Hello all, it’s my third semester of college and I’m a 19 year old male. I am currently majoring in Communications with a focus in PR, but literally everyone online says that this is a recipe to not find a job, or that the major in general isn’t good/respected. I’ve even looked up salaries and wasn’t too impressed.
This is no good for me as I want to make good money out of college, the ability to get a job relatively fast, and have a respectable major/job. I understand it’s very possible to be successful with this degree, but nothing is guaranteed from what I understand.
Because of this I was considering majoring in nursing or some sort of medical field, but I don’t particularly love science. I am also considering business, but I don’t particularly love math. I took statistics last year and finished with an A, but I’m sure it was because my professor was amazing, not me. I also have an A currently in this Bio class I’m taking, but the class hasn’t been too challenging.
Based on what I’ve said, what majors should I look into? I want to change it before next semester so I can start working towards that degree. Also will changing majors set me back any time? Thanks for any suggestions.
Extra: I also don’t have too many interest. I love sports and media related things, but I understand it’s hard to thrive in those areas without connections, which I have none of in those fields.
Once you are working, what you majored in in college (and whether it’s considered “respectable”) won’t matter. I’m continually surprised at the majors of some of my colleagues - many of them seem completely unrelated to what we do now.
Lots of people get jobs, and good ones, with a major in communications. But jobs aren’t handed to you on a silver platter simply by virtue of finishing a bachelor’s program. For example, you say you have no connections, but the way to get connections is to…make connections. Sure, some people are born with them and have an advantage, but most people make connections the old-fashioned way: they do internships, they attend networking events, they contact people. Are you trying to find an internship in your field this summer? If not, you should be.
Even if you did want to change your major, don’t rush into it. You can’t make a snap decision and change before next semester if you haven’t explored anything else…you’d need time to explore your options and maybe take a class or two in that area. Nursing requires a lot of prerequisites before you can get into the major.
I think a better use of your time would probably be acquiring skills that can help you succeed in the workforce. Consider picking up a major in computer science or statistics, or taking a few classes. Get a part-time job that’s maybe adjacent to your field. Definitely look for internships. If you go to college in or near a big city, join a professional organization in your field and go to meetings. See if there are conferences in PR or comms and see if your college will give you money to attend. Look up people in your area on LinkedIn and try to do informational interviews with them.
Nothing is guaranteed no matter what you major in.
@MBel21
“I took statistics last year and finished with an A, but I’m sure it was because my professor was amazing, not me.”
So it wasn’t really interesting?
No sin in wanting to make money, but it helps when you find the activity of interest. The application of Statistics opens doors to a very big world, but you don’t like math? Statistics are widely used in the biological fields and just about every field of business. Making money is really hard work when you don’t like what you are doing.
If you have not already done so, have a conversation with your statistics professor.
I suggest that you go to the career services office. The counselors there are trained to help students find majors/careers/jobs and, since they have knowledge of what programs are offered at your school, might be able to help you design a course of study that taps into your skills and interests and also positions you to get a paying job out of school.
My personal recommendation for someone with your skill set is law school, but most people think you have to go to a top school in order to succeed. I am living proof that you don’t. I have always been employed and make a good living (with benefits including pensions from two companies) working for an insurance company. Like you, my talents lay in the humanities and communication arena and, like you, I found math boring and not worth spending my time on, although I did well enough when compelled to take classes. If your GPA is decent and you do well on the LSAT, you could get a scholarship to a decent, mid-level law school. I recommend focusing on a law school in the area where you want to practice. The companies and local firms that hire most law school graduates know and often have relationships with those schools. I know many people who work in related fields and don’t practice, but their law degree makes them more valuable to their employer. Right now, we have a young man working as a law clerk at our office. He was a communications/English lit major in college but decided he didn’t want to go into academia, so he applied to law school. He will graduate next year and last week, my boss announced that, as soon as he passes the bar and is admitted, he will join our office as a new associate. No, he won’t make the salary that a white shoe associate will make, but he will have a good job, with benefits, that will be his to lose.
Good luck. Try to think about where you would like to be 5, 10 years after graduation, not just 6 months…
With all due respect @techmom99 law school, and prospects afterwards, back in the way-back days was different.
If you go into law, at a mid-level school, then be sure to graduate near the top of your class. Lower-tier schools graduate many people who cannot get work in a job that requires a law degree. They end up working in low-level positions, underemployed, and not able to pay off their school loans. The reason for this is because many schools started viewing their law schools as cash cows. They could charge huge tuition, graduate a bunch of students and many of them couldn't pass the bar and were unemployed/ underemployed.
I’m sorry for the late response, I was sure my thread was lost in this sea of other questions. Thank you so much for your response, I’m glad I came back to check.
But a good salary to me starting out is at least 55k to 70k. My family has never had much, so I just want to be successful amongst everything else. My oldest brother grew mentally sick after college and is no longer has the ability to work. My other sibling received a full ride to college through sports and is now working a mediocre job. My mother is struggling to pay the mortgage monthly, and my younger siblings are enjoying their young and free lives. I aspire to be able to make 6 figures one day to be able to help out and be comfortable with my own life, but know that won’t come early or easily. My main fear with a Communications major is not being able to grow over time in terms of salary, in addition to the generally low starting salaries. But you’re definitely right. I have to start looking for internships right now, in addition to making more connections. I met with an academic advisor today and he gave me some tips on changing my major. It wasn’t exactly inspiring as he eluded to the fact that “Everyone needs to get a crap job someday. Whether you want to be a millionaire or get by is determined by what you love to do”, not his exact quote, but in the ballpark of what he said. That scared me even more because I just don’t want to have low standards for myself. But I’ll take what you said into account. My winter break starts today, so I’ll be doing tons of research this next month I have off.
@techmom99 Glad someone here could relate to myself. What sort of career paths can a person like us expect to find by going to Law School? How many extra years will it take? As I move further along in college, I’m starting to understand that school post-bachelors is going to be beneficial, so extra years is something I’d be willing to do. Also how difficult would you say Law school was? Sorry for the late response, thought no one saw my thread.
I agree that your passion is what’s going to propel you to 1) innovate at your job, thus making you more valuable and 2) help you get through the drudgery that every job entails, even the sexy jobs like “artist” or “writer” or “movie star”–there’s a lot of drudgery and boredom involved and passion is what will keep you tenacious and continue along that path, and 3) help you become creative at coming up with work in your field during the downturns when it looks like the well of work is dry. So find your passion and temper it with some smart skills, that’s my advice.
Smart skills include–
data analysis and data visualization
marketing
social media (and not just “I have a twitter account” but savvy social media effectiveness
business skills such as entrepreneurship – every thing you do you will need to sell, first you will sell your set of skills to others.
So if you were my child I’d say: choose one of those skill sets to add onto your current interest. Then see if you can get an internship that teaches you the practical aspects of that skill. Say that you choose data analysis. Well I’d find a PR firm internship that ideally has a data-something-or-other position. That sort of thing. You are beginning then to build a NETWORK of people who can help you find your first job upon graduation AND you’re building practical skills that mesh with your 1) interests and 2) your classes that you should be signing up for. Like: if data visualization is your thing, then find a class next semester that teaches you that.
@Dustyfeathers makes good points about not going into excessive debt for law school. The likelihood of landing one of the highest paying jobs is very small. I suggest that if you do decide to pursue law school that you work your hardest to get a good GPA and the highest LSAT you can obtain. Then, parlay those into a scholarship at the best law school you can.
I know that this is frowned on, but I deliberately avoided classes that were potential GPA busters for me. That meant no science and no math. I took CLEP tests to get those gen ed credits and I don’t regret it. I wound up with a full tuition scholarship at a brand new law school.
I began my original post by saying that my experience is more than 30 years old. Like you, I came from a very poor family (I grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx) and really just wanted to make a decent living for my family. Law seemed interesting to me and it is. I love what I do and enjoy my work. I never had a desire to be a rainmaker or to work in corporate law. When I first got out of law school, I dated a guy who worked for one of those firms. Dates were constantly broken because a partner needed him NOW, sleeping on a couch in the partner’s office, changing into generic clothing provided by the firm. It was not the life I wanted. We broke up and he later married a girl barely out of her teens (he was then about 32) who was happy to stay home and wait for him to call her. I was not. His life is the life you have to aspire to if you come out of law school with massive debt. My debt was $28K, or about the equivalent of $100K today. I lived very frugally and below my new means to pay the debt off. It took me about 10 years.
Alot of people don’t think law school outside of the top schools has value. I disagree. I have heard that only about 10% of lawyers ever go to court or try cases. Does that mean that type of work has no value because 90% of lawyers don’t do it? Not to me. I am one of those 10%'ers.
Starting at $55-70K after undergrad is kind of an unrealistic goal for the vast majority of graduates. New grad nurses can make in that range, if you are actually interested in nursing; new grad nurses can easily start anywhere in that range (on the high end in urban high-demand hospitals; on the lower end maybe in suburban hospitals or lower-cost areas). But I wouldn’t recommend going into nursing primarily because of the salary; it’s a demanding job with a very different kind of schedule and requires you to really like serving and helping people in a super physical way.
Engineers also start out in that range, but if you don’t like science that’s not necessarily a great way to go. In fact, most of the majors that start out in that range are probably science-related majors. Business majors can start kind of close, but probably more in the $40-55K range.
I understand the impetus to want to help family out; I too have poor family and had (and still do, to some extent) dreams of helping my family financially to be comfortable. The thing to know, though, is that rarely comes immediately after college. It may take some years of working before you make enough money to help support your family in any meaningful way (unless you decide to move home after college to help pay the mortgage, which some of my friends did do - I graduated into the financial crisis, so I had lots of friends with parents in that predicament).
Salary growth is kind of dependent upon what you do. There are lots of folks in PR/communications who ascend the ranks of a company or companies and make a lot of money later on as directors or leaders in their discipline. And there are others who kind of stay where they are, or change fields, and don’t have lots of salary growth. The major in and of itself isn’t going to make you “stuck” at the same salary you started with. (Actually, salary growth amongst engineers is actually a bit flatter than other majors; see here: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html. Part of that is because engineering majors start out so high in the first place and because people in the other majors are more likely to go to graduate school. Nursing is one of the flattest, though, and that’s because many nurses who start out as floor nurses…stay floor nurses.)
Interesting tweet sent out by Georgia Tech when their December class graduated last week:
86%: The percentage of Georgia Tech’s graduating class receiving job offers.
76%: The percentage of students who have accepted offers.
$70,000: The average starting salary for a bachelor’s graduate of Georgia Tech.