engineer. Oh…this was not our choice…it was hers to major in engineering.
I’m not sure why parents want to force students to major in engineering “for the income”. After college, the student might not seek engineering jobs…at all.
One of my kids is in a program that will allow her to graduate with a license in a very specific field (a “practical” major). I am quite sure she will find employment and be able to pay her bills, as I am very familiar with the job market in her field. She is happy and doing very well in the program she is currently in.
My other child will not be graduating with a license or specific skill. She is a smart, driven kid in an excellent school and maybe I am very, very naive, but I have faith that she will be OK. She already is OK- she managed to get herself known and “in” with all of her professors, and is working with one now. Despite not having a specific license or skill (such as engineering), her school places students like her in a variety of places after graduation, and she knows she will be in grad school at some point. I do think she will have a job lined up after graduation if she decides not to head straight to grad school, even if it is a stepping stone to something else. She is a hard worker always tells me that she needs to be busy.
I vacillate between wishing she had something a little bit more tangible (such as engineering or nursing) and knowing she will be fine because of her drive. I told her that the goal here is to pay her bills, and she understands. @PaigeyPoo189 I think you will be fine, but I am not your father. I do, however, understand where he is coming from.
While I do tell my kids that the goal here is independence, I would never tell them what to major in. I do think some of this is related to the student- some do “better” in a major leading to a specific career path, while others can be equally as successful “exploring their passions” (as she tells me all the time) and seeing where it leads them.
In general, your drive and attitude are WAY more important than your major. One of my clients has an income well over a million dollars each year. She has an English degree. Several others make multi-hundred k incomes with economics degrees. Another is a doctor who can’t make ends meet, and it’s not even because of student loans, it’s because of his personality/drive.
Certain degrees will make it easier to get started or will have more paid internships, undeniably. I’d worry if my kids wanted to be theater majors with no plans to support themselves. Ultimately, what you do with your degree? That’s up to you.
If your father is pulling the card of not paying for college unless you major in what he wants, you may be stuck. Wellesley, however, is known for having high-pressure, competitive classes and no grade inflation. Combine that with a major that you don’t feel you have an aptitude for and you may not even be able to graduate. That would cost him even more…
I want to add that you’ve got a long time (two years) to figure this out, and there will be a lot of resources available to you. I suspect that over the years you’ll be able to gather a lot of evidence supporting your chosen major, or you’ll change your mind about what you want to do, as so many students do.
FWIW, I grew up 2 minutes from Wellesley’s campus and now live 10 min away, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful place. My daughters have a bunch of friends who are there and who went. The resources are limitless and any help you look for, you’ll find!
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I always tell my students this:
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You will spend approximately 40 hours a week, for the next 40 years, at your job. That adds up to 80,000 hours, or the equivalent of 9.13 years.
Is there any amount of money on earth, any amount at all…that I could offer you, which would make it acceptable to torture you, 24/7, for over 9 years solid? <<
Come on. That is utterly ridiculous.
If someone doesn’t love their job, it’s the same as literally being tortured? That isn’t even comparing apples to oranges – it’s more like comparing apples to bulldozers.
I don’t love my job. yes, if I won the lottery i would do something else with my life. but i guarantee you this is a heck of a lot better than being tortured.
plus it completely overlooks the possibility that you may have to start in a job you don’t necessarily love for a time, in order to position yourself to move into a job you love.
And engineering jobs can easily be exported to India. Many have been.
If you’re going to major in engineering or certain other STEM subjects like chemistry and computer science you do not have two years to figure it out. You need to start taking foundation courses for your major at the beginning of college.
This may not be necessary. Wellesley, like my kid’s school, offers funding for unpaid summer internships. it may be competitive, and saving is ALWAYS a good thing to be doing, but you may not to need to save for THAT.
If you do go in an international business direction, most likely internships would be paid.
http://www.wellesley.edu/cws/11864/funding
Your dad says he will pull you out of college if you don’t major in engineering…does he not know that W doesn’t offer an engineering major at all? You could put him off with an offer to consider it for grad school I suppose.
I work as a contractor for the federal government, there have been several international business majors that have completed co-ops and gone on to full time employment here.
Are you good with languages? Pairing a international relations degree with an in-demand language (think: Mandarin, Arabic) would make you very competitive for positions in some branches of the federal government such as the State Department.
- High paying majors you hate are worthless.
- Cool majors that result in unemployment or taking a job not related to the major are not good either.
I have encouraged my kids to think about a venn diagram with one circle of majors that interest them and another circle of majors with high rates of employment and reasonable salaries.
I ask them to try to figure out which majors are in both circles.
I don’t get it. Wellesley doesn’t even offer engineering. Does he know this?
My D was an economics major at Wellesley. She has a good job.
Again, I’ll have to provide a contrast to the upbeat attitude of some in this thread. Not because I don’t foresee a good result from choosing a more “passion” compatible major, but because hope and passion don’t make a career somehow materialize. It’s best to realize that you might very well end up average or below average, in capability or results or both, and that it is even more likely that you will be below average at least some of the time (most people are, for at least some point in their life). And you want to be in a position where the below-average result is still something reasonable. Such as, maybe you wouldn’t be too happy with how things are going but you’re still in a decent position rather than working a minimum wage job or being unemployed for a long time.
I did graduate with an engineering degree, and I can tell you how well everyone did. The best students got great positions or went into solid graduate schools, and made things work out quite well. The average and below-average people got jobs in engineering, sometimes right upon graduation and sometimes a few months later, but they earned salaries that even top performers from less lucrative fields (language, psychology, even basic sciences) would feel lucky to get. As with any profession, not everyone was happy with where they ended up and they all had their own set of problems. But even the also-rans got results on par with the winners in less lucrative fields. Why? Because they chose a field that has jobs.
Some fields are very degree-dependent because they teach important skills that cannot really be learned “on the job” at all if you don’t already have a solid base. These include medicine, law, engineering, accounting, mathematics, science, etc. These fields are those where having the specific degree is a massive boon to your resume and may be enough on its own to get you a job (not a great one, but nonetheless a job in the field). For soft skills majors, you have to go well beyond your major to find a niche and find a way to somehow turn it into employment. In my personal opinion, that’s a failure of the education system to properly advise these majors (seldom are 18-year-olds so proactive by their own volition) but nevertheless it’s a factor to a far bigger extent than it is in “hard knowledge” majors.
This does sound cynical but that’s because it’s important to understand that you shouldn’t be playing roulette with your education. Of all the choices you make in life, the years spent in school should be the most “safe” that you can make and shouldn’t involve a lottery career choice. Life never works out quite as well as you planned and you should be prepared for a suboptimal outcome. If you look only at English majors who became millionaires then you are being far too optimistic about how things are likely to turn out. Yes it can happen, but usually there’s more to it than meets the eye and also it’s usually the exception to the rule. You should instead plan for the worst (or, more accurately, for the worse-than-average), and hope for the best, at least as far as education goes.
And a sidenote: economics majors come in two flavors. The first flavor, the only one worth pursuing, is an applied math major that teaches you the mathematical underpinnings of economic models and how they work; the math here is as in-depth as a science major (not physics) would take. The second flavor is a GPA-padding curriculum with easy A’s and no difficult nor particularly useful classes, for people applying to jobs (generally within finance) that are very picky about having a high GPA at a cost to actually learning anything important.