Hey, I am an international student going to UCSD (I don’t have SSN). After graduating there, I wanna get a job in the U.S. and don’t plan to go to a graduate school cuz of financial issue.
This is my third year and I can still change my major hopefully.
Now I am majoring in MANAGEMENT SCIENCE (ECON FIELD) but am thinking to change it to MATH / ECON (MATH FIELD) or STATISTICS (MATH FIELD).
Since math is STEM major, I guess it will not be that hard to find a job if I switch to one of them but is MATH/ECON or STATISTICS highly needed (only with bachelor’s degree)?
On the other hand, I found some website considering MANAGEMENT SCIENCE as STEM major, but is it also international students friendly?
Why don’t you make an appointment with the Career Services Center at UCSD. There are a lot of international students at UCSD and the career center might know which majors are in high demand and which companies are willing to hire and deal with work visas for international students.
If you’re in your third year, a change in major may require an additional year in school. Can you afford it? And before you change, think about the realities of getting a job in the US. To do so, an employer must prove that there aren’t enough Americans to do the given job and be willing to spend thousands of dollars to sponsor you for an H1-B visa. I don’t believe that math/statistics/econ majors are lacking in the US. And even after the employer submits the necessary paperwork, your odds of getting the visa are subject to a lottery, since there are more visa requests than visas.
The reality is that MOST international students, unless they go to grad school or marry a citizen,have to leave the US after their studies/OPT. Plan on doing so, because the odds of staying here are against you.
Your job prospects with a math/econ degree are essentially identical to your job prospects with an econ degree only. And since management science is eligible for the STEM OPT extension, I see little advantage to changing majors at this point. (Be sure your degree is called “Management Science” verbatim, and not e.g. Business Management or Business Administration with a concentration in Management, which would be business degrees rather than STEM degrees.) List of STEM majors for visa purposes, directly from the source: https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2016/stem-list.pdf
Companies that want a “statistician” or an “economist” will hire someone with a PhD.
In my opinion, the best two things you can do to make yourself more employable:
Make sure that you are comfortable programming in at least one major programming language (e.g. Python, Java, C++). Most quantitative jobs require programming skills because it’s tedious to maintain or process large datasets by hand.
Use your OPT for a corporate internship next summer. Many college graduates get a job offer from a company they interned for, and the internship experience would go a long way to help you network and demonstrate interest in that particular industry, which will make you a stronger job applicant later.
Unless you have a degree or substantial work experience (many years) in some field that is in high demand but short supply in the US employment market, it is difficult to understand why a US employer would go to the considerable trouble to sponsor a foreigner for a work visa.
^ because it allows them to hire talent far below market rates?
The prevailing wage requirement is a joke. My company sponsors H-1Bs for entry level “data analysts” in the Bay Area. That’s not a job title the government recognizes for visa purposes. For visa purposes, the company classifies us as “social science research assistants”, which puts the prevailing wage at 31k. If instead they had selected “computer programmer” or “operations research analyst”, the prevailing wage would suddenly be in the 60-80k range - a price point at which we could probably fill all positions with qualified US citizens…