<p>I would think it depends on whether your journalism degree comes from Stanford or from the University of Southern Maine or something.</p>
<p>Kinda like how your chances to get drafted change if you're on the Stanford or University of Southern Maine football team? ;)</p>
<p>@ RacinReaver</p>
<p>The bottom line is broadcast journalism is <em>not</em> a worthless major if someone has the potential to make six figures (no advanced degree required). It's a very competitive market.</p>
<p>No, it's a worthless degree if you can only make a few crappy exceptions.</p>
<p>I can bet you that the broadcast journalism major has easier access to jobs in the news media than a liberal arts major.</p>
<p>I graduated from Northwestern which has an excellent journalism program. Those graduates have JOB OFFERS before they leave school.</p>
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Those graduates have JOB OFFERS before they leave school.
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<p>Welcome to technical (in general, useful) majors at non-top universities in addition to the top ones.</p>
<p>Hiring freeze at many technology businesses. DS has been informally interviewed and courted by major company with many openings, BUT Human Resources is forcing a slowdown in hiring.</p>
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Welcome to technical (in general, useful) majors at non-top universities in addition to the top ones.
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<p>In my school, I've seen ads for "top" graduate journalism schools that boast about regularly getting graduates into the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN or whatever.</p>
<p>There are a heck of a lot more science/engineering related careers that make 6 figures, compared to worthless major careers. Don't get sidetracked here. I went to mizzou. It is the top journalism school in the country. Journalism is the most popular major here. I'm sure you know this. Read my last sentence of my first post. My list isn't flawed. It's quite accurate in majority. SOME people do become successes with their worthless majors...some. Some people jump off the San Francisco bridge and survive too.. I still live near campus. There are a ton of journalism majors. I'm 24, and I will tell you..all these journalism students and graduates i know of are struggling. I only know of 1 guy who may become a success! Their class work load is nothing compared to science and engineering related majors here. The majority here settle for abandoning their future because of a spouse or some type of family life. If you can become a pro athlete and make millions, good for you. Most of us are more realistic and conservative.</p>
<p>if you have a "worthless" major..and you are an elite of that major and it's material..and become a success..then it wasn't a worthless major and well worth your efforts. but these successful people with relatively "worthless" majors are few and far inbetween. Failures exist in every major but it's less abundant with other majors.</p>
<p>I hate rephrasing or restating everything that's already been pointed out...but some people never read and understand entire posts.</p>
<p>Yes, but the science/engineering folk tend to be self-selecting. Some people will be gifted in psychology, right? It makes no sense for them to choose a major they will hate. Simply because i-bankers tend to have the highest chances of making money doesn't mean random elite student X would have that same probability going into i-banking.</p>
<p>Also, how much matters on the formal major and how much matters on my coursework?</p>
<p>This is my current plan (as a first year without having completed a semester yet):</p>
<p>Right now I have 30 AP credits and 13 dual-enrollment credits, with credit for two semesters of calculus-based physics (with two more left to complete the sequence), two semesters of intro biology, one semester of economics (micro), credit for two years of calculus + linear algebra + French phonetics and not counting general humanities credits (English writing/lit French speaking / world history / etc.).</p>
<p>From here I plan to major in cognitive science (I plan to use the linguistics, neuroscience, psychology/anthropology and computer science areas) and physical chemistry/materials science (via the honors chemistry series) with a minor in economics. In addition, I plan to have a lot of genetics / cell bio (needed for the neuroscience).</p>
<p>Feedback on this route? Is the cognitive science portion going to be worthless, as well as the economics portion? Should I just focus on the one money-making major (materials science) instead? Which courses are worthless, and should I throw away? Should I forfeit my language credit since that is worthless too? Am I going to be jobless if I go down this path?</p>
<p>I believe cognitive science is on the worthless list.</p>
<p>Well, I could have chosen just pure Neuroscience, but my school doesn't allow me to triple major or double minor so Cognitive Science allows me to combine linguistics, psycholinguistics and then psychology, anthropology, and computer science into neuroscience coursework. </p>
<p>There are for example parallel principles between integrating neural circuitry and integrating logic gates with their entailed truth tables. We have effectively mapped every single cell, thus including every single neuron; 1032 somatic cells develop, 131 die by apoptosis; from here we can also experiment with playing around with the genetic gestation cues in order to change how one cell develops or where it is placed, or perhaps delete or create cells, and in fact I believe wormatlas and other databases will also document other strains, wild-type or otherwise, noting the differences between cell position and/or number. So now we have a working neurocircuitry model for an entire free-living nematode, so now we can look at the equivalents of AND gates and OR gates in neurons and then combine them to form even more complex routines and gates). The possibilities of this are amazing; though we can construct artificial ears for example (a lot of the principles of acoustic signals being well-known), if we are to construct artificial eyes, we will need to know a lot more about how to construct interfaces between computer circuitry and neurons, of course. </p>
<p>Basically I intend to be heavy on neuroscience, linguistics and computer science coursework, while still allowing me a second major slot for physical chemistry, since I've always been fascinated with enhancing the inherent properties of materials.</p>
<p>I don't think I'm going for the cogsci major simply to take the easy way out. But will it come across to employers and grad/med schools that way? Would they look at my major, my GPA mainly and not take any real look at my transcript/coursework to see that I will pack my eight semesters with neuroscience and natural science courses?</p>
<p>I would like to say that cognitive science researchers are quite a different breed than social psychology majors, well at least of the type of social psychology that is done today. We are more faithful to the scientific method; we seek to investigate the actual biological mechanisms behind effects; we rely way more heavily on medical and biological fact. Cell biology, cell communication, signal transduction, genetics and so forth becomes very important in cognitive science, to the extent that you could probably take the principles and branch out to brain oncology.</p>
<p>Of course, perhaps employers do not know this. I note that neurosurgeons are the highest-paid surgeons, surgeons being of themselves the highest-paid among medicine, and the knowledge base they use has been developed by cognitive-science-augmented neuroscience. </p>
<p>But again, does which major you declare become way more important than what coursework you eventually take, or what your transcript shows?</p>
<p>my economics degree is worthless cuz I don't have a 3.5+ GPA. Above a 3 ain't good enough any more. 3.5 is the minimum, 3.7+ the ideal.</p>
<p>Can you elaborate? Are you saying you can not get a job at all?</p>
<p>@ wutangfinancial</p>
<p>I'm sure you can find positions with your economics degree. Are you only applying to the most selective firms? That's probably one of your problems.</p>
<p>^I'm graduating this year, but I have yet to land so much as an interview. I have an informal sit down with a partner at McKinsey from networking, but I doubt he'll be interested...
Financial adviser is an option, but pretty lame. </p>
<p>I have two ideas, as an econ major entering the worst financial sector job market in years.</p>
<p>-work for an NGO, demonstrate "leadership", kill the GMAT, get an MBA, where GPA, particularly if one has over a 3.0, is not so important. </p>
<p>-Start a franchise or small business. This one's really overlooked by econ majors because of a econ major's ego. But if you have such a masterful command of how markets work, this is a great option to consider.</p>
<p>Galoisien:
So just what job is that mish-mash of courses going to prepare you for? As an employer I'm looking for poeple who know what they want to do. You don't seem to have any direction.
What companies are hiring for the job that you are interested in. Try to give names and numbers to those firms and i think you'll find out that you need to narrow your focus you are way to scattered.</p>
<p>Wutang:
Stop whining. Go out and get an entry level job and do a great job and get promoted. Just because your dream of IB has blown up along with the dreams of thousands of others, there are still plenty of jobs (even in Canada).</p>
<p>Kids in school think they are going to get a job and jump to the head of the class. They have to realize that there are folks already working who are experts in their field who have been doing it at the highest level for years and that as a new hire you still have ahuge amount to learn; for about a year you are just overhead to your firm.</p>
<p>don't dis financial advisers. i want to be one. </p>
<p>the 100 hour work week ib job is not for me. i don't need a huge amount of money. i want my family to be my life. sure i want work to be interesting, but that is secondary to me in the long run.</p>
<p>Hey, if all else fails, you can go work a non-professional type job in Canada...from what my friend who's Canadian says, there are so few people willing to do those kinds of jobs that businesses have to actually overbid on them to get employees.</p>
<p>hiring is more selective now. just like someone said earlier. most firms only target top schools, so other graduates are having serious difficulty in getting a gig</p>