I know in a very general sense as to what it means for a school to be pre-professional: hard-working, ambitious students interested in entering the work force in prestigious careers (i.e. consulting, investment banking, etc), but besides some of these surface level things, what does it mean for a school to be very pre-professional?
That is not how I interpret ‘pre-professional’. When I hear a school is ‘pre-professional’ I think it has a number of majors that are essentially ‘job training’ majors – pharmacy, accounting, engineering, veterinary medicine, physical therapy, etc., rather than your standard liberal arts majors.
Pre-professional does not necessarily mean aiming for consulting, investment banking, or similar careers.
For example, many less selective colleges have students mostly choosing majors in pre-professional subjects like business, communications, health professions (including nursing), criminal justice, physical education, etc…
You can check the college’s distribution of majors in https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ .
Of course, many students choose liberal arts majors for pre-professional reasons. Examples include math/statistics/economics for finance jobs, biology with pre-med intentions, or political science or English with pre-law intentions (even though pre-med and pre-law do not actually require any specific major).
Some colleges strongly emphasize co-op programs, which add to the pre-professional emphasis.
Means many are focused on future careers in law, medicine, business etc. Instead of going on to become academics or poets.
@barrons As someone who dislikes a strongly preprofessional atmosphere (personal preference) that’s a bit harsh: there’s many kids who simply prefer a more “academic” atmosphere and also want a future career such as the ones you mentioned.
@barrons may have overstated it a bit, but there is no denying that pre-professional is derided often on CC. Even this thread reminds that it’s the province of less selective schools. News to Wharton I’m sure. The number of schools that offer only these programs, without also requiring some type of liberal arts core, is negligible.
Pre-professional majors are tracks in undergraduate programs that prepare you for a professional degree after your bachelor’s. You’re expected to continue school, after your BS/BA in a professional program.
Schools that folks think of as “Pre-professional”, are typically schools that have several “professional” degree programs, like pharmacy, veterinarian, law, dentistry, business (MBA’s, MFA, etc), medical and even graduate programs in Engineering, etc. Many of the undergraduate students at these schools may continue on into a professional program at that school, and in fact, it’s professional program is one reason many students enrolled as undergraduates at that school.
It doesn’t mean that these “pre-professional” schools don’t have an your typical liberal arts majors, many of these “pre-professional” schools are large comprehensive universities.
OP, pre-professional doesn’t imply “hard-working, ambitious students.”
Nor that they’re “interested in entering the work force in prestigious careers.”
One could study accounting or marketing and get a job with just the undergrad degree. They prepare you for the work.
Not necessarily “prepare you for a professional degree after your bachelor’s” at all.
In the top tiers, applicants who are more focused on a job title or job prospects or that skills training, rather than the journey and some breadth in learning, can be called pre-professional. Not always a plus for those colleges that want to see more curiosity. Not even if the drive is to be a doc.
But it’s a legit path for many.
Interesting thread thus far.
I would suggest a slightly different take on “pre-professionalism”: When I attended Duke many years ago, what struck me about the place was not the fact that so many students were cognizant of the need to prepare for careers (I wish that I had been much more cognizant of that myself!), but rather the fact that so few of them were interested in ideas, in intellectual inquiry and debate, in learning as an element of personal growth and flourishing.
There were, of course, some Dukies who bucked that trend, but–nevertheless–a trend it was. For the vocal majority, education seemed to serve a purely utilitarian purpose: It was a means to an end, a hoop to be jumped through, with little value in and of itself . . . though it did, of course, provide a convenient backdrop for drunken shenanigans. It didn’t take me long to realize that I had had more engaging discussions with my non-college-attending best friend back home than I was likely ever to have with all but a handful of people at Duke.
From this perspective, it is less the emphasis–whether individual or institutional–on career preparation that defines “pre-professionalism” than it is a lack of emphasis on learning for the sake of learning.
Lest anyone accuse me either of snobbery or of a cavalier disregard for the harsh realities of the post-college workplace, I would stress that concern about future careers and a commitment to intellectual vitality are not mutually exclusive, and neither is the latter the sole (or even the primary) province of humanities and pure “science” majors. On the contrary, based on personal experience, I can easily imagine a school full of English and art history majors who are just killing time before they can get on with “real” life, and a school full of accounting and physical therapy majors who are eager to take advantage of opportunities for intellectual exploration that they realize they are unlikely to have again.
While I do believe that there are serious social and personal disadvantages that follow from an excessive embrace of the pre-professional mentality, I don’t think there is anything “wrong” with that mentality per se. People are different; they have different tastes, different concerns, different aptitudes. There is no need for everyone to be an amateur philosopher. Rather, my concern has been simply to distinguish between, on the one hand, the “pre-professional” atmosphere that the OP asked about, and, on the other hand, a justified concern for the vocational dimension of college education. My point is that these are not the same things.
The many definitions are certainly part of the confusion as well. To try to summarize the thread by different definitions:
- Pre-professional majors/schools exclusively or almost fully with those majors. This is the pharmacy, veterinarian, law, dentistry, business, engineering, etc. Describing a major as pre-professional is very different than describing a school as pre-professional in this way.
- Pre-professional students - those who would have a primary or sole focus on one of those majors, perhaps in the stereotypical prestige/title/salary way that would include consulting, investment banking, etc. Negative connotation for this specific case would usually be widely agreed upon within any academic community (CC included), though of course for some that is their goal and see it as positive for them. Depends on the student.
- Pre-professional vibe - This is a term used to describe the atmosphere of schools, and probably the context where you have seen the term used most. In a sweeping generalization, it means that the student body, on a whole, slants more towards caring about their careers after school over learning for the sake of learning. This is speaking statistically and in no way applies to all students at the school. In general, the more popular majors at the school are usually in STEM, Business, medical majors, and other fields that are usually viewed as lucrative. These schools (as opposed to exclusively pre-professional schools) have liberal arts majors and classes and almost always some form of core liberal arts curriculum.
This is also where the connotation is most gray. Some on CC look down on this type of school, while some are strong advocates for it. What can be agreed upon is that it has a clear social effect and is why some students will seek it out and others will avoid it. And it’s not based on major always either. Often practically slanted students in classic liberal arts majors are prime examples of students who prefer the pre-professional setting. Other engineers who are frustrated with the pre-professional focus of their major may prefer studying at a liberal arts school. It’s up to the student.
As an example, I go to Northeastern, which has a large emphasis on their co-op program and would be seen as one of the classic examples of a pre-professional vibe. I looked for the type of school because while I absolutely love learning for the sake of learning, I was frustrated with the lack of application to the real world. I actually have a philosophy/ethics minor, and what I enjoy is that even in those classes, the subjects are approached from a practical and applied perspective. I enjoy that all of my classmates are thinking about how they want to use their degree after graduation, and not just in terms of where can I get the most prestige/salary, but what would make the most enjoyable career for me. Despite my love for pure academics, I value that practical focus of my peers over having a social environment more focused on talking about the academics in general without as much of that practical tie-back.
As with every school, you can find both types of students at just about every college. The difference is the distribution of each across the student body. The “pre-professional vibe” tag indicates a higher percentage of the student population and focus is on one side of that.
Very fine post, PP.