<p>Rising sophomore terrified about the unemployment situation here in America. I go to a good liberal arts college (about top 20) and I'll probably graduate debt free. I haven't really excelled in anything remotely science or math oriented which only leaves most humanities/non-technical/vocational majors; majors that don't typically lead to a job out of undergrad. I've considered majoring in Cultural Studies, Philosophy, English, Sociology, etc, etc. I was wondering if anyone on here can give me some advice because I'm kind of lost. I don't want to end up jobless come graduation time, but majoring in something like chemistry or math might pose a risk on my gpa and that certainly isn't a good option.</p>
<p>Any success stories with a liberal arts degree?
Advice, tips on what to do during undergrad?</p>
<p>Don’t pick a major and then hope jobs will appear. Instead start looking up jobs/careers you’re interested in and then figure out what they are looking for. </p>
<p>The best idea is to volunteer/shadow/intern for a job you’re interested in. That way you’ll not only gain experience in that field (more valuable than a gpa or major) and you’ll know whether or not you like it. </p>
<p>Definitely look up real life job postings on websites like indeed.com. That’s reality, stuff like the bureau of labor will give you average salaries and broad job descriptions and listings of what employment outlook is like. Instead look at what jobs are actually being posted, how many, and what the jobs are actually paying and asking for.</p>
<p>Social studies involves the study of human behavior; knowledge of such can be useful in a lot of business areas (indeed, much of business as a field of study in school is applied social studies). However, note that statistics is typically needed for social studies; calculus and sometimes more advanced math may be needed for economics beyond the introductory level.</p>
<p>One thing I found: if you do look at job postings, don’t even pay attention to majors listed (except the obvious ones like nursing jobs, engineering jobs, etc). The worst thing that can happen if you apply to a company that has a list of majors that doesn’t include yours is that they don’t pick you for an interview.</p>
<p>As for what major you choose, I really don’t fall into the camp of “choose a useful major” since honestly, there is no major that fully prepares you for a business job. You WILL need extensive training, and it won’t really matter what your major was after a few months. Take a look at the companies that recruit at your school and whether you are eligible to apply (for example, some universities will have recruitment for engineers only, excluding anyone who is not in their school of engineering) and you will know who you have a good shot at working for, and then figure out a major that you are good at.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, you can turn any major into something useful, but you need to be smart about it. If you major in, say, sociology, you can make yourself more marketable by tying in some statistics with some of your big assignments. Learn business applications like Excel (learn the formulas, figure out how to do some basic VBA) or SPSS (that’s a statistical analysis tool) so that you have something to talk about in interviews. Most importantly, don’t mess around… while your GPA isn’t the most important thing ever, chances are that it is going to be a big key about whether you get an interview at company X.</p>
<p>Many consulting companies recruit heavily at top liberal arts schools. That’s because the philosophy behind a liberal arts degree is that you can do just about anything with it. You’ve had exposure to math/science, English, etc. and can serve a useful purpose in finance.</p>