I don’t mean to belabor the point, but in my opinion, the advanced, upperclassmen depth/specialty requirements that do not overlap with pre-med are the key courses that “qualify one” to be a major. In contrast, the basic, underclassmen foundation classes that overlap with pre-med are not major specific and and are often taken by students from a variety of majors. If the latter qualified one for a major, then Stanford might offer a Pre-medical Studies type major rather than Biology / Human Biology. Instead all majors at Stanford require a good number of advanced upperclassmen depth/specialty courses in field of study, beyond just intro foundation requirements.
I also did the pre-med requirements at Stanford, but I did not major in science.
Yet art & humanities majors as a whole do fine for med school admissions, with a higher med school admit rate than biology majors. This largely relates to art & humanities major med school applicants averaging higher stats than biology major med school applicants, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that there is a penalty for being an art & humanities major after controlling for stats + demographics.
What is your source for this statement? One might argue that more upper division science classes could correlate to a higher MCAT score, but I’m not aware of any data that support that.
We do have med school acceptance stats, as well as average GPA and MCAT scores, by major. (Caveat that the “other” majors represent 16% of med school applicants for 2021, which isn’t necessarily helpful).
This site has the summary data for 2020-21 medical school acceptances by major, as well as GPA and MCAT score in an easy to read format.
Around 58% of applicants were biological science majors with an acceptance rate of 42%, which is the overall average. Humanities, math and stats, and physical science majors had relatively higher acceptance rates (but fewer total applicants). 2021-22 AAMC data are out, but I haven’t looked at those.
Bringing this back to the original post, many physicians don’t see a high ROI on their educational investment because of the relatively high educational costs, as well as the opportunity cost of not earning income for quite a few years. The physicians who do have a high ROI include those who didn’t have to take out educational debt and/or those who enter the more highly paid specialties.
This is NOT an incredible exception- because the Big 4 recruit at a wide range of colleges, hire folks for their consulting/advisory tracks who do NOT have degrees in accounting, and clearly know how to allocate their recruiting resources by hiring new grads out of the colleges they want to target.
Why would Deloitte recruit at specific campuses and interview humanities majors if it were looking for “incredible exceptions”? That would make Deloitte the dumbest employer on the planet. Recruiting is expensive, sending teams (back before Covid, when teams of employees went to colleges for dog and pony shows) is extremely expensive (opportunity cost of not having these folks actually working for clients that day- but essentially a write off day working for Deloitte).
How dumb could these companies be by hiring English majors and Poli Sci majors and Psych majors? Answer- they’ve got the metrics which show career trajectory broken down every which way- how do Swarthmore grads compare with Wharton grads compare with Maryland grads? How do psych majors compare with finance majors? How do men do vs. women ?
Etc. Any company still recruiting XYZ majors at ABC schools clearly has strong evidence going back years which shows that whatever they are doing works.
These are not exceptions. They are part of a recruiting strategy. You need different people with a wide variety of skills to staff a consulting firm. Leadership, project management skills, communication skills, influencing skills- these are not tied to a specific major. And companies know which skills they want and how to get them.
Good sales skills are probably a strong factor in many types of career success, independent of other factors (family SES and connections, academic strength, choice of college and major if attending college, etc.), since selling something (including oneself) is a major factor in many kinds of career advancement. Writing a college application essay or job application resume, and interviewing for colleges or jobs, would be examples of sales situations.
It would not be surprising if a feedback cycle led to increasing income and wealth inequality, so that the strongest students increasingly feel that they need to choose majors and career paths associated with the highest incomes in order to avoid falling down the SES scale (especially if the students had student loans to have to pay off), which reinforces the (self-perceived) eliteness of those career paths leading to further increases in income and wealth inequality.
Of course, those elite paid career paths are not necessarily STEM or tech. Wall Street and management consulting are examples of traditional Ivy League destinations that are commonly seen as elite paid career paths.
These “elite” career paths can’t be “self-perceived”, can they? Companies on these paths aren’t going to pay more unless they generate more profit and need to compete for more talented employees in order to maintain their profitability.
@teleia - I find the work of Paul Tough fascinating, also. He delves some of the topics discussed on this thread (what factors go into ‘success’). Didn’t realize he had a new book out.
It looks like this is his book ‘The Years That Matter Most’, originally published in 2019, just renamed. Although it does say on Amazon it’s ‘updated and expanded for the pandemic era’. Seems like the new title is trying to take advantage of the buzzword ‘inequality’ (I’m not disagreeing that there is inequality in education, but it starts way before the college years).
I have wondered about the starting salaries. For example, the higher tier schools with higher starting salaries - is that because many of the students come from wealthier families with connections? Do they have History or English degrees but are working for Uncle Bill’s investment firm? Do these scorecards break out what field the degree holders are working in?
Are the top tier kids smarter than average so no matter what they do professionally, they are going to make more? And would they make more no matter what school they attended?
I feel like this is more true these days than when I went to school. In my day (I sound 112 years old LOL!) college was a place to become a more well rounded person, see what piqued your interest, learn for the sake of learning, etc. Now it does feels more career prep focused. And I get it - it is so expensive!
We paid for our kids’ college. No loans for them or us, but it was not as easy for us as simply writing a check (lots of saving and sacrificing). I love my kids and was happy to do it, but in our situation, I could not justify spending that kind of money on a degree that wouldn’t “pay off” - for ex, a dance degree if they wanted to be a ballerina (and I know nothing about dance or those types of degrees so apologies if my example is a terrible one!)
I know a 23 year old that just graduated with a teaching degree…and has $100,000 worth of debt. I wish she had had better guidance from her parent. (And I wish her parents had better info!)
I would expect that when colleges are showing the average, they are using mean values rather than medians.
The problem with using means is that a fraction of English majors at elite colleges end up in consulting or finance and make over $100k to start which significantly changes the mean, whereas the majority not in those fields could well be below $40k.
I think this is true. Kids in college now grew up with the impact of the 2008 recession. That no doubt impacts how they, and their parents, view job security. And on top of that, stem took over the world in that timeframe, too.
I wrote about this in an earlier post. There isn’t as large a discrepancy in earnings among the CollegeScorecard sample, as some of the other posts imply. I previously listed a $8k difference between the median earnings for English majors from USNWR T20 (colleges vs median earnings from all colleges ($35k for English majors at T20 colleges vs $27k for English majors at all colleges).
I think the primary reason for this difference in earnings is individual student characteristics, including things differences in ability/talent/drive, career goals/targets, and family background/connections. If a particular student is accepted to Harvard and chooses a full ride to Alabama to save money, he/she doesn’t suddenly become the average student at Alabama, who has a decent chance of dropping out and not graduating. Instead that Harvard accepted to student is going to be very different from the average student at Alabama and have a significant differences in median earnings expectations, after controlling for major.
I linked to the Dale & Krueger study earlier, which found no significant difference in earnings expectations between students who attend more selective and attend less selective colleges, among students who apply to and accepted highly similar colleges). Being a high scoring student was associated with higher earnings, as was being the type of student who applies to highly selective colleges, but attending had little influence aside from certain minority groups, such as URM + first gen.
I mentioned that the URM + first gen exception may relate to connections earlier, but modeling/counseling may also contribute. For example, when I attended college, I majored in tech, but didn’t do an internship. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get an internship. I didn’t apply to any internships because I didn’t know that was something that was normal for tech majors to do. My parents/family also didn’t know internships were normal and did not mention or recommend doing one. It worked out for me because I gained experience with a part time job in tech during college, which was more the norm for my family/background. Students who come from backgrounds where internships and other activities leading to higher typical salaries are not common may better benefit from attending colleges where they are surrounding by friends and other students who are doing those activities that often lead to higher earnings.
Later D&K type studies found the more influential part for earnings seemed to be being the type of students who applies to highly selective colleges, rather than being the type of student who is accepted to highly selective colleges. This may better fit with the influence of family background and career goals/motivations.
As others have pointed out, attending “elite” colleges can provide a good deal of help with working at "elite’ finance + consulting companies, which also has a significant influence on earnings. This influence is more evident when you compare earnings of majors like economics, where a larger portion go in to finance + consulting, rather than humanities.
A comparison is below, using CollegeScorecard sample (captured from CS data file a couple years ago). Note that both economics majors and English majors had a significant difference in earnings between public and private colleges, and little difference between T50 public vs all colleges. However, the more significant difference between econ and English majors occurred when comparing T20 USNWR to T21-50 USNWR colleges. English majors had little difference in earnings between T20 vs T21-50, while econ majors had a large variation in earnings by USNWR ranking. I expect this pattern largely relates to influence from “elite” finance + consulting employers favoring grads of “elite” colleges.
CollegeScorecard Earnings
English Majors – T20 = $35k, T21-50 Private = $34k, T50 Public = $28k, All Colleges = $27k
Econ Majors – T20 = $74k, T21-50 Private = $59k, T50 Public = $49k All Colleges = $47k
I have to disagree with this: As a dual-primary care family who took out a set of med school loans each, and paid them off on -gasp- a nonspecialist salary , and yet, not yet 20yrs out from Med graduation and we have somehow afforded private K-12 and now are full pay for college and in the top few % of earners nationally? This thread has clearly lost it’s sense of what a good ROI is if apparently that doesn’t qualify! And, we know many many physicians not in lucrative specialities who also have plenty of money after paying for med school themselves. Besides our city, they are in Pittsburg, Ohio, Nashville , Houston, Charlotte….all wonderful places to live.
No need for the snark, and gasp. Clearly everyone’s situation is unique, good thing it’s straightforward to calculate a career ROI…which you haven’t done. Of course a dual earner primary care physician couple is likely to be full pay for college.
A physician’s career ROI will depend on many factors including their ultimate specialty, how many years they are in school and the cost of education and living for those years, and how much in loans they take out during their 7+ years of med school/residency.
For physicians who must physically be present in their jobs, living in a lower cost area typically translates to a relatively lower salary, so that doesn’t necessarily translate to a higher ROI. Getting married can be a large increaser of life financial standing due to the relatively lower tax rate most married couples pay (in addition to the savings of sharing living expenses, which most anyone can take advantage of).
I am sure that a physician career and related ROI is well worthwhile in many cases (it’s definitely not for someone like that dentist who made the news last year with his $1M+ in school loans), and the pathway remains attractive to many.
i’m having fun thinking about the English Majors that i know, or have known.
Very anecdotal. but here they are: BA English > law school now 1%'er. smart, and lucky; think PNW in early 2000s. The others include UC, WI, and midwest state school grads. Stay home mom, paralegal, freelancer, teacher (went back to get teaching certificate), compost business owner, Barista (MA - looking right now); and another PHD student. They are all pretty happy.
But I will say, in the midwest from what i see, companies want more, or additives to just a classical, liberal arts education. I do think it’s changed since my college days 30 yrs ago.
30 years ago fewer people graduated college. It was more of an accomplishment (and showed a certain level of discipline, dedication, etc no matter what the degree). With more college grads today, employers look for more than just a degree.
What is a fluffy degree? To many corporate employers (I’ve worked for a few) it’s the stuff that folks on CC think are so practical and employable. Travel and Tourism? You don’t need a degree in that. Real Estate Development? Why not just get an MBA after studying Urban Planning as an undergrad. Marketing? Get a degree in psych, and take real statistics, not statistics for marketing majors.
Anthropology, Political Science, Comparative Literature, History- these are real disciplines. Getting a degree in Recreation Management- ???
I don’t believe you can ever have too many college grads. But too many kids go off to get their ticket punched, not to get an education. Courses that are high on content (which gets outmoded very quickly ) and light on analysis and critical thinking.
I’ve interviewed Business Majors who claim they are interested in “International Business” who couldn’t find China on a map. I’ve interviewed Finance majors who stutter when asked about a recent proposed change to the tax code (a relevant and important change, not some small detail that impacts 200 soybean farmers) and their response- “I don’t really follow current events” is hilarious. As if studying finance is about what happened in 1776!
Although it does say on Amazon it’s ‘updated and expanded for the pandemic era’. Seems like the new title is trying to take advantage of the buzzword ‘inequality’ (I’m not disagreeing that there is inequality in education, but it starts way before the college years).