<p>I enjoy the sciences myself but I want to make a living as well. So I am considering going into business (which I will also enjoy) or a science. I thought about engineering but I dont really want to do that kind of stuff so please dont recommend that to me.</p>
<p>Not really, according to the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post16559971[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post16559971</a> .</p>
<p>It’s hard to get a decent job with only a chemistry undergraduate these days. Five to ten years ago it was a different situation. But what is guaranteed? If the sciences are where your strengths lie, that’s what you should pursue. It’s a good idea to minor in something outside the sciences, especially in something that will help you develop your writing skills. Then you show you’re a well-rounded person and have more opportunities available to you.</p>
<p>No, it is not.</p>
<p>With only an undergraduate degree, it isn’t likely you’ll find the kind of job you’re looking for. You could go into business with a company that sells, markets, manages, or develops scientific products (machinery, drugs, etc).
As a biologist or chemist, keep in mind what you would actually be doing. Perhaps you would be involved in a business that develops techniques for analyzing things, or maybe you’d be making a new chemical drug, or developing fuel. What is interesting to you?
If you do decide that your undergrad major will be biology or chemistry, in order to make a living and actually do things, I would suggest furthering your degree in something that interests you.</p>
<p>The sciences are so bad in terms of financial reward and employment prospects that many Americans are being actively repelled from the field. Unemployment is very high, salaries/wages are very low, Companies are now using temp agencies to staff their labs that don’t even provide benefits like paid time off or sick leave and they pay as low as $10-12 an hour. As a result, I am one of the few I graduated with still in the field.</p>
<p>Grad degrees don’t help. The MSc is treated as a BSc with 2 years experience and PhD are declared overqualified, too expensive, clueless academic and often wind up doing poor paying post-docs for close to a decade until their career dead ends.</p>
<p>If you like science persue something that offers a decent living and study it as a hobby.</p>
<p>The only way to move up in the sciences if you are a drinking buddy, family, or slept your way up top. Your boss will rob you of pay, sick leave, and use your talents for their benefit while you sink further and further down to the ground. Good degree as a stepping stone and that is it.</p>
<p>I did the business- accounting as my first bachelors, landed me part-time academic work around 13 hourly but I can continue my education. Science is a lot more interesting to study for me personally; I will likely persue chem degree while working part-time. Some of my coworkers are in grad school for science or have worked as professors/laboratory work in biology/chemistry.</p>
<p>Absolutely not. Stay away from biology and chemistry at all costs. Switch out to an engineering degree, business, finance, or something related to computers while you still can. </p>
<p>Chemistry and biology are a huuuuuuuuuge waste of time. It absolutely ****es me off to no end I wasted 10 years of my life trying to establish a career in those fields only to find that it is a dead end. I could have spent 10 years working in finance, become manager by now, paid off all of my student loans, and owned a house by now if I chose a different path. </p>
<p>Do you ever remember anyone telling you that it was required to earn a graduate degree in biology or chemistry in order to find gainful employment? Probably not. Furthermore, you can go into grad school to earn a PhD in biology and chemistry, yet you won’t find out until later that many subfields within those two fields are massive busts; Oraganic chemistry, biochemistry, and pretty much most fields of biology are unemployable. No one tells you before you go into graduate school for biology or chemistry that you need to focus on super specific disciplines like bioanalytical and need to learn super specific techniques like MS/MS and UPLC to be employable. If you make one wrong mistake, you are done and will get stuck working temp jobs for the rest of your career followed by chronic periods of unemployment after you company axes R and D first before almost any department in order to stay afloat when things start going south. </p>
<p>Don’t waste your time with chemistry or biology. You will be lied to the entire time on how to proceed forward in order to find a real career. No one tells you when you are 17 that in order to find employment that pays a sustainable wage in the chemical industry that you’ll need to pursue a PhD in a super uber specialized field or that most industries that chemists and biologist are employed in are extremely unstable and have notorious reputations for layoffs and job instability. </p>
<p>If you are spending $60,000 on an undergrad degree, don’t waste time in science, spend time learning finance, computers, or engineering. Don’t let the system lie to you, eat you up, and earn as much money off of you as possible on your in interest payments on your student loans because it takes you much longer to pay off your debt due to chronic underemployment with a worthless science degree. Get the most ROI you can.</p>
<p>If you love science, go for a clinical medicine degree–MD/DO/DMD/PharmD/RN+PhD And then try to get into academic research. It’s much easier this way around, and the pay is way better + you’ll have job stability. Also companies will pay people with these degrees more, as they’re a hotter commodity, and all clinical trials have to be done in the US and can’t be outsourced.</p>
<p>Applied science is the best. And that’s medicine and engineering.</p>
<p>What about employability of very specific degrees, gravenewworld, like microbiology, biophysics, or bioinformatics/mathematical biology, for example? Those are still bio/chem fields, but does specificity help?</p>
<p>Bioinformatics or epidemiology perhaps. Microbiology heck no, biophysics probably no.</p>
<p>Well, there are “Biotech Entrepreneurs” which are biologists or biochemists that focus on market demand biotechnology. They develop a unique technology, like recombinant DNA technology for example, and then partner with venture capitalist investors to start a biotech company.</p>
<p>Obviously, this route is not biology exclusive and involves business knowledge, but the pay is much more substantial.</p>
<p>Jlsperling, if it was so easy, everyone would do it. There are so many unemployed and underemployed biologists with PhDs who would jump at the opportunity to make millions with their ideas. Unfortunately, there is more luck than planning in marketable breakthroughs. Many of those biologists work as phlebotomists and laboratory techs at my hospital for peanuts. Thank you gravenewworld for getting the word out. These aspiring students need to hear what you have to say.</p>
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<p>Many people try this and fail. The barrier to entry in many areas of biotech is quite large which limits what you can do without a lot of initial funding. For example, Almost all biotech is going to require analytical equipment, which is extremely expensive if you are starting off very small. Also, if you go into biotech, you should ALWAYS expect to be laid or have to change jobs within 5 years, because the industry by its very nature is just so unstable. If you remove the top 10 giant corporations from biotech, the industry as a whole loses $6 billion dollars per year. The game is literally stacked against you from the beginning. Many, many extremely smart people have tried biotech start ups and fail. Usually it takes a stroke of good luck, perfect timing, and some serendipity. Your biotech startup also has to be something that another company can’t easily outsource to China or India (many US CROs get outcompeted simply on price point when compared to an Indian or Chinese CRO). </p>
<p>Anyone who is thinking about a startup should definitely read this book:</p>
<p>[Science</a> Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech: Gary P. Pisano: 9781591398400: Amazon.com: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Science-Business-Promise-Reality-Biotech/dp/1591398401/sr=8-1/qid=1168219621?ie=UTF8&s=books]Science”>http://www.amazon.com/Science-Business-Promise-Reality-Biotech/dp/1591398401/sr=8-1/qid=1168219621?ie=UTF8&s=books)</p>
<p>We constantly hear about amazing biotech promises that end up never coming to fruition. I’m still waiting for the “revolution” in genomics to produce any tangible clinical breakthroughs. </p>
<p>New biotech is always great, that is until you have to convince someone to pay for it:
[Failure</a> to launch : Nature Biotechnology : Nature Publishing Group](<a href=“http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n1/full/nbt.2482.html]Failure”>Failure to launch | Nature Biotechnology)</p>
<p>Not to hack the OP’s post, but since the topic has shifted to more specific areas of focus, does anyone know about opportunities and employability in infectious disease, particularly research in vaccines and mathematical applications like mapping the spread?
I’m so sorry if asking on someone else’s post like this isn’t allowed!
Thanks though :)</p>
<p>Wow. This thread has literally taken a c*** on my dreams. I was planning on double majoring in Biochem and Astrophysics. Science is apparently a terrible field in terms of employment. Errrrrrrrrrr. Is it next to impossible to get a position as a researcher at a university?</p>
<p>
Of the handful of successful people I know in the sciences:
The only one who succeeded in academia was a physicist who received tenure at a decent state university maybe 30 years ago.</p>
<p>A few received cushy jobs at private research companies and have worked there for decades. A few won the jobs lottery, but more common than that was that they were groomed into their position in some sort of arrangement where their PhD education was an extended apprenticeship working on the company’s work for 4-6 years. A lot of these people got there not because they were exceptional scientists, but because they had a gift for getting along with people. </p>
<p>Most of them took a different path, away from the sciences. Smart enough to eventually figure out that their science knowledge wasn’t going to get them employment. Family, some sort of business, anywhere else but science really.</p>
<p>In short: you’re not playing the odds.</p>
<p>Some of the people who are good enough at math-type of thinking to handle astrophysics do make it into jobs in computers or finance. But those would not be physics or astronomy jobs, and if those jobs were your first choice, you might as well major in computer science, math, statistics, economics, etc…</p>
<p>High school or community college science teaching may be another option (not necessarily well paid).</p>
<p>I guess my hope was to be a researcher at a university/ private company after obtaining a PhD (in either Biochemistry or Astrophysics, I’ll use my undergrad years to guide that decision), but that might be a bad idea since jobs are few and far between. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad teaching high school, except for the pay. I just don’t know what else I would major in. Nothing else really interests me.</p>