The "best" career paths/majors to go into?

<p>NOw a days a career in demand is managent of businessi.e. mba.</p>

<p>momochan, well said.</p>

<p>I could have earned more $$$ in another setting but chose to stay at a large hospital system in allied health. Have had no concern about job security even in these more challenging times. Of course, I chose to work hard and smart and pursue many opportunities along the way. The pension, 403b plan, healthcare coverage for my entire family, liberal vacation time, flexible shifts are what enabled me to be engaged at work but also have a life outside work as well.</p>

<p>Accounting seems like another undergrad major that leads directly into a specific career. Honestly there aren’t many UNDERGRAD majors that lead into specific careers. People say majoring in hard sciences is a good idea, but what career options do you really have? of course you can go to med school, but so can someone who didn’t major in a hard science.</p>

<p>While the most important factor in choosing a college major may be a student’s interests, a close second is certainly the likelihood of actually finding a job and making a living after graduation, especially when factoring in the high cost of tuition. Turns out that when it comes to post-college earning power, not all degrees are created equal.</p>

<p>To find the most useless degrees college students can get with their four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, we wanted to know which majors offer not only the fewest job opportunities, but those that tend to pay the least. The Daily Beast considered the following data points, weighted equally, with each degree’s numbers compared to the average for each category, to achieve a categorical comparison that accounts for differentiation from the mean. Data are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Payscale:</p>

<p>• Starting and mid-career salary levels, using the profession most associated with the degree.
• The expected change in the total number of jobs from 2008-2018.
• The expected percentage change in available jobs from 2008-2018.</p>

<p>[Useless</a> College Majors, From Journalism to Psychology to Theater - The Daily Beast](<a href=“Useless College Majors, From Journalism to Psychology to Theater”>Useless College Majors, From Journalism to Psychology to Theater)
[20</a> Most Useless Degrees - The Daily Beast](<a href=“20 Most Useless Degrees”>20 Most Useless Degrees)</p>

<p>20 most useless degrees
1)Journalism
2)Horticulture
3)Agriculture
4)Advertising
5)Fashion Design
6)Child and Family Studies
7)Music
8)Mechanical Engineering Technology
9)Chemistry
10)Nutrition
11)Human Resources
12)Theater
13)Art History
14)Photography
15)Literature
16)Art
17)Fine Arts
18)Psychology
19)English
20)Animal Science</p>

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<p>Math, statistics, and physics graduates are often recruited into well paying finance jobs, and sometimes move into other well paying jobs like computer software. Physics graduates sometimes move into engineering jobs that do not require PE licensing.</p>

<p>Biology and chemistry graduates tend not to have very good job and career prospects.</p>

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<p>Unless they are premed which the vast majority are.</p>

<p>@cellardwellar
true, most students are rejected</p>

<p>Actually, the majority are accepted, and at a top 50 college, your chances are typically >75%.</p>

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<p>Slightly less than half of pre-meds who apply to medical school eventually go to medical school.</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>However, many pre-meds don’t apply after seeing their MCAT scores or accumulating a GPA too low to have a chance of getting into medical school.</p>

<p>For example, out of 217 Molecular and Cell Biology majors who graduated in 2010 from Berkeley and responded to the career survey, 27 (or about 12%) went off the medical school. Total graduate school (including medical, dental, optometry, pharmacology, law, and academic) attendance was 27% of these graduates.</p>

<p>Of the 91 respondents who majored in Integrative Biology that year, 3 (or about 3%) went off the medical school, with 19% going to all graduate schools.</p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/MCB.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/MCB.stm&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/IntBio.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/IntBio.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Again, ucbalumnus you are mixing applicants on graduation with total applicants. </p>

<p>According to the AMA, there were 772 applicants in 2010 with Berkeley undergrad degrees. Of these, only 119 or around 15% were seniors just graduating. This leaves 85% that applied after leaving college which is typical. For every Berkeley applicant that applies on graduation, approximately another SIX will apply later.</p>

<p>^do you have an estimate of the number of freshmen pre meds graduate medical school, let’s say within 15 years of graduating high school?</p>

<p>I don’t know how that could even be measured. Is there even a definition for a freshman premed? Are you a premed once you take the MCAT? According to the AMA, you are a premed only when your entire file has been forwarded to at least one med school for evaluation. </p>

<p>According to AMA, around 25% of all med school applicants are repeat applicants. Assuming the repeat applicants get admitted at the same rate as first time applicants, the likelihood that an applicant will eventually be admitted is closer to 75% than 50%.</p>

<p>“I don’t know how that could even be measured. Is there even a definition for a freshman premed”</p>

<p>I don’t know either. I was thinking kids who when they enter college say “I’m pre med”.</p>

<p>What definition were you thinking of in post 106? Med school applicants?</p>

<p>I was using the AMA definition: you are a premed once you actually apply to med school, not when you just express an interest in medicine. That interest may wane over time. Applicants have made a substantial commitment and can be tracked. It may be a narrow definition but at least it is objective. It is also based on the fact that premed is not a major just a set of requirements, you can meet at any time, during or after graduation. The vast majority of med school applicants never applied while in college, many did not even know they wanted to go to med school.</p>

<p>I did not know that was the AMA definition! Thanks! Is it known what percentage of bio and chemistry majors end up applying? Is it the vast majority?</p>

<p>BTW, it was a VERY long time ago, And it was an HBCU, but I applied and went straight from college, and most of my classmates did too.</p>

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<p>Repeat applicants are probably less likely to be accepted than others, since many of them were rejected the first time. The chance of acceptance from the two applications from the repeat applicant are not independent. Someone with a 2.0 to 3.0 GPA can apply every year and never get accepted.</p>

<p>In any case, claiming that pre-meds have a high chance of going to medical school is misleading if you do not clearly state that “pre-meds” only includes those who complete the medical school applications, rather than much larger group of freshmen or high school seniors who say that they are pre-meds and start taking pre-med courses.</p>

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<p>Actually, my definition is much broader and probably includes more students than just the freshmen who indicated an interest in premed or the seniors who took classes.</p>

<p>My group includes all students from a particular graduating class whether or not they expressed an interest as freshman, or while in college at all. At Berkeley as at most colleges, the vast majority of graduates did not apply while in college but later. For Berkeley that number is 6 to 1. This includes grads that took a job and decided for med school later and took premed courses elsewhere, it included the PhDs and other applicants with second degrees. It would be ridiculous to include high school students who have no clue about medicine, or freshmen who change their minds for other careers for a variety of reasons. The majority of college students change majors at least once, so declared interest is pretty useless.</p>

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<p>That is not clear at all. There are probably fewer super candidates in the repeat group, but there also probably many fewer real low chance candidates. There are certainly repeat candidates who were accepted the first go-around but just didn’t get in to their target schools. The application process is expensive and those with reapply have often added new elements to their application: better recommendations, possibly better grades. Most importantly, the repeat candidates probably have more “life” experience that the first time group. That is considered very important by all med schools.</p>

<p>Medicine is “better” than engineering, because good doctors make huge amounts of money (250k/yr, 500k for some specialists and even 1 million a year for a few neurosurgeons/others). Whereas even good engineers don’t earn that much, an engineer making above $200k a year is very rare. Also, medicine and engineering have similar job prospects, I believe.</p>

<p>CS (but only if you are REALLY good at it)
<a href=“Silicon Valley Booms but Worries About a New Bust - The New York Times”>Silicon Valley Booms but Worries About a New Bust - The New York Times;