I’m so happy you posted this question. From what I’ve noticed, the students who land jobs upon graduation are the ones who took advantage of growth opportunities while in school: internships, PT work in field, fellowships, volunteering, job shadowing. Those who cruised in undergrad had a much more difficult time, as they have nothing to prove their worth but the non-applied degree itself.
Our D’s experience was much, much more than just going to a school that promotes internships/co-ops. The career readiness focus permeated throughout her classes, projects, and conversations beginning freshman year. Exam questions are real world/company problems. Industry speakers routinely come speak to classes and judge projects. There are “field trips” to nearby companies, partnerships with design classes and industry, and the yearly engineering seminar classes are geared towards job finding. This year her department offered free one on one communications consulting for seniors. Students could tailor make their senior seminar experience as well so those who already had job offers could skip the job searching stuff and focus more on things like effectively network post college, how to negotiate for a promotion/raise, etc…
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These links may be helpful.
But, as you cautioned yourself at the beginning of the thread, Purdue is mostly a STEM school.
Not saying it’s easy, or that they aren’t doing an outstanding job, but it’s easier to set all these things up with preprofessional majors, and, importantly, pre-professional students who are, by definition, going into college with a different mindset.
OP is worried, specifically, about a kid wanting a “non-pre”, humanities major, because such a student will have to start out even finding the field they want to work in, before they can then focus on how to gain a foothold.
I would think that the most interesting suggestion so far is GW, because while they may not do handholding, I understand that the school’s whole culture is focused on how to find internships and jobs in public policy. Don’t discount culture - if everyone around you is about the life of the mind and grad school, it’s hard to be the lone undergrad go-getter, but if going out into Washington DC for internships is normal and everyone talks about them, it may be the push a student needs.
Don’t know anything about High Point’s humanities, but the culture sounds so business- and money-focused, that I am wondering whether a student who does care about the academic side of her humanities studies will be happy there, or feel like she could have just gone to business school.
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I think many if the schools on the list were tech schools which begs the question as to whether it’s the school or major or student. It’s likely all three although hearing @momofboiler1 first hand experience through her daughter leads me to believe Purdue does stand above. If one was a political science major at Purdue would this have happened ? I don’t know.
In the end, I think one needs to find the right school for them and if they want to focus on employment, then they can and will hopefully be successful.
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My D has a handful of friends who were English and History majors. One just returned from a fully funded research trip to Europe and the other has had a bunch of internships. I can’t speak to the specifics of what has happened in their classes, but they’ve had great undergrad experiences.
I’ve heard the same for nonSTEM majors at Cincinnati as well. We know many HS friends who went there for all kinds of majors.
For the record, I’d chose Cincinnati over Purdue for a non STEM student.
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Thanks for all of your input. Very useful
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High Point University Majors
Ten Most Popular Majors for 2021 Graduates
- Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services
38%
- Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs
13%
- Parks, Recreation, Leisure, Fitness, and Kinesiology
8%
- Visual and Performing Arts
8%
- Psychology
7%
- Biological and Biomedical Sciences
6%
- Education
5%
- Homeland Security, Law Enforcement, Firefighting and Related Protective Services
3%
- Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services
1%
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Some of the best colleges for public policy tend to be highly selective. Nevertheless, these schools might be worth considering:
With respect to your child’s interests, note that the economics component of public policy may rely partly on quantitative aspects. Therefore, suitable high school preparation in mathematics may be advisable.
This is definitely a consideration. S23 was interested in a school with spectacular recruiting numbers. It’s a hard to get to school and recruiters would often stay 3 hours away for their job fairs. I had to remind S23 that the fact that they were there to hire engineers meant nothing to him as a possible forestry major and that he would need to get program specific numbers for it to be a meaningful comparison to other schools on his list.
There were some interesting patterns on the list. On the best for career placements, schools that focused on tech or had popular engineering & business programs seemed to dominate, but William & Mary was a bit of an outlier (and though it does have a business major, about 90% of majors are in non pre-professional fields).
In the public schools with the the best internships, William & Mary topped the list, and Christopher Newport wasn’t far behind, both considered public liberal arts colleges. And UVA and Virginia Tech both scored well on the career placement list, so Virginia public schools might me a good place to look, even beyond these four institutions as it might be more of a culture of practice for them.
The best private schools for internships seemed to have the top half of the list dominated by non-urban smaller colleges…perhaps because they have to be more aggressive about helping students get placements because of their locations? Interestingly, two men’s colleges made the top 10, which I think likely has to do with the historical cultural importance of male breadwinners, but I could be mistaken.
Depending on what OP’s kid is interested in with respect to college (size, vibe, etc), the third list (20 best private schools for internships) might be the best list to go on as it seems to be have a mix of schools that are urban/suburban/rural, range in size from small to large, and that have a range of admissions selectivities.
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What does your non-STEM, non-business kid want to do? I just checked out Lehigh’s career center, to see if it had changed much since I was a student. It still looks excellent - they do hundreds of interviews yearly. Granted, most of those will be STEM and business focused, but they also have a number of great videos up online to help any student.
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