<p>I graduated with a BA in Sociology. I had no prior job experience so I move back home with my parents to get my first job. But where I live now, there are no social psychology or research jobs available, that's mostly what I majored in. There's only Social Work positions but they require a Master's degree. In order for me to get a great job, I have to have a Masters. Well I want to change my career path and get a degree in something math and science, mostly Physics and something in data research/statistics but I haven't taken any physics or statistics classes during my undergrad. I was thinking maybe I should get a secondary bachelor's degree but most schools don't allow that unless you've been out of school for more than 10 yrs. I'm still looking around for grad schools to go to that are affordable and provide me what I need but currently the only school in the city where my parents live offers 6 Master's degree programs: Master of Business Administration, Master of Arts in Human Resources Development, Master
of Arts in Human Resources Management, Master of Arts in Management & Leadership, Master of Health Administration, and Master of Arts in Counseling. So I'm stuck with these. My mom says if I went to a Master's program that offered Physics or some hard science/math, I would be able to take it since I didn't do it in undergrad. But if I found a school that offered the Master's I wanted, would I be able to double major even though I've never taken it in undergrad?</p>
<p>This is very confused thinking. I hardly know where to begin. For starters, since you don’t even know what to pick for a program or career, why do you think you need to double major? What purpose would that serve? I’m confused about what you propose to double in. Usually you should pick one thing and do it well. Pretty much no one double majors for grad school, that just shows that you don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>No you are not prepared to be accepted in any Physics program. You would have to look up what programs expect of people who don’t have a BS in physics and take all those classes as a post-bac.</p>
<p>How do you define “provide me what I need”?</p>
<p>Did you get a degree from a decent college? I find it hard to believe that you didn’t have to take any statistics for social scientists for your major.</p>
<p>To work as a Sociologist you need a Master’s. But nothing is preventing you from just getting any job that requires a Bachelor’s degree. I know a sociologist working at google in people resources, an art history major too. I know a psychology major who works for a mortgage broker, in advertising. Etc, etc.</p>
<p>To pick a Master’s degree program because that is all that is offered near you is nonsense. You go where the program that will get you what you want is. But you don’t know what you want. You can’t act like you never went to college and just start over. Go to work for a couple of years until you get a better handle on it.</p>
<p>Whatever you do, do not get an MBA without work experience, it will likely make you unemployable. You will be overqualified for anything with experience for nothing.</p>
<p>edit to add: read Cal Newport and the comments to the original question it links to.
<a href=“The Student Passion Problem - Cal Newport”>http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/03/02/the-student-passion-problem/</a></p>
<p>You don’t need to earn a second bachelors if you truly want to go to grad school for physics. What you need to do is figure out what the required undergrad courses are and take those courses. It’s highly unlikely you would get accepted into a program where your education did not include the prerequisite courses - and you would be setting yourself up for failure by not having a comparable background to other students. </p>
<p>You also need to do a bit more research in how graduate schools work. It’s not the same as undergrad, where you take X courses in this major and Y courses in that major and as long as they all fit in your schedule you can have multiple majors/minors. A big part of graduate school is working with a faculty mentor on research. Most people I know who have more than one graduate degree earned them at different times, not in parallel, as getting two departments to provide you mentors - and having enough time to do the work - would be very challenging.</p>
<p>@BrownParent Yes I’m very confused. Idk how to go about going to grad school but I just know going for my Master’s might help me get a decent job. I haven’t even been able to get a job in my major or anything dealing with sociology so I want to change my career path. </p>
<p>Why do you think you need to double major?–B/c I never got to double major in my undergrad and I thought you could do it in grad school. I wanted to double major in sociology/urban studies but I was in my senior year. I spent one year at a college that I didn’t like, transferred to a 2 year college and graduated in sociology b/c I liked the classes but there wasn’t much to choose from there either. Then finished my senior year in Sociology too since that’s what I graduated in at the 2 yr college and it was too late to change it.</p>
<p>I never knew about post bac classes. Do you earn a certificate when you complete them? I’ll have to research that more. So if I take the post bac classes, it’ll prepare me better before I get a degree in Physics?</p>
<p>Did you get a degree from a decent college? I find it hard to believe that you didn’t have to take any statistics for social scientists for your major–Yes I went to UW. It wasn’t required for me or maybe my advisor screwed me over? I’m thinking the latter. But I mostly took psych classes. Business classes were always full so I couldn’t get into it. Only business majors got first pick and so, other majors could never get into them. </p>
<p>To work as a Sociologist you need a Master’s. But nothing is preventing you from just getting any job that requires a Bachelor’s degree. I know a sociologist working at google in people resources, an art history major too. I know a psychology major who works for a mortgage broker, in advertising. Etc, etc—Hmm well I am still looking at what I can do with my degree. I’m still confused on what I can do since it’s such a broad degree. I wouldn’t mind working for urban/city planning but there’s no positions available where I live. It’s like a small city and no jobs are here. I’ll have to research what people do at Google in people resources. </p>
<p>To pick a Master’s degree program because that is all that is offered near you is nonsense. You go where the program that will get you what you want is. But you don’t know what you want. You can’t act like you never went to college and just start over. Go to work for a couple of years until you get a better handle on it–I want to work I just don’t know where to work at. What can I do with my degree? It’s like useless for me b/c I don’t have any experience working in the position they require and I’m not sure how to get my foot in the door to get 3 yrs worth of experience either. They say they’ll accept a Master’s degree in place of the experience since you’ll gain the experience in the Master’s program. </p>
<p>Whatever you do, do not get an MBA without work experience, it will likely make you unemployable. You will be overqualified for anything with experience for nothing–Oh! Thank you for telling me. I have no experience whatsoever. </p>
<p>As an example, this is from NC State’s graduate program in Physics:</p>
<p>The Physics Department welcomes admissions from students who have earned bachelors degrees in accredited institutions. Whereas the majority of our applicants major in physics in their undergraduate education, some obtain their degrees in related fields such as electrical engineering or mathematics. The department has on occasion admitted interested students who focused on social sciences or even humanities as undergraduates. In such cases, an appropriate curriculum would include undergraduate classes that might have been missed.</p>
<p>Just like you don’t need to be pre-med to get into medical school, you don’t need to earn a Bachelor’s in a field to go to graduate school. You do, however, need a solid grounding in basic principles so that you will be successful in graduate level classes. If you tried to take a graduate-level Physics course without having enough undergraduate math and physics, you would be almost guaranteed to fail. In order to be admitted to graduate school, you have to take the GRE (graduate school test similar to the SAT) and probably for physics most schools would want the GRE for Physics (kind of like the SAT subject test). If you don’t have enough math and physics to pass the GRE, you won’t get admitted. So you need to take those missing undergraduate courses, it just doesn’t have to be in the context of earning a degree.</p>
<p>You won’t get a certificate for taking individual classes post undergrad, but you will have a transcript. When you apply for graduate school, you request that your undergrad transcript be sent as well as transcripts for other courses you might have taken at other institutions. Taking these undergrad courses would help you determine if Physics was really something you want - since you’ve never taken any courses, it’s hard to tell how good a fit it would be.</p>
<p>In programs oriented to professional training- eg, MSW- you can have all sorts of academic backgrounds, as long as you meet the central requirements. When talk turns to traditional fields such as physics, as said, there is an expectation you come in ready to hit the ground running. Ie, you know physics, you’ve done the intense math prep, you have the UG faculty recommendations. Even more, you have defined your interests within the field. You know faculty works in those arenas and they want to work with you. It’s graduate school. As said, if you want to catch up on math and science, try a comm college.</p>
<p>I’m not sure you’ve fully explored what a social science major can do. If you want to keep it narrow, work specifically in socio-psychological research, you can look at jobs at local colleges, where they need research team members and admins. Sometimes hospitals, marketing firms. You start where you can, maybe low, then watch for opportunities to move up. Or you have to be in a locale where the sorts of firms that do this 9-5 M-F are concentrated.</p>
<p>For a satisfying job, this really harkens back to very traditional job hunting research: don’t look for the job title that matches your interests. Look at your interests and strengths and see what variety of jobs allow you to use those and feel fulfilled. </p>
<p>Grad school isn’t really the place to dabble or try out new areas in my opinon. If you aren’t sure what you want then you need to research or take a few classes or something but grad school is for delving in depth into something not for trying stuff out. </p>