Interesting difference. Good to know.
As an English major from U-M, my career benefitted directly from the description of my studies posted above. I also had a preference for hiring English majors throughout my career in IT as I felt that many of the technical skills could be acquired easily, but it was much harder to teach critical writing, communication, and presentation skills to those who hadnât honed them much earlier on, and those skills were the best markers of advancement in my organization. To be fair, though, the English majors who interested me were those who also had some complementary background in logic, math, or CS even if just a class or two. They werenât that hard to find. Those who are good at literary critical analysis might be just as good at data analysis and even better at presenting and communicating that analysis.
Letâs not forget that a humanities major does not preclude a student from being well-rounded.
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I think a better representation of the English major would be reviewing the courses required for the English major. Continuing with the Harvard example, an English major requires taking at least one course covering texts from 3 time periods â before 1700, 1700-1900, and 1900-2000. It also requires taking the 4 specific courses listed below, and 5 additional English electives.
The description summarizes, the major as âEnglish concentrators studyâand createâart made out of words: fiction and nonfiction, tragedy, comedy, lyric, and much more. By studying English literature, you will learn to interpret the verbal expression of others and to make the meanings you want for yourselfâskills more crucial than ever in a digital age, when so many words travel so fast.â
English 10 â Literature Today
All literature was contemporary at some point, but the literature that is contemporary now provides special opportunities for enjoying, questioning, and understanding the world. Literature Today focuses on works written since 2000âsince most of you were born. It explores how writers from around the world speak to and from their personal and cultural situations, addressing current problems of economic inequality, technological change, structural prejudice, and divisive politics. We will encounter a range of genres, media, and histories to study contemporary literature as a living, evolving system. The course uniquely blends literary study and creative writingâstudents will analyze literature and make literature. The conviction that these practices are complementary will inform our approach to readings and course assignments.
English 20 â Literary Forms
This foundational course for English concentrators examines literary form and genre. We explore some of the many kinds of literature as they have changed over time, along with the shapes and forms that writers create, critics describe, and readers learn to recognize. The body of the course looks to the great literary types, or modes, such as epic, tragedy, and lyric, as well as to the workings of literary style in moments of historical change, producing the transformation, recycling, and sometimes the mocking of past forms. While each version of English 20 includes a different array of genres and texts from multiple periods, those texts will always include five major works from across literary history: Beowulf (epic), The Winterâs Tale (tragicomedy or romance), Persuasion (comic novel), The Souls of Black Folk (essays; expository prose), and Elizabeth Bishopâs poems (lyric). The course integrates creative writing with critical attention: assignments will take creative as well as expository and analytical forms.
English 97. Sophomore Tutorial: Literary Methods
This course, taught in small groups and required for concentrators, introduces theories, interpretive frameworks, and central questions about literature and literary media. What do we do when we read? What is an author? What do we mean by âliteratureâ itself? How might we compare and evaluate interpretations? How do the historical, social, cultural, and legal frameworks around a text shape its meanings and its effects? Combining major critical and theoretical writings with primary works, the course investigates how literary production and interpretation are informed by philosophical and aesthetic traditions, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, national and post-colonial identities, and the material forms in which literature circulates, from parchment books to the internet. Students will also practice fundamental literary research methods through close engagement with Harvard libraries.
English 98r. Junior Tutorial
A unique experience within the English Department and provides an opportunity to pursue focused, but flexible, study in a topic of shared interest to tutees and tutors. Encouraging in-depth exploration of topics not normally covered in the English curriculum, the Junior Tutorial also enables students to consolidate and refine critical skills gained in our Common Courses while at the same time exploring possible thesis topics. Rising juniors have the opportunity to identify a thematic, historical, or chronological literary subject they might like to study in their Junior Tutorial.
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D has an undergrad degree in English and an MBA. She found her communication skills (especially in writing and presentation) to be extremely useful in B school and in her current business career.
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My son-in-law has an undergraduate degree in Russian and Eastern European Studies (Tufts). When he graduated, his first job was with a software company that provided specialty software for the investment community. The company specifically looked for liberal arts majors for entry-level positions. Their view was that liberal arts majors had analytic skills and the company could provide the training these hires needed to do the job.
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What is he doing for them?
I regularly tell my kids that the most valuable and differentiating skill in my career has been the ability to write well. More than just about anything else, I want them to be able to write and communicate. It makes a HUGE difference in the workplace and in life. People who disparage the humanities donât seem to acknowledge this.
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He was in customer service, but left to pursue a doctorate in International Relations.
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A philosophy degree is not going to be excellent prep for these three companies. Iâm sure there are a handful of philosophy majors in each of these companies, but companies want to know what technical or specialized skills you have that can contribute to the bottom line. Nobodyâs going to be asking you about Platoâs Dialogues during a job interview.
*EDIT : I jumped the gun by posting this before reading comments from others that pretty much said what I did.
A 4.0 in philosophy means you have a chance of getting an interview. A 3.0 in CS means you donât. Students are not equally capable and motivated in all subjects.
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I never saw that in my 30+ year software development/engineering career. Your GPA mattered a lot less than your degree.
What does that have to do with MBB consulting?
The GPA matters more for BlackRock and McKinsey than it might at Google.
Even at Google you wonât get called for an interview coming out of school if you are below some number like 3.8
In the 90s at my Ivy, McKinsey was definitely looking at the kids with humanities majors. Maybe that has changed.
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Same at mine. Consulting was one of the things you did if you didnât know what you wanted to do with your life yet. And if you knew how to write.
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Never saw anything that suggested the discussion was confined to MBB. If so, why was Google mentioned? And these days companies like Blackrock are based on tech.
When I taught business school, I saw two clusters of students who had difficulty. The biggest cluster were English/humanities/soft social science (e.g., sociology) majors who had real difficulty with the quantitative courses (one of which I taught). I think gender and ethnic studies degrees might be included in that group today. The second were engineers/other quants who had trouble with the people-related subjects (organizational behavior). But, the humanities group was the group that had the biggest trouble with the curriculum. So, some quantitative background would have really helped them â and some definitely have had some background (like the folks @ChoatieMom hired).
My limited experience with humanities courses (a couple of literature courses and a couple of philosophy courses) is that they did not do a very good job of teaching writing. My lit courses were a book a week with a few papers. In the first one, the professor told me I was a good writer (I was not). No real work on how to improve the writing. The philosophy courses did reward crisp thinking but again I donât believe I get any help on writing.
My undergraduate thesis (which was an early paper in its field and is still regularly cited, amazingly enough) was terribly written. (I know now, but also know because of all the rewriting required to get it published in a premier journal). But, when I started writing my PhD thesis, one of my committee members took the first chapter or two and ripped them apart from a writing standpoint repeatedly and had me rewrite them repeatedly until a) they were clear; and b) I internalized what he wanted me to learn about writing. After that, he told me he was happy and didnât need to see the rest. That was where I really learned to write. In large part as a result of that exercise, people think I write well (I have gotten comments about books, articles and memos that I have written).
To the extent that English classes really help people break down and improve writing (like my committee member did), they will become good writers. I donât get a sense that they are getting that.
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Incidentally that is not enough these days â I have some rough numbers above at post 81.
I used to work at Barclayâs Global Investors, which was acquired by Blackrock. GPA would have mattered a lot less at Barclayâs than your major, and from what I saw of Blackrock, the same applied. I can imagine there are some non-technical, entry-level jobs where major doesnât matter that much, but theyâre likely not going to pay very well. Do you, as a student, really want to spend four years and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars getting a humanities degree for that type of job?