My sons school does a very good job with programs to help low income and URM students with career mentoring. They introduced my son to his current internship opportunity, helped him with his resume and interview skills. He has a mentor in his area of interest that meets with him once a month. The alumni are also very helpful.
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@compmom, I agree on both counts. On the first point, what I wrote earlier was that the way to think about things was in terms of conditional probabilities. The probability of getting internships or jobs is probably higher for the groups with parents who can coach them than with parents who can’t. It does not mean that those without that parental advantage can’t get those jobs and internships; the probabilities are just lower.
On the second point, also true. Kids of extremely hard-working parents will absorb that regardless of parental class or privilege. I think my kids got to see certain things because of who I was – I co-founded a few companies and ShawSon is now a tech entrepreneur; with both kids I talked about the importance of a) creating a career that played to their strengths as I did; and b) having done that, the importance of paying your dues to have the credibility to take the next steps in which one moves towards a career that really plays to one’s strengths and is inherently satisfying. Both kids are following point b. I’m not sure those are class- or privilege-based but reflect the way I think about the world.
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@lettiriggi, although I have a more expansive view generally about how to think about careers, when kids in majors that are not directly valued by the hiring market (or their parents) ask me, I suggest a few things. I suggest for language majors or some humanities majors that they consider becoming fluent in Arabic as there will for the foreseeable future be a need within the government to hire folks fluent in Arabic. If they are following that path, I suggest spending some time in a relevant country. I wouldn’t typically suggest accounting as I think AI is eroding/will erode a lot of accounting jobs, but I suggest that the ability to interpret data may be a way in to first jobs where their communications and writing skills will then show them off to advantage. I suggest data analysis courses in social sciences (sociology, economics).
There are a bunch of jobs now in social media and social media strategy, populated in part by young college graduates – indeed, I am hiring firms that do this work. I don’t know what the career path will be and I also suspect that AI will erode the basic work from these jobs over time.
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Both of your two previous posts make good points. And I almost said myself something similar to the part I quoted above. Many (most?) social science majors require at least a minimal level of statistics and data analysis. Those sorts of courses could be a very good addition, or a minor to accompany their major. And that gets to @soozievt 's point that there is a lot of room in a liberal arts major to supplement their required coursework. Some things dovetail very nicely.
Languages are another good suggestion for those so inclined. Frankly, I wish I had known more about the possible careers they could lead to, because I absolutely loved and was very good at language study. I actually have a sibling even better at it than I was, who made a career in the military learning and using strategic languages. (He was never able to tell us what he did, so we like to say he was a spy 
).
It’s more essential for low SES or other kids who haven’t had the exposure to get adequate information about the opportunities and pros/cons of all these majors.
Major is often highly influential on outcome at “elite” colleges. Many first job options will require or prefer graduates from specific majors and/or expect students to learn specific things in their major, in some cases testing applicants on those things during the interviews. An example is software engineering, which will typically have technical interview questions that require CS-specific knowledge to answer correctly. Similarly I was an engineering major at an “elite” college. Every one of first full time job interviews involved solving technical problems that required electrical engineering specific knowledge.
There are also some fields where what you major in and major specific knowledge has little influence. An example is a student who plans to pursue a JD. Law school does not require a specific major or major specific knowledge. Majoring in CS/math/… provides no advantage and may be a disadvantage, if it hurts the student’s GPA. However, this isn’t specific to “elite” colleges. Major doesn’t matter for law schools admission, regardless of eliteness of undergrad college.
I suspect you are instead talking about “elite” finance and consulting. It’s true that “elite” finance and consulting employers are often big on hiring students who attended specific undergrad colleges, and often do not require specific majors. However, while many positions in these filed may not require a specific major, they may still prefer graduates from some majors over others or prefer students who take certain courses. Such positions are often highly selective, and most grads who choose unrelated majors probably are not interested in those fields. For example, I wouldn’t assume that major doesn’t matter for anthropology majors who attend “elite” colleges since anthropology majors always want to work in “elite” finance/consulting and will have no problem getting hired for such positions.
If you look at actual outcomes among grads from elite colleges, there is huge variation by major – both in terms of salary and specific positions. Outside of econ and math, the vast majority usually do not work in finance and consulting. As an example, the most common function and employer of Yale grads with different majors are described below.
Most Common Yale Outcomes by Major (who do not pursue grad degrees)
–Higher Median Salary Majors –
- Computer Science – Software Engineering, Google
- Math / Applied Math – Finance, Goldman Sachs
- Economics – Finance, Goldman Sachs
- Electrical Engineering – Engineering, Hawkeye 360
– Lower Median Salary Majors –
- Anthropology – Office Admin, Yale University
- Art – Visual Arts, Yale University
- Biology / Neuroscience / Ecology – Research/Lab, Yale University
- Classics – Teaching, ACES Village (primary school specializing in cognitive challenges)
- English – Writing/Editing, Yale University
- Linguistics – Teaching, Bellevue School District (???)
- Music – Teaching, Yale University
- Religious Studies – Teaching, Teach for America
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One of my kids went to a so-called elite school. Many graduates go onto graduate school, her being one of them.
In my kids’ cases, they worked in their respective fields every summer during college and then directly after earning their final degrees. I had NO connections in their fields and they obtained very internship and job based on their own initiatives.
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By the way, unlike mentioned in some posts, one doesn’t need a specialized degree to have a professional career in the performing arts. Some do, sure, my own kid included. But just look at who is on Broadway or on TV or in movies…while some have surely earned a BFA in Acting or Musical Theater, many have earned a BA in the field, and many earned a BA in a totally unrelated field, and many didn’t even go to college!
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The flexibility of one particular college major in allowing you to work in a totally different field is, in some part, dependent on the job market at the time that you’re looking for a job/career/field change.
For example, if you’re looking for a job in the tech sector when there are more jobs available than applicants, then it’ll be way easier to get your foot in the door with, let’s say, an English degree + some computer programming skills, than if you were to look for a job when there are more applicants than job openings.
That english major + some computer programming skills could supplement his/her resume by, for example, taking a community college class or 2 in programming, scripting (Python, for example).
However, if you want to switch to something like “I’d like to be a nuclear physicist,” then that’s a bit more of an uphill climb.
So there’s a lot of variety based on the specific circumstances of the applicant, his/her educational & work experience background, his/her current skill set compared to the required skill set of the job that he/she wants to switch over to, etc.
Does it matter that you have A degree? Usually yes. For job promotions over the course of one’s career, yes, it makes a difference.
Does it matter WHAT your degree was in? Sometimes yes.
Does it matter WHERE you went to college? Sometimes yes.
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Mine too, got internships on their own, they never asked for my help. I think if you read this thread you think otherwise. They all had to work every summer, no slacking off, except one did study abroad in Paris and London.
I’ll confess to being a bit surprised by this whole “connections” thing. It’s just so far from my own reality, and that of virtually everyone I know. I’m getting a sense that this may be more common in certain fields (like these Wall Street type jobs?) and/or locations, and perhaps at certain SES levels? I just haven’t seen it happening in my world, or if so rarely.
Note, I’m referring to internships and first jobs, not connections later into one’s career where networking and referrals are far more common, even necessary.
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Understanding what sort of internships will be best for your long term plans, and what an employer is looking for, are something that middle class kids with professional parents are likely to have a much better grasp of than kids without that background.
You don’t need to help your kids directly with introductions for them to benefit from your background. Even just observing their parents on Zoom calls during the pandemic can be very helpful in learning to present themselves in a professional setting.
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This is undoubtedly true. But many posters here seem to be talking about wealthy parents using their own position or ability to pull strings to get their kids in the door.
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So, at various points in this thread, especially early in it, there were quite a number of people who mentioned that they would not support their kid who wanted to go into the performing arts. In fact, I run into this as a college counselor sometimes where the parents will not support their kids pursuing college degrees in the arts. I feel very differently and was and am entirely behind my kid who has wanted to pursuing performing arts since preschool.
I bring this up again because I am in the middle of watching the Tony Awards (it’s a commercial right now!) but I thought of this thread when the Featured Actor in a Musical Award was presented and the winner, the young actor, Matt Doyle, won for his role in Company (which I had the fortune to see) and in his acceptance speech, he mentions how thankful he is that his parents always supported him pursuing his dream and he couldn’t do it without them. I’ve heard similar speeches before. Quite apropos of this thread.
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Interesting, my kids never knew what my husband and I did at work, they just knew we went to work, that’s it. No zoom call in my time.
They found out about internships from their peers, one complained to me everybody talked about internships, she felt pressure, we didn’t do anything.
Honestly, I rarely help my kids with homework even starting kindergarten, I remember one kindergarten teacher sent me a not to help my kid counting to 100 toward the end of kindergarten year. I was very happy if this kid had C average, it turned out she surpassed that all on her own.
That wasn’t my interpretation. My anecdotal experience has been the opposite: the kid I know whose parent set them up with internships was much less motivated and successful than the kids who went after things for themselves.
Where I have observed benefits from connections was at S’s DC think tank internship where famous professors at HYPSM etc got their students in the back door without having to participate in the competitive application process. But that had nothing to do with parents (other than the students who were recommended obviously knew what to do to get that recommendation and might well have benefitted from a higher SES background that taught them to go to office hours and converse with their professors).
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That explains why so often I hear of American students who graduate with double major and 1-2 minors. It might also possibly explain why so many more jobs in the US seem to be degree agnostic.
While it can vary from school to school, a typical single major arts or sciences bachelors degree in Canada is structured such that the major encompasses around 2/3 of the courses required for the degree. There is however quite a bit of variability as to what constitutes a minor. At S19’s university specifically, a major in the faculties of Arts or Sciences is 27 of 40 courses and minor requires a further 9. This might explain why Canadian employers are often times more rigid with regards to credentials when hiring particularly in fields like business, since our degrees are typically more specialized.
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Double majors practically don’t really matter. For example you won’t major in both mechanical engg and civil engg – two heavy subjects. You can major in computer science and history for instance. In that case the history major is just there. Nobody is taking it seriously. You can major in computer science and economics – seemingly two “relevant majors”. Not really necessary. Consider all the jobs you would practically want with an econ major – 1) a staff economist on a bank economics research team, 2) an “analyst” at a bank, 3) a sales person at a bank, 4) a trader at an investment firm or a bank, 5) a hedge fund analyst, 6) an economist at a regular company such as Amazon etc. Of these 2,3,4 and 5 can be obtained with any math/engineering/cs degree with maybe one or two courses in economics provided you go to a well regarded school. You are being hired for general smarts, hard work, common sense, personability, writing skills, critical thinking etc. You don’t really need that econ degree for “light” econ work. A lot of the kids find the “light” econ roles more financially lucrative than the “heavy” econ roles anyway. Even if you want to go and do a PhD in econ, a math bachelors is more valuable than an Econ bachelors. Double majors are generally not useful. They won’t hurt. But they won’t help. It is time pass.
It has not been mentioned here, but the folks that really want you to have the relevant degree are policy folks. If you want to go and join a think tank, they sort of want you to have a major in the appropriate policy area. Go figure.
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I’m not sure about majors in humanities and social sciences, but I don’t think that for any major in STEM at most colleges (even those with open curricula), the required courses, including major-specific electives, consist only 1/3 of all coursework necessary for a degree. In order to take a higher level course in STEM, a student typically has to complete a set of lower level courses.
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Note that different majors have different degree requirements. For example, ABET-accredited engineering majors typically require ~2/3 of courses for the degree (counting math/science/engineering prereqs in this total), although I have seen as high as 3/4 before. An employer can be confident that the student from any college that is ABET-accredited in the major was successful in a similar list of specific courses related to the major.
However, non-STEM majors often require far less. It’s fairly common for humanities majors to require ~1/3 of courses for degree. Some specific numbers from Stanford’s website are below. Some majors require more than double the units as other majors. These totals do not include distribution/core/general ed type requirements, which may add another 50 units or so.
Stanford Unit Requirements by Major
Civil Eng – 116 units
Mech Eng – 116 units
Energy Resource Eng – 112+ units
Computer Science – 96-106 units
Biology – 88-102 units
Chemistry – 82 to 101 units
Human Biology – 81+ units
Economics – 80 units
Physics – 77 to 84 units
Sociology – 60 units
Most Area Studies – 60 units
Most Languages – 60 units
Philosophy – 55 units
I looked up degree requirements at University of Calgary, and did not see far larger degree requirements than above. For example, Spanish requires “a minimum of 42 units” at Calgary. It’s my understanding that a degree from the university requires 120 units, so 42/120 = 35% of courses in major for degree in Spanish. In contrast, Stanford requires 60/180 = 33% of courses in major for degree in Spanish. Engineering majors appear to require far more courses than typical humanities majors at Calgary, in a similar way to Stanford (and other ABET-accredited colleges in US)
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I thought I was pretty clear in saying that there are exceptions in certain fields and degree programs that require more than 1/3 of their coursework to be in their major. For example, engineering, BFA degree programs, and BArch programs all require much more than that in their major. I was referring more to BA degrees, and not specialized degree programs, such as the type one applies directly into.
I don’t think this is necessarily a STEM vs. Humanities difference! It is more a difference in terms of the type of degree program. For instance, a BA in Math may require the same amount of credits in the major as a BA in English. An engineering degree or a BFA in Musical Theater can require even more than 2/3s of one’s coursework in the major.