Getting to the interview does not necessarily mean getting hired.
In my experience over the years, any individual application to a highly desirable job is a high reach – that is why dozens or hundreds of applications may be needed. If you get to the interview, it is still a reach, but less so than from the initial application.
Hence the second part of my response, the support system that allows people to do well on those interviews and get hired. For example, students interviewing for IB positions at a target college will likely have a club that teaches the finance necessary for the interviews, recruiting visits from the hiring companies that are useful for networking, upperclassmen that can guide based on their successful interviewing process, and alumni who can route your resume to the right hiring manager.
Among the students who have the skills and take full advantage of the networking opportunities, it’s pretty common to get offers from many of the top IB firms, much more so than it is for high school applicants to get admission to many of the top 10 colleges.
You mentioned students applying for IB positions at target colleges. Students who are admitted to target colleges, choose to matriculate to target colleges, choose to apply to IB, and choose to be involved in IB clubs is a very different group that general high school students who choose to apply to highly selective colleges. There are many contributing factors to why the former group may have better success in IB admission than most. Interview preparation and school support are part of it, but there are other, more influential factors in my opinion.
There are many types of jobs that have different selection systems. CS and finance were mentioned. CS and finance positions often have very different selection systems that emphasize different types of criteria. Both typically have noteworthy holistic elements.
For example, in the paper at https://www.thinedgeconsulting.com/assets/pdfs/Ivies%20extracurriculars%20and%20exclusion%20Elite%20employers’%20use%20of%20educational%20credentials.pdf , the author works with 120 persons involved in “elite” IB, consulting, and law hiring. They describe their hiring process and evaluate mock candidates. Roughly the same portion of these 120 employers said they used ECs to screen candidate’s resumes as they did school prestige. A larger portion said they used ECs to screen resumes than GPA. Some employers are quoted as making comments like below, which sounds quite holistic and may be difficult for some students to learn via practice interviews.
“We look for someone who’s got a personality, has
something to bring to the table. You know, for lack
of a better term, someone you can shoot the ■■■■
with… Typically…they were in sports, they were
involved in different activities on campus. The more
well-rounded individual versus the candidate who has
the 4.0, who’s got all the honors and all the different
Econ classes.”
CS employers often emphasize technical interviews that involve solving problems using a CS skillset. However, they also often evaluate applicants on how well they fit with the team, culture, … Many tech employers have an interview primarily dedicated to fit, rather than just focus on technical skill/ability. It’s also evaluated when you have lunch with other employees, go to interview day events, etc. When I was interviewing for engineering jobs as a new grad, larger companies sometimes had events like bowling to evaluate this type of getting along with group/personality/fit.
I don’t think one can say employers are more/less holistic than colleges. Instead you need more detail about which employers and which colleges for which applicants. There is a lot of variation.
Actually I do know a biology student whose parents helped her get an internship with a biotech company their friends own. This isn’t a huge company, but big enough to put on a resume.
I am sure this exists, but students do get these positions on their own, without help from parents. It might be a smaller company…or maybe not…but from there students move on.
My daughter had a research position with a world renowned research hospital, along with several publications (some from other facilities). She isn’t unique- others have had the same experiences. I am not putting her on a pedestal.
None of this involved parents. It did involve drive and hard work.
She is entering a field that will throw her into her love of science. The salary is good enough for her.
@hopedaisy, my son saw the same phenomenon among his classmates at his prestigious LAC, which really was working hard to not only have diversity, but unlike other schools, to admit talented kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds. My son observed that this latter group of kids was not getting the same kind of advice that he was getting from me about majors, internships, kind of available jobs and even post-graduation on how to manage money. [Just to be clear, one of my son’s roommates was an African-American kid whose parents are Ivy-educated cardiovascular surgeon and a non-profit exec and who have provided their kids with the same kind of advice/help that we have provided ours.
While their kids certainly encounter racism, they are not in the lower SES category I’m talking about]. Some of his friends from the lower SES demographic became teachers in expensive cities and were spending more than they were making. A couple quit after attending coding bootcamps. I really felt that the school was letting them down. Great hyper-liberal ideology, but just getting into these schools is not a ticket to economic success.
I’m somewhat well-connected but not uber-well connected. My son had/has options that he wouldn’t have had. While one can’t catch up from some of those advantages, schools really should develop a program to help lower SES kids understand the majors/jobs/career paths and financial management issues. I am sometimes asked to give a talk on how to think about career choices and career trajectories, but it has always been to relatively privileged audiences. I get groupies after the talk, which is interesting. I’d give another talk to the lower SES group, but I would think it could be even more impactful. I wonder whether the schools even recognize that they are falling down on their jobs.
I have completely lost track of what the last few hundred posts in this thread are about, so I will address the initial question. I don’t think I have steered kids towards degrees that would offer better paying jobs so much as steered kids away from degrees that had a questionable ROI. A kid is welcome to study philosophy or the classics on their own time, but I don’t think it is worth $80,000 a year to major in either, even if the family can afford it.
I also think that if some non-lucrative field is their life’s passion, go for it, but then they better be passionate. I knew plenty of C+ liberal arts majors when I went to college that were mostly at school to party, but that was a different era. A C+ Sociology major would have a very hard time getting a good job today. An A Sociology major has a reasonable shot at building a career in the field.
I was a pretty focused, driven kid my last two years of college, and I still had only a rough idea what the real world was like. I grew up in a town where a lot of people worked in big corporations and Wall Street, and I knew I wanted to do finance, but I did not really know what a career in finance entailed or how to get into the field. If I could tell my 21 year old self one thing, it would be to explain how to start a career.
It is important to remember with kids that they just don’t know what is out there. I know a lot of kids that latch on to some field that seems like a good idea or because they like the subject matter, they plug along through college, and then the real world shows up and figuratively punches them in the face. I bet every parent on this board has a friend who has a kid that got a degree in something that is difficult to get employment in, and ended up working in retail or in a dead-end entry level job. That has a real effect on the rest of a young person’s life beyond just how much money they make.
Well, yes. But the parents of these kids were themselves college-educated in comfortable jobs so the dead-end period didn’t last too long.
A relative majored in psych (with no interest in psych so fit your model of C party student), drove a forklift for a year. A generous sibling lent money for a coding boot camp. Been gainfully employed for 2 decades.
Another majored in an obscure field (another party student), call center for a year before a kind relative pulled strings to get employed in junior publishing sales (and then went on to other sales roles).
Another majored in philosophy for fun, but didn’t really want to go into academia or teach. A neighbor gave him temp work in his company and he has moved up in this niche field since.
So yeah, generally, if offspring of college-educated parents, kids do ok no matter what they major in.
They do ok if their parents have sufficient money or connections to bail them out of their dead end job. That isnt always the case, and perhaps shouldn’t be expected.
Limited sample size, so all the usual warnings.
I find that in more mundane occupations that do not require specialized university-acquired knowledge that most do get their first job through connections.
Perhaps (my theory) another reason immigrants push their kids into fields where connections to get foot in door not as needed.
Have you talked to the school about this deficiency?
I feel some on the thread make it a really BIG deal about one’s college major as if that dictates all you learn in college or that one’s major dictates the only job you can go into. Talk to many working people and they are not all working at jobs directly related to their college major. And for many majors, the coursework is only about 1/3 of their coursework in college. I realize for some careers, they do require a specialized degree program. But for many careers, people from many colleges majors can be hired as they want smart people and train them on specifics at the job. I just don’t think the choice of major means that is the only field you can work in. As well, a lot of what is learned in college is not in one’s major, unless a specialized degree program. So, in weighing whether this or that major pays off, I feel the kid is getting a college education and that is what can pay off in the long run.
I’m a bad mommy. I admit it. We had a conversation once in junior year college. He brought up medicine, and I asked, “what would you do.
Research, he said. Then came NS, and CS, all with the goal of research. So, whatever field, academics or industry, he’d make his way. So be it.
I think that they could make their way with any major if they are inclined to do so. It might not be a direct arrow, but that’s ok. It took me a long time to be able to say that.
A sociology major coming out of one of our state schools may work at a nonprofit for a few years and then realize they need more money. Maybe they will go back to school, maybe they will do City Year (teaching) etc, Maybe they will do City Year for 2-3 years and then return to school, etc. If they have motivation they will figure it out.
My older kid was the straight arrow: college, grad school, job. My other one- the “dreaded” biology major- is not. She did a two-year gap program out of school, thought she wanted a specific health care field and got into several outstanding programs, and then realized she doesn’t have any interest in the coursework or day-to-day work in the field. She wants more direct science. She regrouped and has done more in these last two days than I can do in a month. She’s moving forward with a degree and field that is suited to her interests.
My point is that the drive and decisions have to come from them, and not from parents. If they want something…more money, a better suited field…they will do it. Some don’t need a lot of money to be happy.
Some don’t launch at all….but that’s a whole other discussion.
It is somewhat of a big deal what you major in. It adds some skills to your repertoire and not others. And that constrains what learning you can do in the future and what you cannot. Optionality reduces with time. That is just a fact of life. I should not think that I (at my age, for example), can go study medicine and do something with it. I am not Albert Schweitzer.
I agree, and yet I don’t.
If you are a history major and at the age of 23 you suddenly decide you love genetics…it can be done (it will cost time and money).
You can take the prerequisites for biology masters programs and spend time volunteering in the field, attending grand rounds, speaking to PhD level scientists, interviewing research assistants etc.
After 2 years of taking classes and delving into the field, you can apply to graduate school.
It takes drive, time, money, and a lot of self awareness. I know somebody in her 40’s who just graduated from medical school. I know a CPA who is now entering nursing, after many years as a CPA.
I can’t speak for @soozievt but I understood the post you quoted to be more along the lines of:
“A degree in Psychology doesn’t mean that the only job option is Psychologist”
Any college major BA/BS could lead to career directions of the following types:
Choice of college major mostly affects 1 and 2, although it can indirectly affect 3 (e.g. where the employer views college major as a sign of skill, intelligence, politics, etc. or where a major may signal that someone is mainly interested in 1 or 2 and is more likely to leave when such an opportunity shows up – can also be a factor for any BA/BS graduate in 4).
Where the career opportunities in 1 and 2 are limited for the chosen major, the student or graduate needs to consider 3 and 4 more.
Right, I was making that point. But I also was making a second point as to the “worth” of the college degree and about focusing so much on the college major in that respect as the college major (usually, with some exceptions in some fields or degree programs) consists of just 1/3 of the coursework. So, it is not like the coursework in one’s major is the entire thing one is getting out of a college education. You don’t JUST go to college for the major. The major is not the big value necessarily, and certainly not the entire picture.
@twogirls, I always think about the world in terms of conditional probabilities. [Makes me weird but turns out to be pretty useful]. One question is whether kids from less privileged backgrounds even know about applying for internships for freshman summer or what the “right kind” of internships would be for their areas of interest. I’d suspect the probability of a kid in that group even knowing about what we might think of as typical paths is lower than for more privileged kids. A second question is the probability of getting the internship (or the job) conditional on parents’ background. Some from each group will get internships, but I’d guess the probability of more privileged kids getting the job is higher.
My impression, per my previous post, is that there is a lot of cultural knowledge that upper middle class or middle class kid absorbs about jobs, interviewing, internships etc. and about how to succeed in various contexts without explicit intervention – questions the parents ask, working from the parents as examples. Both kids got to see how hard I worked – I would be home at 6 PM every night I was in town for dinner and would read them stories or help with homework if needed but would work in my home office from 9-1 or 2, how I treated my employees, etc. as well as how important we thought their education was and the fact that we would drop anything to help them with what turned out to be some pretty serious issues. We would coach them in thinking about summer jobs etc. and which would be useful. At one point in school, ShawD had three part-time jobs (she didn’t need the money as we had fully stocked a 529 Plan, but wanted the experience and felt obligated to the people she’d started working for etc.]. We helped her get it to one PT job.
We’re still doing coaching. Just now, I had a conversation with ShawD who at age 29 was calling for job-related advice. She has decided to move back to our city and her company is having her open up a clinic in a great area for young people. But her current boss just let her know that they will more than likely be instituting a pretty attractive cash retention bonus for people who stay a year in SF and probably another bunch of stock for those at her rank. So, she wanted to talk her decision through with me. She spent two days at her company’s leadership conference and got the sense that she wouldn’t be interested in her boss’s job and started thinking about what the next step would be within her company and the next steps she thinks she should take to move in that direction.