<p>Is it better to major in <em>something</em> rather than General Studies? Or is the difference of employability among the easy LSA majors negligible?</p>
<p>Employability is more a function of candidate ability, personal initative, luck, “fit” and of course, overall school attractiveness. </p>
<p>Unless one wishes to land a job as a highly technical employee (accounting, Computer Science or Engineering), major will not really make that much of a difference. Overall GPA and transcripts, coupled with strong interviewing and communication skills will play a much larger role. </p>
<p>Of course, attending an elite university that attracts top employers and that catch the eye of recruiters always helps. Michigan students are fortunate to attend such a university. Recruiters love our university and respect it highly, so that alone will almost always get a student’s foot in the door.</p>
<p>But beyond that, one must demonstrate ability, understanding of the position and fit with the organization. </p>
<p>Of course, if a student takes a bunch of easy classes and does not show commitment to academic development, even a high GPA will not suffice. So what if a student has a 3.7 GPA taking a bunch of electives? And General Studies is not a major, so I recommend against it. If one wishes to major in something less “challenging”, such as a language or international studies or Psychology, I recommend taking some difficult classes like Intermediate level Economics and Mathematics classes to demonstrate analytical ability. </p>
<p>Bottom line, ability = employability</p>
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<p>If a less-challenging-LSA-major major were to try to compete against technical majors for technical jobs I guess it would make sense to prove analytical ability, but what kind of jobs are there that less-challenging-LSA-major pursues that wants to see analytical ability?</p>
<p>Tentai, for some reason I thought you were at the school of music. Must have been based on my misperception of another post somewhere.</p>
<p>My .02 is that every employer wants to see evidence of analytical ability together with a healthy dollop of common sense. It is an indicator that they can grow with the company, contribute to its future competitiveness, and develop into future key roles.</p>
<p>However, in some fields, you do not need a pure science to demonstrate analytical ability, but you do want to have the metrics of analysis at your disposal. So consider courses that give a “big picture” or deal with structural mechanics of the type of job/industry in which you want to work.</p>
<p>If you major in a Liberal Arts degree or General Studies, and take 3-4 CS related classes and have GPA avg. of 2.5 and graduate from U-M, and have connection with someone who works at a small IT company, can you easily get a job there?</p>