Worst College Majors for Your Career

[LoremIpsum]

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Originally Posted by JonLaw
The only reason to go to law school these days is if you are masochistic and have a psychological need to lard yourself up with $200,000 in non-discharagable debt.</p>

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What happens to that debt if you emigrate? Just wondering.

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<p>What other country in the world would want a US-trained lawyer?</p>

[Todestrieb]

<p>Hey, if you go to Mexico as a tourist, you can get resident status (allowing you to work) without having to go back to the US first. I’m sure some companies over there could use a US-trained lawyer. ;)</p>

[Canuckguy]

<p>

I think employers also care about “fit.” There really is no such thing as the “top 1%” for all employers, and for all jobs. They recruit at the colleges where they believe they are most likely to find recruits who will meet their needs.

</p>

<p>That is why I started with a disclaimer in my last post. If I am looking for salespeople, I want good looking extroverts with a gift for the gab. If, on the other hand, I am running a hedge fund, then I would like to have a Terence Tao on my team, because I am sure he can follow a proof in the American Journal of Mathematics.</p>

<p>I begin to think the recruiters in the Rivera study are not as shallow as I originally thought. Maybe investment banking and consulting are looking for people who belong to the same social and economic class as their clients, and pure smarts is secondary in importance. Where else do we find them if not in the elites? We do know that we prefer to associate with people who are most like us.</p>

<p>Students do not choose their majors randomly. The “worst college majors for your career” list, I suspect, is simply a good proxy for academic ability. With the exception of philosophy (and even that is confounded by religious studies here), none of these majors are known for sky-high GRE scores, which is NOT the same as saying that all students in these majors are academically weak.</p>

[Consolation]

<p>

Students do not choose their majors randomly. The “worst college majors for your career” list, I suspect, is simply a good proxy for academic ability. With the exception of philosophy (and even that is confounded by religious studies here), none of these majors are known for sky-high GRE scores, which is NOT the same as saying that all students in these majors are academically weak.

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<p>Glad you added that final caveat, says the English major with 800V 760M on the GRE. (And yes, I know this is purely anecdotal and doesn’t mean anything in the larger statistical picture, so don’t start. But one can only take being called stupid so many times. I used to devoutly wish that there was such a thing as a job one could get with GRE scores. )</p>

<p>You might find this interesting:</p>

<p>[Classicists</a> are smart! | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine](<a href=“http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/classicists-are-smart/]Classicists”>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/classicists-are-smart/)</p>

[geeps20]

<p>^ I guess you just can’t help yourself</p>

[Consolation]

<p>

^ I guess you just can’t help yourself

</p>

<p>I guess not. ;)</p>

[blossom]

<p>It’s lovely to speculate.</p>

<p>I’ve been in Corporate recruiting for 26 years, virtually all of that time spent in global organizations. For jobs which don’t require content knowledge (i.e. when I was hiring aerospace engineers, they needed to have degrees in that field) I don’t make assumptions based on major-- at least not the assumptions you’re debating. I’ve hired hundreds of English majors with terrific quantitative ability and skill; I’ve hired hundreds of physics majors who write elegantly and concisely; I’ve hired hundreds of kids who majored in history who ended up acing our in-house finance and accounting classes.</p>

<p>The major isn’t important; we ask for transcripts and we read them. My colleagues have recruited at enough campuses to know what a “gut” load looks like at Dartmouth or Yale, or what a heavy load looks like at UIUC or U Texas.</p>

<p>We ask for SAT scores; we ask for GPA (college, not HS), we have our own tests, developed internally, which we use for certain roles. (Analytical thinking, quantitative skills, writing and editing, foreign language competency, etc.) Most large companies have spent millions of dollars refining their assessment techniques- it’s stupid to think that you can get lucky and end up with the 100,000 employees you need on any given day.</p>

<p>It troubles me not in the least to know that there are kids at Harvard who are dumb legacies (there are very few of them) or that there are kids at Princeton who got there because of their athletic prowess. As a citizen, I am far more troubled by the millions of kids whose abysmal literacy skills means that they will never go to college, and as a tax payer, I am far more irritated by the thousands of kids in my own state who couldn’t graduate from our flagship even if they were admitted.</p>

<p>It’s only on CC that the presence of legacies or athletes or AA admits to the elites is presumed to be a problem. If companies found the gene pool at the Ivy league so tainted, they’d stop hiring there.</p>

<p>I know, recruiters are shallow. We are too stupid to understand a college transcript, or to understand that pound for pound, U New Haven offers a student body every bit as qualified as Yale (and the parking is better.)</p>

<p>If a kid wants to be an English major- more power to him or her. Take a statistics course and do well in it; take both micro and macro economics and ace both of them.</p>

<p>Don’t be an English major who says in an interview, “I’m just not a numbers person”. If you’re interviewing for an entry level job in PR or for a media company or to be a speechwriter or a journalist - guess what you’ll be doing? Numbers. Interpreting economic data. Comparing inflation from this year to last in Brazil so you can write an accurate press release.</p>

[bovertine]

<p>It would sure be interesting to get a list of all these organizations that ask applicants for SAT scores. It is completely contrary to anything I have experienced, or frankly anything I’ve even heard of except on here and in news articles about strange hiring practices at companies like Google or some top-flight consulting group.</p>

<p>Some of the places I’ve interviewed - Intel, Hughes Aircraft (when it existed), Northrop, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Mattel, Applied Materials, I can name more. Not a single one of them indicated any interest in my test scores. In some cases I would have much preferred to issue them a score report than suffer through their interview process.</p>

<p>I suppose they could have been waiting to spring the old test score requirement at the same time they checked references. But really, is asking for SAT scores from mid-career applicants a common practice? I would really like some evidence because that’s just bizarre to me.</p>

[Bay]

<p>What is a SAT score used for in a hiring setting? Are there any studies indicating a correlation between SAT scores and career success?</p>

[cromette]

<p>We don’t ask for SAT scores. College transcript (w/gpa), copy of diploma, work experience, etc. Relative to where the applicant is NOW, not where they were there senior year of high school.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>“It would sure be interesting to get a list of all these organizations that ask applicants for SAT scores. It is completely contrary to anything I have experienced, or frankly anything I’ve even heard of except on here and in news articles about strange hiring practices at companies like Google or some top-flight consulting group.”</p>

<p>I agree. It’s out of my realm of experience.</p>

[Canuckguy]

<p>Glad you added that final caveat, says the English major with 800V 760M on the GRE.</p>

<p>I have nothing but the greatest of respect for English majors who can do this. In fact, I have the greatest respect for anyone who can do so. I sure can’t.</p>

<p>I know, recruiters are shallow.</p>

<p>Not all recruiters are shallow. The recruiters in the Rivera study, however, do come across as shallow. Since my last post, I have been advised to look into this article by Jim Manzi:</p>

<p>[How</a> Elite Business Recruiting Really Works - By Jim Manzi - The Corner - National Review Online](<a href=“http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285160/how-elite-business-recruiting-really-works-jim-manzi#comment-bar]How”>http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285160/how-elite-business-recruiting-really-works-jim-manzi#comment-bar)</p>

<p>His experience with management consulting seems to be much more along the line of what I am hoping for. They hire at many more institutions and programs. (If nothing else, this should increase the “diversity” that folks in CC are so enamored). More importantly, they value the SAT and they care about the major:</p>

<p>

In my experience as a resume screener, the logic normally goes something like this.</p>

<p>If you don’t have at least 750 on the math SAT, you’re out. The most common score is 800. Math plus verbal scores should be well over 1500, and typically over 1550. GRE, GMAT, and other scores should be scaled similarly.</p>

<p>Then, your degree should be in something hard: math, physics, electrical engineering, analytical philosophy, computer science, and so on. It’s okay to major in history or literature, but you better have some really tough quantitative or analytical classes on your transcript, and have done very well in them. If your GPA is below about 3.5, you’re out unless there is some really compelling rationale for why. The average successful candidate has a GPA above 3.7. Everyone understands how bad grade inflation is, and that it’s worst in the most elite schools. Any reasonably smart person with good instincts about course selection can figure out how to get a decent GPA at one of these schools. A GPA-plus-major screen is not about IQ, as much as it is a quick screen to see who is capable of figuring out how to succeed in a new environment, and of doing at least some sustained work. Screeners and interviewers will typically look at the transcript to make judgments about raw candlepower; for example, checking which calculus sequence the candidate completed, and if it was the most difficult track, what grades were achieved.<br>

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<p>I guess I am not all wet after all.</p>

<p>What is a SAT score used for in a hiring setting? Are there any studies indicating a correlation between SAT scores and career success?</p>

<p>I am afraid so:</p>

<p>[American</a> Psychological Society: SAT Measures More Than Student Performance, Research Shows It Is also a Reliable Measure of IQ](<a href=“http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2004/pr040329.cfm]American”>http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2004/pr040329.cfm)</p>

<p>Now we know why social engineers have been trying hard to dumb it down ever since.</p>

[absweetmarie]

<p>Sorry, Canuckguy, but I have to ask you where in that article it said anything about SAT scores correlating with career success. The article discusses research suggesting that the SAT correlates to IQ. I assume that there’s no evidence that having a high IQ (being, if you will, as smart as Consolation ;)) is going to hurt a person in any job. But it has been my experience that intelligence (and even more so academic preparation) is not always the best predictor of success in the workplace. Maybe for some fields, but not (IMO) across the board.</p>

[Beliavsky]

<p>

It would sure be interesting to get a list of all these organizations that ask applicants for SAT scores. It is completely contrary to anything I have experienced, or frankly anything I’ve even heard of except on here and in news articles about strange hiring practices at companies like Google or some top-flight consulting group.

</p>

<p>It is not uncommon in finance. I was asked when looking for a job, and I know of someone at a financial company who looked at SAT scores on resumes and threw out those without scores.</p>

<p>Probably the biggest use of SAT scores is indirect – prestigious companies recruit at schools with higher average SAT scores. A large company cannot openly use SAT scores for hiring because it would be sued for disparate impact, since whites outscore blacks and Hispanics.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>Again, this depends on what you define as “prestigious.” There seems to be some notion that only Goldman Sachs, Bain, McKinsey, etc. are “prestigious.” It’s mostly the people who work at those places who self-define those things as prestigious, though, and are mightily impressed by themselves. If I want to go work for Procter & Gamble, or AT&T, or Target, or whatever, why should it matter to me that a handful of other people whose opinions I don’t care about deem other companies as more prestigious?</p>

<p>(My BFF’s are McKinsey people and I nearly wound up there, so there’s no animosity or jealousy.)</p>

[absweetmarie]

<p>Assuming people think Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine a reliable source of information about jobs prospects, consider the following: [10</a> Best College Majors for a Lucrative Career - Kiplinger](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/10-best-college-majors-for-your-career/1.html]10”>25 Best College Majors for a Lucrative Career | Kiplinger)</p>

<p>Spoiler alert: Accounting and finance are not on the list. What’s there? Nursing, allied health (three areas), engineering (three areas), management information services, construction services and pharmacy/pharmacology.</p>

[Canuckguy]

<p>^^^Ask psychometrists and they will probably tell you that intelligence is the best predictor of success in life. It is, however, a necessary but insufficient ingredient. Ability to socialize and work with others is important too. </p>

<p>You may find this interesting, as I do:</p>

<p>[Intelligence</a> is more accurate predictor of future career success than socioeconomic background, study suggests](<a href=“http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120329142035.htm]Intelligence”>Intelligence is more accurate predictor of future career success than socioeconomic background, study suggests -- ScienceDaily)</p>

<p>Got to go.</p>

[bovertine]

<p>

It is not uncommon in finance. I was asked when looking for a job, and I know of someone at a financial company who looked at SAT scores on resumes and threw out those without scores.

Name of companies please. Actual names of comapnies that do this might be of value to some applicants, with either sky high or low SATs. Plus, I could see if there are more relaible references to this practice elsewhere on the internet. I’d want to make sure none of my money is invested with such companies.</p>

<p>And remember, I’m talking mainly about mid-career applicants, not entry level. THough I doubt the parctice is commoon even for entry level applicants.</p>

<p>Geez, Even the anecdotes on here are vague.</p>

<p>

Probably the biggest use of SAT scores is indirect – prestigious companies recruit at schools with higher average SAT scores. A large company cannot openly use SAT scores for hiring because it would be sued for disparate impact, since whites outscore blacks and Hispanics.

My question is about comapnies who specifically ask for SAT scores from applicants regardless of career stage. THis paragraph seems to contradict your first paragraph, unless you are only talking about small finance companies in that paragraph.</p>

[absweetmarie]

<p>Thanks for the link, Canuckguy. But that study does not say that intelligence is the best predictor, only that it is a better predictor than socioeconomic background. And, yes, I do find that interesting. </p>

<p>But with regard to the predictive value of intelligence for job success: </p>

<p>I did a little sleuthing this morning and came across a study that seems to suggest the following (I say “seems to” because I have not yet decided whether I will spend the $11.95 to buy the full text!): </p>

<ol>
<li>The three best predictors of job success, in order, are work sample tests, general mental ability (GMA) and structured employment interviews. (GMA and structured interviews, according to this research, have the same predictive value.)</li>
<li>These are followed reasonably closely by peer ratings, job knowledge tests, the “behavioral consistency test” (interviewer asks how you handled a situation in the past, on the theory that “past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior”), job tryouts and integrity tests.</li>
<li>“Overall, the 3 combinations with the highest multivariate validity and utility for job performance were GMA plus a work sample test (mean validity of .63), GMA plus an integrity test (mean validity of .65), and GMA plus a structured interview (mean validity of .63).”</li>
</ol>

<p>My sources:
<a href=“APA PsycNet”>APA PsycNet;
[Selecting</a> Talent: The Upshot from 85 Years of Research - Bob Sutton](<a href=“Bob Sutton”>Selecting Talent: The Upshot from 85 Years of Research - Bob Sutton)</p>

[bovertine]

<p>

Since my last post, I have been advised to look into this article by Jim Manzi:

A glance at wikipedia shows that apparently Jim Manzi got a degree in the classics from Colgate, and a masters in International Relations from Tufts.
I don’t think those schools or majors are on his list. </p>

<p>I wonder how his resume made it through all the filters. :)</p>