Is it hard to find...

<p>Job with just having a B.S. ?</p>

<p>I will finish my B.S. next year in Biochemistry with about 2.80 GPA. GPA sux thats why i dont even wanna apply for any gradute school. I heard that there are some easy to get universities (such as California State University), but i think my GPA is way way low, and have will too many Fs and Ds on my transcript. </p>

<p>How hard is to find a decent job with having just BS in Biochemistry?</p>

<p>My dream is to work in some kinda research in Boston..someplace like Brigham and Women's Hospital... <a href="http://www.brighamandwomens.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.brighamandwomens.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>do i have hope or not? :-(</p>

<p>For research you'll need grad school - MS, MD, PhD.</p>

<p>:-(</p>

<p>I guess i should just stop going to college and keep working at Mall. i will have no future with BS in biochem. why waste money in next two semesters? I wont be able to focus on my studing anyway knowing i have no future in it. </p>

<p>sorry i am just sad. I wish i was more careful my first two years.</p>

<p>:(</p>

<p>Don't get discouraged. It's actually much easier to find a job at the BS/MS level than at the PhD level. Look for research associate or laboratory technician positions on career websites. Working for a couple of years may compensate for a low GPA if you wish to apply to graduate schools in the future.</p>

<p>thanks for giving me hope.</p>

<p>i searched on careerbuilder.com and found that alone in Brigham and Women's Hospital there are 60 some positions for research associate kinds of jobs. But their Req'd Education is listed as just B.S. with less than one year experience.</p>

<p>do they even hire people with just B.S? why dont they say Req'd Education MS/PhD? </p>

<p>i just find it weird. </p>

<p>may they just say B.S but actually hire people with MS/PhD.</p>

<p>UAB11 - believe the employer's website. But...</p>

<p>Your GPA will hurt your chances right out of school. (After your first job it will be pretty much irrelevant so don't worry about it long term.)</p>

<p>Now, there is nothing you can do at this point about your first two years in college so...</p>

<p>I would suggest you call the employment office at B&WH and ask about the positions and what they normally expect. For the jobs you are interested in, ask what they would consider relevant coursework or project experience.</p>

<p>Take whatever answers you get and try to match things up during your final months in college. You may have to go out of your way to overcome the GPA issue, but it looks like there are a lot of positions out there so it shouldn't be too bad as long as you are flexible.</p>

<p>cool thanks</p>

<p>BTW can you lie to employer and say your GPA is 3.0 when its actually 2.8 something?</p>

<p>;-)</p>

<p>I think it's better to be honest about your GPA. I wasn't so thrilled with mine either, but employers want to hire people who are trustworthy and honest.</p>

<p>
[quote]

do they even hire people with just B.S? why dont they say Req'd Education MS/PhD?</p>

<p>i just find it weird.</p>

<p>may they just say B.S but actually hire people with MS/PhD.

[/quote]

The reason people say that you need a PhD to do research is that you need a PhD to do independent research. The jobs you're seeing at BWH are research technician positions -- you'll be doing what someone else tells you to do. Research techs can become laboratory managers, but they cannot become professors.</p>

<p>A research technician job is a great thing to do with a bachelor's degree in biology, especially if you're interested in research as a career -- a few years of solid technician experience can far outweigh undergraduate grades. Many of the students in my PhD program worked as technicians for some number of years.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I guess i should just stop going to college and keep working at Mall. i will have no future with BS in biochem. why waste money in next two semesters? I wont be able to focus on my studing anyway knowing i have no future in it.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, no, you certainly shouldn't quit. Just think about the sunk cost aspects. You are already so close to graduation that you might as well finish the degree, as the incremental costs of doing so are very low (like you said, just 2 more semesters). Then you will at least have a bachelor's degree. Most decent jobs out there require or prefer a bachelor's degree. It doesn't even have to necessarily be a degree in a relevant field, you just have to have a bachelor's degree in SOMETHING. So if you only have to spend 2 more semesters in getting a degree, you might as well get it.</p>

<p>Also... BWH is a great institution, and there are a lot of academic research technician positions in the Boston area. But don't discount industrial research, either. There seem to be a fair number of people who work in industry for two or three years before going to graduate school.</p>

<p>thanks a lot </p>

<p>I have a last question. Do research associate jobs require biology Knowledge ? At my university, for Biochemistry degree , you dont need to take any biology classes. Thats why i never took any biology at college level. My Minor is Math. Do you think it will effect my chances getting a job in Hospital kinds of places?</p>

<p>I know a girl that works in a reasearch lab at that very place in boston and she only has a bachelors. I think she had decent grades though.....</p>

<p>It helps... but I've known some people who are not only not smart, but have no common sense, and they can still get a job as an associate or a lab tech. If you are lucky, you will find a company that is willing to take you on and train you and educate you. If you're really lucky, they will take an active interest in your development as a scientist. If you are smart, you will take advantage of the resources available at that job. You could enroll in classes (many companies will offer tuition reimbursement), and learn there. Maybe you can even get a LOR from the prof teaching that class. You could ask a lot of questions of your supervisor and the people around you in the lab. In this way, it is very easy to distinguish yourself from the average associate/tech.</p>

<p>I don't know why you are so insistent on finding a job at a hospital. I think that if you are really that desperate to find work, you need to look at every available opportunity.</p>

<p>I am currently working as Student Assitance in a Hospital, in a cancer research lab. I like the environment. In my lab there are different kinds of people working in research, some with MS, some with BS and then there are some with PhDs. Since its a small city its not hard to find jobs with just a BS in Hospitals here. But i dont know if thats the case in Boston. I heard people are more eduacted there. </p>

<p>I have heard of places like Kelly Scientific Resources and Aerotek Scientific. But i am not familiar with those companies.</p>

<p>Well, even in Boston, people with bachelors degrees and people with PhDs are not looking for the same kinds of jobs.</p>

<p>Your practical laboratory knowledge (techniques and the like) will be most important for securing a laboratory technician job.</p>