<p>I’m sensitive to the situation in which the guidance counselor can’t possibly pay attention to 400 or 700 kids in any meaningful way, but I doubt that most guidance counselors can give useful career advice anyway. [I’d feel lucky if they could give useful college advice, but definitely would not count on it].</p>
<p>I’m always surprised when a kid in HS has a career in mind, because one of the great virtues of the US college/university education is that it introduces students to ways of thinking and paths that they might not be aware of. I went to a meeting where a HS sophomore or junior was seriously asking about the best colleges and majors for getting into a particular area of investment banking. How could he know that that would be the best career choice for him?</p>
<p>My own experience is that the two jobs I’ve held longest in my career (both came from helping to start firms) didn’t exist when I was in college. So, how could I have known as a sophomore of junior in HS. I did know that I was interested in using math to think about human behavior in some form and ultimately be able to offer useful advice or take useful actions. To a large extent my career has followed from that, but I could never have predicted from my interests when entering college (or even leaving college) what form the work would take.</p>
<p>OP, if by STEM, you mean all of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, there are huge numbers of careers available. There are the software and hardware guys in computing, mobile technology, and elsewhere. There are jobs in biology and biotech as well as in chemistry (not sure how many jobs there are in physics, though the training can be useful for jobs outside of physics like finance). I’m no expert in engineering, but from math there are many jobs (statistician, biostatistician, hedge fund quant or trader, bond modeler for i-bank, risk management, actuary, seems to be a growing area in biology for people with math/computer science backgrounds …). </p>
<p>My advice would be to become knowledgeable about the broad set of possible choices and understand the academic paths to these careers. The best place for guidance would be ensuring that he doesn’t choose a path that prevents him from pursuing training for career directions that interest him. For that, you may be able to help find activities that let your son identify directions that particularly interest him. [I benefited greatly from attending a NSF sponsored summer program prior to senior year in HS – I’m not sure these programs still exist. My daughter attended a short summer science program at a school she was considering]. I tend to think that engineering is better for people who are practically rather than theoretically inclined (though I am sure that there are areas of engineering that might appeal to someone with a more theoretical bent) so it might help both of you to get some sense of whether he’s more theoretically or practically inclined. That could guide selection of colleges – for example, would an engineering-only (or predominantly engineering) school be the best fit for a theoretically minded kid?</p>