<p>I'm seriously considering majoring in biology and clinical laboratory sciences.
Biology is my passion and eventually I want to get my PhD in bio but an undergrade degree in bio doesn't get you anywhere and the unemployment rate is high (around 8%) and I can't afford to be out of work for years after college.
Secondly, a CLS major leads directly to a job as a medical technologist & is also something I'm very interested in, it will give me experience in the bio field (if I were to progress my career by getting a bio degree) pays really well, and something I could enjoy doing for years while doing graduate work.
However the downside is that it will take me 2-3 extra years to complete. </p>
<p>So basically my plan is to get a degree in bio & CLS, get a job with the cls degree and continue my education with the bio degree to further my career. Makes sense? Not worth it?
Any opinion is welcomed, thanks</p>
<p>What are you going to do with your PhD in Biology once you get it? That’s a pretty big chunk of money and time to invest into something if you can’t look ahead to see what could come of it. Do you know exactly how much your career will be boosted by having a PhD? </p>
<p>Like, for me, a PhD versus a bachelor’s for some government jobs there is a difference of nearly $80,000. That’s where I could see the payoffs of going to graduate school and getting a PhD. Not really if you only get 10 more bucks an hour added to your paycheck. Then again, my major is in applied math, something very employable.</p>
<p>A PhD in bio will help me land a job as a microbiologist which has an average salary of 100k… A 40-50k increase from a medical technologist & putting aside that factor of me actually doing something for the enjoyment, the salary increase is a pretty big incentive. </p>
<p>Another quick question, if I were to just go for a CLS degree how difficult would it be to gain acceptance to a graduate school for biology?</p>
<p>Double major isn’t worth it here because you’d be better off learning the material a different way. Neither is a bio PhD, simply because the field is in a pretty bad state right now.</p>
<p>Don’t go into it, thinking you will make 100k. There are many people with ph.d’s that aren’t making anywhere near that amount. The fact of the matter is, the United States scientific market is dismal. You’d be better off going for a degree in finance or economics, work at a investment firm that deals with health related fields, get your MBA, then work your way up to a executive position.</p>
<p>Why can’t you go straight into a PhD program after getting an undergrad degree in biology?</p>
<p>Even if going straight to PhD is not possible, taking 2-3 years just to get a CLS degree is not worth it, in my opinion. True, it’s tough getting a decent-paying job with an undergrad in bio. However, there is a very good chance you could get a lab tech job with very crappy pay, maybe even minimum wage. Why is that worth it? With 2-3 years of biology work experience, you could work your way up the kind of position a CLS tech has. Factor in the cost of tuition/housing you’d have to pay over those 2-3 years if you did a CLS major, and it turns out that the CLS degree is just not worth it.</p>
<p>However, a master’s after a single major in bio might be worth it, depending on the salary boost.</p>
<p>
This is a seriously misguided sentiment, that everyone should just work in an investment firm/bank and do business. The fact is that not everyone enjoys that kind of work, and not everyone will do well and “work [their] way up to an executive position.” In fact, if biological science is the OP’s passion, the OP probably has a better chance of becoming a 100k microbiologist PhD than becoming a health care executive.</p>
<p>To employers, a double major is a negative. Employers think that you aren’t committed to their discipline and that you will switch to the other discipline in a moment. They also think that you are spreading yourself out too thin instead of focusing on one area.</p>
<p>Sio, that’s not always the case. In some fields a double major may be useful. Computer Science/ Mathematics, Finance/Economics or Finance/Math, even Marketing/Psychology(I know it sounds like a strange combo, but in marketing, you want to get into the consumers head)</p>