I am switching from my current pre-med track (for multiple reasons), and I don’t know what I could study in college/do later in life that will leave me with good pay, a job im satisfied with, and good employment options. What career path should I switch to that will give me the best options? I’m desperate (i’ve been thinking about this for months). I am a good student, so far I have a 3.9 in college (I’m a sophomore), so I don’t want that to go to waste. I considered computer science, but its seems like that field changes every second, so I’m scared about how employable I will be in the future/if it is even worth it since there are people that don’t go to college and still get well payed CS jobs. I considered actuary, but that seems unbelievably boring/there are hard tests to pass that might be too much to handle (for me at least, since I’m okay at math but I’m no genius). I also considered biomedical engineering, but that seems very competitive and will be hard for me to keep up with since I’m a slow learner and I am also a girl and want to have a family later on in life.
Please! any help will go far. I am so desperately lost.
If you want options, I would suggest computer science. Sure the field changes but there is no reason that you can’t keep up. I am in software qa (so i don’t code) but many of the development people that I work with have been in the field over 20 years. If they can keep up, you can keep up. Also, as time goes on, more IT/CS people are working from home as I do.
Majors in and of themselves don’t confer opportunity; skills and experience do.
You can’t predict the future.
Computer science is a pretty lucrative field with lots of opportunities and good pay. No, there’s no telling what will happen to the field in 5-10 years - the tech bubble could burst; a surge of students majoring in CS could depress salaries; the Chinese could conquer the Western hemisphere and throw economic markets into chaos. But you could say that about any major! If you like it, and you’re interested in the kinds of jobs you can do in that career, take a few classes in it and see if your interests hold.
Some fields are more competitive than others. It’s up to you how much competition you want to encounter in your career. Computer science is wide open, but there are lots of different kinds of jobs in the field and some are more competitive than others. Getting software development jobs at Google or Microsoft is pretty competitive; but there are also CS majors who are coding apps for small startups or less interesting/desirable places like Home Depot or PACCAR or Costco (hey, they need apps and websites, too).
What kinds of things are you interested in?
They’re in the minority. You’ll have much better prospects with a bachelor’s degree.
I want to address this because it’s really important - don’t self-select yourself out of a major before you’ve even begun it, much less a career, because you are worried about family concerns.
It’s not that I don’t think having a family is important, or that women and men shouldn’t consider the implications of their careers on their families. It’s moreso that there are thousands, millions of different ways that you can arrange a career (even a competitive one) around your family. It’s also that you’re in an early stage of life and you may change your mind about how exactly you want to structure your family and your time with them. What you don’t want to do is select yourself out of the most well-paying, respected job fields because you’re a woman (what does that have to do with anything?) and you want a family.
Truthfully, professional careers are a lot more flexible than non-professional ones, and highly-paid folks can arrange to make their lives easier with kids (hiring nannies or getting good daycare or paying their parents to stay at home with their children). There are also a wide variety of jobs in each field - some biomedical engineering jobs might be more 9-to-5 type deals that allow you to get home and spend time with your family.
Professional jobs typically require a degree (often graduate), tend to involve critical thinking , general knowledge, and expertise, offer good benefits and salaries, are typically more flexible and interesting.
Depending on why you are no longer pre-med, there are a ton of other jobs in the medical arena that you may like…nursing, PT, OT, MA, NP, PA, radiology, etc. Many of those positions have per diem shifts as well which can work with a family schedule.
^Or more flexible full-time shifts in general. I know tons of nurses who have children and specifically chose nursing because of the flexible scheduling (including my own mother ). Nurses can often work 3-4 days a week for 10-12 hour shifts, leaving their other 3-4 days open. Or they can work night shifts, working while their kids are asleep and their spouse is at home (although that can be hard on a marriage over time…) Nursing is also flexible enough for parents to switch between part-time and full-time and somewhere in between depending on family demands.
Lots of healthcare positions are like that, including most of the ones that kchamp listed.
You might also want to consider pharmacy or optometry. The profession is flexible for a working mom. The pay is good. It appears that you have the grades to get into pharmacy or optometry school.
). Nurses can often work 3-4 days a week for 10-12 hour shifts, leaving their other 3-4 days open. Or they can work night shifts, working while their kids are asleep and their spouse is at home (although that can be hard on a marriage over time…) Nursing is also flexible enough for parents to switch between part-time and full-time and somewhere in between depending on family demands.