And as @ucbalumnus points out directly above, the curve median doesn’t really matter. I used the term “soul-crushing” a bit tongue in cheek because that type of curve can require a bit of adjustment for students used to being disappointed in a 97%.
I think the superstar students are going to make themselves known regardless. They’ll be the ones getting an A and going to prof’s office hours asking what else they can read/learn/research, and so on. That goes for any field, not just STEM. The cream rises to the top, as the saying goes.
I’m kind of the same, though with two longer-term careers so far:
Process analyst (writing job aids, training, quality assurance… that stuff)
Car sales
Had a few jobs in-between those two that didn’t fit – stop-gaps.
But I love analyzing things, teaching, cars, writing, and promoting stuff. I’ve been able to do a lot of writing in both Process and Cars, as well as teaching/counseling. And in this car sales job, of course one of the perks is the opportunity to drive an awful lot of vehicles. That’s pretty cool. It’s also been uplifting when I’ve improved a process or successfully taught it to someone, or (as now) when I’ve helped someone find the right car and handed them the keys amid shouts and/or tears of joy. It’s awesome.
(the downside of car sales is when the customer wants to buy but can’t get approved for a loan, but every job has its share of difficulty…)
Sort of in reply to the current discussion, and also in reply to the original topic - yes, we suggested to our kids that they get an undergrad degree that would enable them to pay their bills, and not live in our crawl space.
First two kids both earned two undergrad degrees, one BA and one BS each. The BS degrees would ensure a reasonable paying job. Youngest was going into nursing, was accepted at a number of schools for nursing, then changed her mind. She will be a college freshman in the fall, so plans may change, though she wants a BA in a not high paying field. She also intends to get a BS in a new CS degree offered that focuses on Social Sciences. She is signed up for classes in both areas of study.
I have seen employers value engineering, physics and math degrees, as these degrees are not easy at any college, and the employer knows that the person can likely learn what is needed for the job in a fairly short time frame. Of course, that doesn’t work for every sort of job, but for jobs where you need someone who can learn quickly, it is a better bet to go with the engineering grad than the Antarctic Cultural Studies major.
If you don’t want to count out the non-STEM majors, you can have a hiring practice like one of my past employers. At one point I wanted to try something other than engineering, and was hired by relatively small software company. I went in for an interview, and was handed two tests: 1) Personality test and 2) A test similar to the Wonderlic test (so a short form IQ test).
I didn’t get to the actual interview until they had scored the IQ test. They said they found that for many of their jobs, candidates with a degree in a relevant area didn’t pan out, and that it was easier to just train someone who made a certain score on the IQ test, though they did not have a relevant degree. I was working in software QA, along with a History major from a non-flagship state school, and someone who finished HS at 15 or 16, but never went to college. Maybe if more employers went this route, your degree wouldn’t matter as much.
IQ tests are illegal. That is why the army uses what they call a GCT test: Army General Classification Test - Wikipedia
I think they say that it is not an IQ test.
Similarly there are other employers like the quant firms that do a version of the IQ test, but don’t call it one. As an example, using Leetcode type questions in software interviews is also a kind of an IQ test.
Curious if the BA is related to the focus of the CS degree. If not, and she plans to work in CS, what is the purpose of the BA? Just interest in studying that subject? I do find it interesting how people find various solutions to conflicting priorities.
Yeah, they didn’t call it an IQ test. This was decades ago, and I forget what they called it. I realize that the Wonderlic isn’t truly an IQ test, though I believe there have been studies where Wonderlic scores line up pretty well with IQ tests.
There are questions they can’t ask in interviews, such as “Are you married?” or “Do you have kids?” but there are perfectly legal questions that can typically get you to those answers.
Practicality varies by position. For example, you mentioned your daughter was interested in nursing at one point. It would not be practical for a hospital to hire a history major for a nursing job, with the expectation that he/she is a bright kid, so we know he/she will figure out how to do nursing on the job. Ideally you’d want an applicant who not only had a nursing degree, but had experience working with patients in an out of classroom medical setting, in addition to classes/GPA.
A similar statement could made about assuming a history major with figure out how to do engineering, figure out how to code in desired languages as a software engineer, figure out how to do accounting,… In many fields, employers expect the applicant to learn specific skills that are important to be successful on the job during colleges, rather than just get a general education. These jobs that expect the employee to learn specific vocationally-focused skills during college tend to have a higher starting salary than average, with a good amount of variation depending on how in demand those required skills are.
Of course many other factors are relevant as well, which often can’t be captured by either name of major or giving the applicant a short written IQ/personality test. For example, in the survey at https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf , hundreds of employers in a variety of fields are asked to rate what criteria is most/least important in evaluating new resumes of new grad for hiring decisions . The overall relative importance was as follows. The most influential areas related to relevant employment during college. A good way to show you will be successful on the job is having past success doing something similar to the job, preferably as an intern at that company.
Internships – 23
Employment During College – 21
College Major – 13
Volunteer Experience – 12
Extracurricular Activities – 11
Relevance of Coursework – 8
College GPA – 8
College Reputation – 5
After having passed the resume and received interviews, both technical and soft skills may be evaluated, with a lot of variation depending on the position. A minority of employers do also include a written IQ/personality type test or look at past test scores, as one of many factors that are considered.
Lots of skills, knowledge, and achievements that can be tested are affected by IQ (for typical definitions of IQ), so you can claim that any test of such is (partially) an IQ test. However, measuring IQ (for typical definitions of IQ) in isolation from prior learning and other environmental influences (including test-specific preparation) is much more difficult.
We will see if she actually gets a BA in Anthropology and a BS in Computational Social Science, since she hasn’t even started college yet. They are degrees that can tie in together.
Middle kid got a BA in Linguistics and a BS in Applied Math, and is now working on a PhD in Linguistics (specifically Computational Linguistics). Middle kid would really like to be a writer, and her minor was in Creative Writing. She is all over the place with her academic interests - she would also love to be an eternal student, if it paid well. Computational Linguistics will pay well, and she can write in her spare time.
It turns out the son of one of my former bosses is on the Supreme Court bar, and in fact has argued dozens of cases there. Based upon the donations he has made to my alma mater (where his dad worked), it’s clear he isn’t struggling.
The men and women wearing the robes have the power, but it’s the attorneys before them that make bank.
The kid wanted to do con law and sit on the bench. Not argue cases in front of the court.
That is a poor path in life
Additionally I told him that when he is in early 40s, there should be a slot open upon the bench, and the President should belong to the party that the kid belongs to, and his ethnicity should be the one for which there is support in that political party. I told him it is harder to get onto the supreme court than becoming President itself.
And if he doesn’t get onto the SC bench, the profession is a frictional profession for which he has to hustle and bill an hour at a time. Most unpleasant. He tells me now that the legal profession is under significant stress because the legal training pipeline has withered away – law firms are using software to look up cases that in the past they used new lawyers for. They need fewer new lawyers these days to look up case law. Hence harder to get trained.
Didn’t see the thread, but I suspect the issue is a lack of soft skills or not coming prepared for the interviews. There are plenty of people who get IB jobs without special connections.
The thread was deleted ,probably because it linked to another site. You can find it if you Google some relevant words, such as “What no one tells you about Harvard.” He mentions prepping for interviews and technicals, but the comments do not scream great soft skills.
Is the daughter likely to be interested in any graduate or professional school at all, and (if so) would the interest be in an acceptable one (leading to a license), unacceptable one (most others), or unacceptable one that is fully funded (PhD program)?
However, the license criterion does not fully capture the “value” of a graduate or professional degree. For example, law job hiring is highly dependent on law school ranking, even though all law schools at least theoretically lead to law licensing.
One daughter got a PhD in physical therapy. The other a master’s in speech pathology. Both are working in their fields. Cousin’s reasoning is that if his daughters ever decide to leave the workforce to stay home with children, they will always have their license/always be qualified to go back. Yeah, sexist.
