<p>architect grads are hurting as well, due to the housing bust.</p>
<p>“The problem with “market chasing” in choosing a major can be that by the time the student graduates and gets on the market, things may very well have changed” - True. But some students have a variety of interests, so it makes sense for them to at least consider the majors that are currently in demand.</p>
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<p>Which is hilarious, because very few architects would place their stamp on the mostly cookie-cutter tract subdivisions, office spaces, and retail plazas that went up like mushrooms during the boom years…</p>
<p>Even in my neighborhood (a byproduct of the boom, give or take) fewer than half of the McMansions were designed by ‘real’ architects.</p>
<p>Bill73 LOL</p>
<p>Public accounting isn’t a prestigious occupation. You don’t last in public by being smart you last by putting up with partner BS. A lot of the best people jump ship to industry in a couple years. My firm doesn’t care as long as you pass your cpa within 2 years. After that you may get kicked out.</p>
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<p>How nice to read this in reference to Dartmouth students, since S just graduated from D with that very major. He has a job in his field for this summer, at least. In France. And a fellowship-like gig that will keep him there for the next year, and even has a job component. After that, who knows. But he has no interest in taking a job with the average “employer,” either. </p>
<p>BTW, his HS classmate who majored in architecture has a job. In architecture. The English major has a job. Teaching. To date, all of the business/economics/math majors are “looking.”</p>
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<p>D econ majors do not seem to have any difficulty getting jobs in finance. Check out the destination of the 4 vals. And it’s not only vals. S’s friends include econ majors who are heading to well-paid financial jobs in major cities, and they aren’t PBK, much less vals.</p>
<p>Consolation the architecture major in my family has a job and was contacted on other opportunities. The English major does also. She also has been called to interview for other openings.</p>
<p>“Interesting. I worked in Chicago at a Big Four firm, and 90% of the people at our firm graduated from Illinois or Notre Dame. Also, most of these people had above a 3.6 GPA in undergrad and passed the CPA exam on their first attempt.” </p>
<p>That’s my experience in my area too - GPA wise at least. You’ll have a pretty hard time getting interviews with a 3.3-3.5. Not sure about CPA pass rates (although wouldn’t suprise me). Big 4 in my area recruit from a wide range of schools - but do tend to give more offers to the better ones. </p>
<p>“Public accounting isn’t a prestigious occupation. You don’t last in public by being smart you last by putting up with partner BS. A lot of the best people jump ship to industry in a couple years. My firm doesn’t care as long as you pass your cpa within 2 years. After that you may get kicked out. - Valley” </p>
<p>I mostly agree. However, many top accounting students want to work for big4 - so it IS prestigious for them & make positions more competitive (hence why a 3.3 GPA is not going to be good enough). Although CA may be different I suppose.</p>
<p>I think you need higher GPA to work in top accounting firms(and that was years ago), I don’t believe the 3.3-3.5 GPA at all, not now when the economy is bad. Nice trolling!</p>
<p>“The problem with “market chasing” in choosing a major can be that by the time the student graduates and gets on the market, things may very well have changed”</p>
<p>From our experience, this statement is so true, psych_. In April of 07 we went touring around with our s to see various Landscape arch programs. USNews and some other publications ranked it as one the “best”, “most interesting” careers around. Huge upside.
Great fit for our kid as well. </p>
<p>At one of the top ranked schools we toured with the dept chair. On one floor of the LA building, the room was filled with graduating fifth years. My husband asked how many had jobs lined up. Out of 60 kids, almost every one of them had a job lined up with some kids having to choose between up to three offers. Now here we are five years later and this field is hurting like crazy. We are praying that our kid will get one offer, in something, hopefully just related to Landscape Arch. You can’t plan out for anything anymore I don’t think.</p>
<p>This definitely happened in CS. It was booming in 1998, 1999 and 2000 and then crashed hard. Those starting in 1998, 1999 graduated into a horrible hiring market. Enrollments went way down for several years. There were stories of mass layoffs, off-shoring, etc. The enrollment crash would have been a good time to go for the degree - this would have been around 2005. Right now, enrollments are soaring.</p>
<p>It has been said many times that if you can go to an Ivy or Ivy like–(MIT, Stanford, etc)and have the right temperment there are jobs mostly of a certain type–high pressure finance or consulting with 60-80 hour weeks and great pay. For the other 99% of college grads the picture is different. Your major will probably matter.</p>
<p>“enrollment crash would have been a good time to go for the degree -”</p>
<p>@BC Eagle 91. That is what I also been thinking and used when convincing my two sons who are in college now to major in Geology and Physics. These are majors that few students are interested in and have had stable or declining enrollment for years. However, every year industry and the Goverment hire a fair number of geologists and physicists. This is the type of situation needed by my sons who attend a state university and would be strong candidates for a job only if there were no other other applicants for it.</p>
<p>I posted this in the investment thread but will post it here too:</p>
<p>GM’s new CIO Randy Mott plans to bring nearly all IT work in-house as one piece of a sweeping IT overhaul. It’s a high-risk strategy that’s similar to what Mott drove at Hewlett-Packard.</p>
<p>Insourcing IT on that scale will require GM to go on a hiring binge for software developers, project managers, database experts, business analysts, and other IT pros over the next three years. As part of that effort, it plans to create three new software development centers, all of them in the U.S. IT outsourcers, including GM’s one-time captive provider, EDS, face the loss of contracts once valued at up to $3 billion a year. </p>
<p>[General</a> Motors Will Slash Outsourcing In IT Overhaul - Global-cio - Executive insights/interviews - Informationweek](<a href=“http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/240002892]General”>http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/240002892)</p>
<p>Just wanted to speak on the anecdote regarding the dartmouth, duke, etc. graduates who could not find jobs. It is likely that they all applied for the same “reach” jobs at your typical prestigious investment banking and consulting firms due to pressure from peers. </p>
<p>They simply did not make the cut and did not hedge their bets by applying to other places and are now unemployed. Their expectations were simply not in touch with reality. </p>
<p>The majority of my close high school friends (some of which graduated from the above schools) are all doing very well and living in nyc with six figure jobs right out of school. And for those interested, they all accepted positions at blue chip firms in the industries of investment banking, consulting, and tech. Bottom line: it is possible to do well in this economy</p>
<p>Hey…wanna do CS/IT work and not worry about outsourcing?..do top-secret defense work.</p>
<p>Right now, there are about 6 or 7 majors that one can realistically take at the moment:</p>
<p>Computer Science
Computer Engineering
Petroleum Engineering
APPLIED Math (notice what I capitalized)
Accounting
Finance
Nursing</p>
<p>Any other major?..you better do a 2+2 program and save your money…unless you can goto an Ivy school and get a IB job.</p>
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<p>Do we have another John Wayne Gacy on the loose?</p>
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<p>So, aren’t you saying that all of those friends applied for the “reach” jobs?</p>
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<p>I will have to disagree; up to the 2000 time frame there was a requirement for all US Citizens in most of such jobs; the requirement seems to have been circumvented by offshore teams delivering “off-the-shelf” components to the US team… I won’t name where this is happening, but a major defense contractor in our city went from ‘develop everything from scratch’ to ‘the vending machine is the most complicated piece of equipment in the building’ in a decade. I have friends who work there and basically all they do is ‘systems integration’…</p>
<p>Likewise, the sector has layoff tendencies that make pharma sales look good by comparison. Most of my friends went into defense companies in the 80’s (I did not thanks to Elbonian citizenship at the time) and they were pretty much all laid off within a few years; as a friend observed, “no fun watching CSPAN to see Congress debate your job”…</p>
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<p>I am not talking about regular 'ole “defense” work, I am talking SECURITY DEFENSE work. The type of work that will make you shake your head and say “Is this really the USA?” defense work.</p>
<p>What about the potential cuts due to the fiscal cliff?</p>