I am a 23 year old psychology major from Morehead State who will be a junior in the fall and I am currently worried about my future job prospects. The reason I am worried is that my GPA isn’t exactly stellar (3.20) and I don’t have any research or anything else to make me stand out. I also didn’t think much of the job prospects at first when I began this major, but did intend to either get into research with it or the business sectors of it. I am not sure whether to continue with this major as I am, add a minor or do something else entirely as a major. A drawback of mine is that I mess up often when memorizing and using algebra concepts, such as forgetting a step or doing one wrong, for example. Has anybody else here been in a similar scenario and has advice?
Contact your school and change your major to business/accounting and minor in psychology. That way later on you can still go to graduate school if you so desire. After your next semester you will be more locked into your major since your classes specialize after junior year.
Is general business good as a major, with a psych minor? Or the combo of the other? As implied above, I have four semesters left.
I would look into minoring in business or marketing or something along those lines. I know a decent amount of people combine psych and business and go into business/consulting. I’d say that a good thing to do is to try to find an internship to get some experience under your belt, whether it is research or business, or a combo of both.
You know, I like the sound of that. I can get an internship during my remaining two years. As you mentioned, I have heard of quite a few people mixing the two with good results. This was actually something I had thought about before.
I disagree with the advice provided so far. It all depends on what YOU want to do.
A business major is not a magical ticket to a job. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates with a BA in business management is 7.8%; in accounting, it’s 8.8%. Conversely, it’s a myth that psychology majors can’t get employed anyway - the vast majority of psychology BA majors are gainfully employed (the unemployment rate is 9.2%, which isn’t cosmically higher than the rates for business majors). Secondly, I just want to say that I am currently job hunting in marketing and market research and most of the job ads list psychology as one of the BAs that they prefer for these positions. They realize the value of someone trained to study and think about human behavior. (Although, in reality, they don’t really care what your major was as long as you can do the work - lots of the ads just list like 4-5 loosely related majors and then say “or other related field”, or even better, “or equivalent experience.” If you can program like a champ and built an award-winning app, you think they care that you majored in English in college and learned how to program in your internship rather than in the classroom?).
The problem is not your major so much as what you are (or aren’t) doing in college - you need to do internships, part-time jobs, research, programs, or other kinds of experiences that make you a more attractive candidates. You can go into business or marketing with a psychology major. I have successful former students who majored in all kinds of “useless” majors that don’t translate directly into a career - English, psychology, ethnic studies, urban studies, philosophy, sociology - who are employed in great jobs that they love and that pay a middle-class salary. What set them apart are the experiences they got in college; without exception, they interned, they did research, they worked part-time, they developed skills, they did SOMETHING that made them attractive hire and announced “Hey, I have been thinking about life beyond college and I can bring value to your company.” That’s what you need to do.
If you are interested in marketing, you don’t have to change your major if you like it - add a marketing minor, and/or do a marketing/advertising/market research internship next summer, or work part-time with a market research firm or start-up or something. Visit the career office to see what opportunities exist. Develop some in-demand skills - maybe take classes in programming; definitely take some classes in statistics and research methods (including making sure you learn how to use at least one statistical software package - SPSS is common, R is better); make sure that your writing and presentation skills are top-notch and polished by practicing and doing extracurriculars that capitalize on that. Volunteering to do research with a professor is a great way to enhance this experience; if you are at a college with a business school, remember that business professors do research too and you can be an RA in a business laboratory in work that’s directly applicable to marketing research.
Now, if you WANT to change your major then go ahead! It’s about interest. But getting hired is about making yourself marketable to companies - thinking about what they might want, and then obtaining those skills.
Thanks. You’re right. I tend to be negative at times. When thinking about it, it does seem irrational to think psychology majors are at such a disadvantage compared to most other majors. What other advice do you have? Such as relating to internships and similar matters? Also, do minors and electives even matter much? I have heard mixed opinions on the subject. I am planning on sticking with the psychology major now. I have always got 87% + on all my psychology classes, except one, but that was because of a bad teacher who gave out poorly made exams.
Most of the psych grads (I know of, in my town) work for insurance companies.
One gal at the local Target, announced to her coworkers, while checking me, that she had just graduated from her college and had exactly $17 in her checking account.
When they asked her what she was going to do, she said, “might as well apply to grad school”.
But, you are in a good position that you still can shape your future.
A coworker’s husband majored in psychology and minored in mathematics. He worked for a think tank that did stats on new drugs. He interviewed and tallied surveys and provided the stats to the company.
You need to find the prof, on your campus, that thinks outside of the box and ask him/her how you can use your degree in a creative manner.
My other advice is parallel to what I said above, but make sure that you identify what skills are currently marketable and develop those. Find something that you like to do all day, though. I think knowing a bit of programming is important, but getting really good at coding is worthless if you hate it and you don’t want to do coding all day. Same thing of any skill - most of those skills are useful to have, but don’t spend a lot of time on things you hate. Focus on the things that you really love that are in-demand.
That said, I know right now the trend is to obsess over the quantitative and the technological. But remember that there are ‘soft’ skills and non-quant skills that are in high demand, too. Almost every single job ad I’ve looked at has asked for someone who is an excellent communicator and can give oral presentations and well-done written reports/communications as well. Jobs want people with interpersonal skills who can resolve conflicts on their own; they want independent individuals who can make decisions with minimal oversight. Make sure that you develop those skills, too.
A minor matters only as far as it’s teaching you something useful/new/complementary. So let’s say that you wanted to be a science writer and you minored in writing - that could be a useful minor. BUT what’s really going to make the difference is demonstrations of your ability to write (clips/writing samples). Same thing with electives. If you take an elective in statistics or public speaking or marketing those can teach you skills that you can use. But most employers don’t even ask for your transcript, let alone spend a lot of time agonizing over the classes you took.
Professors may be people to ask, but do realize that most professors have spent their entire careers within academia - so some of them may have ideas but most of them may not. I’d visit career services - they’d at least have records of where people with your major and related ones go post-college.
Another question, does a BA or BS make much of difference? What I do with my upper level electives will determine which of the two I graduate with.
BS is widely known as the harder of the two and would score you slightly better job prospects.
Juillet’s advice is great.
http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/ (based on a large, well-organized 2012 survey) shows what occupations people have actually gone into with their majors. Put your mouse on the word “Psychology.” As you can see, psychology majors work in every occupational area - although not particularly as psychologists!
I think you should do a BA in order to have more electives to learn more useful things than just additional psychology.
If you are at a college that allows you to choose between a BA and a BS, the difference is usually that the BS requires more coursework in the natural sciences - maybe biology and chemistry, maybe math, maybe some other classes.
It is not necessarily true that the BS would score you better job prospects - I’m not sure employers would even notice or care. What they look at is your coursework and your skills - what kind of preparation you have - and it would depend on the job. For example, let’s say the BS required four additional classes in biology and chemistry and an extra math class or two. If you were applying for a user research job in the tech field and chose a BA so that you could take more coursework in computer science, then the BA would be better. If you were applying for a marketing position and chose the BA so that you could take more writing and PR courses, that would be better. If you chose the BA so that you’d have more time for an internship or a part-time job, that would definitely be better.
Also, a BS isn’t widely known as harder - it depends on the additional classes the BA major takes. A BA major who is minoring in CS or engineering or math might actually have a more rigorous schedule than a BS major. It really just depends.
That graphic is really cool @jjwinkle, I’m going to bookmark that!
I agree about the BA. The BA allows for more flexibility. Also, I am taking a psychology stats class in the fall, but would you recommend I take a general stats class soon, too? Or a computer management systems course?
I would say see if you like the psychology stats class, and if you like it a lot take the general one. Most people that I’ve talked to that have more experience than me with this stuff say that it’s best to try a range of other things, see what you enjoy the most of those, and take more courses in what you know you enjoy and can see yourself applying in the future.
Take one or the other, because a general stats class is likely to be redundant to a psychology stats class. Psychological statistics teaches you the same thing as the general statistics class without the calculus. In psychological statistics, you learn basic statistical concepts without the assumption that you know the calculus underlying those concepts. In general statistics in a math department, you learn the same concepts, but at a deeper level, making the connection between calculus and statistics.
The other difference is what software you’ll use. Most psychology departments teach statistics using SPSS, which is a social science-oriented software package that uses a point-and-click interface. Most stats departments now teach statistics using R, which is an open-source statistical package that uses a programming language. SPSS is easier to learn, but R is much more versatile and powerful. SPSS skills are still asked for in a lot of job ads (particularly in nonprofits, social science-oriented jobs, and marketing) but a lot of job ads in more technical fields are asking for R, and a lot of firms use R because it’s free! However, I will say that once you learn the basics of statistics and one software package, it’s pretty easy to teach yourself others - I currently know three of them, and I’m pretty decent in R.
If you plan on going into a field where you’re going to use statistics more heavily - like quantitative psychology, human-computer interaction, social science statistics, etc. - then you might want to take the general statistics class. If you are not, then psychological statistics will be just fine for the average psych major.
Computer management systems - well, if you want to go into an IT-related field that might be useful. What would be more useful is taking an introductory programming class. The language almost doesn’t matter (most of the jobs I’ve seen ask for Python, Java, and/or Ruby, but a lot of colleges teach C++ as the first language and a lot of jobs would take that too.)
I will just take the psych stats, which is required by my major anyway. The computer class I was talking was more of a Microsoft office based class. Learning to use it in business endeavors, as opposed to programming.
Hey bud, great question and I’m glad you came to this forum. Tons of people here are offering great advice. Here’s my input:
I would recommend perhaps something along the lines of a skill or trade. Psychology was voted, on some forums, to be the most useless degree in all of college as of 2014, and digging a deeper hole that you will have to climb out of might not be the best move.
- keep in mind, for the people who don't really have the best credentials.
Start searching for jobs and careers, as if you were applying for them, and if you cant find any prospects… Then you know that field might not be for you; vise versa as well.
Its important to expect something accurate after graduation, and the worst advice in the world will come from your guidance counselor.
- Best of Luck, Jake
This is your best option @TannerML1991 if you are truly fixated on college. I work near a LARGE mental hospital which has several locations and is a HUGE corporation in Florida; they’re even contracted by the government.
The average payment for people with a bachelors degree in Psychology is $14/hr
The average payment for people with a MASTERS degree in Psychology is $18/hr
- These people will never pay off their student loans.
Again, making psych a minor is a great idea,
- Best of Luck, Jake
Where are these figures coming from? The Wall Street Journal reports that the mid-career median salary of psychology majors is $60,800, which is roughly $30/hour.
Forum votes for “uselessness” are unreliable, as I have seen all sorts of majors be voted “useless” but know people in most of those majors who are gainfully employed.