Let’s talk the reality of career resources

[Anonymous]

Family members experiences at Top 10 National Universities:

U Chicago--excellent. Offered job at every interview. Went to a hedge fund and made a lot of money over 5 years, then the markets crashed. Had enough funds to retire. Now writing screenplays & producing films in Hollywood/Southern California.

Northwestern--sent out 3 resumes from career center postings; was offered 3 interviews, but received a full tuition scholarship to law school.

Brown--excellent regarding internships and post graduation employment. Know several graduates.

Duke--horrific. Public policy major. Scholarship athlete, frat member, very social, above average appearance, close friends with several classmates with fathers in position to hire into coveted finance positions. Stayed another year to earn a 10 month masters degree from Fuqua. Still horrible. Got nothing. Vacations regularly with wealthy classmates. Nothing. Eventually was able to get a modest paying positions with great benefits, but wants out after a year due to low pay.

The family member's Duke experience prompted me to examine Duke's Fuqua School of Business one year specialty masters degree placements (multiple programs). The results were not good for these masters degree programs.

Friends & family at other universities:

University of Georgia Honors College--outstanding guidance and opportunities. Foundation Fellows was/is great !

University of Alabama Honors College was great. University Fellow had outstanding results.

Dartmouth College--athlete, but below average student. Receives lots of guidance & counseling, however most of it is how to obtain a solid GPA by skirting challenging courses and majors.

University of Georgia non-honors college. Bright, but lazy. Got two very good positions in data analysis through his parents connections. Classmates & frat members all did well. All attended U Georgia virtually tuition free due to statewide lottery funded scholarships.

I could list many other schools, but not family members.

Overall, I am familiar with the situations of many who graduated U Chicago & Northwestern. Would rate both universities job & internship placement as outstanding. Same for U Georgia Honors College and Foundation Fellows. Same for U Alabama University Fellows (ultra-select group above Honors College level). U Alabama Honors College is very good to excellent.

Most of family members close friends attend Ivy League universities. All did well, but unsure about sources of job lead.

Not sure, but I suspect that Northwestern & U Chicago do so well because students are not focused on highly competitive East Coast prestige positions. Willing to work in Chicago & on the West Coast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s easier to get research than an internship. There’s a ton of research that uses important tools- ML, Python, R, SQL, and Qubit were all needed for my DS who’s a Junior in physics. He’s already accepted an internship at Google this summer, and getting a job has been easy. Start with research, then expand out.

+1

+2 DS developed in demand data analytics skills via on campus research program which helped him get a good junior year internship which turned into a job on graduation.

DD (sophomore) will start working with professor on research next semester.

[Anonymous]

I’m a low middle class kid who got into a T10 LAC by mostly sheer luck. The career service opportunities there are out of this world. Funded internships, internship grants, career people from almost any industry you can think of. My career advisor remembered me by name and sent me opportunities for internships and networking just because I was on their mind. Might be different at an LAC than a university. I expressed my anxieties about getting an internship as I transferred from a community college and wasn’t familiar with how to. She told me not to fear as I was going to get an internship.

[Anonymous]

14:07. I chose the LAC over UVA because I didn’t want to compete with 15,000 other kids for resources.

[Anonymous]

It's entirely possible that your child is lazy and didn't even go to the Career Center.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's entirely possible that your child is lazy and didn't even go to the Career Center.

According to half the thread, it’s not the job of colleges to do any of that and they simply need to crack out a few, very reasonable, 200 applications and should have applied by their first birth. So, it is quite possible that their child did go to the Career Center too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Northeastern has a required course in applying for internships, co-ops, networking, interview skills, resume writing, etc.

I'm not sure why other schools don't do this.

I've heard Northeastern does a good job with this

[Anonymous]

How about Harvard, Yale, Stanford?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mentioned talking with professors earlier (I think). It was not my intention to suggest professors find students employment. The onus is on the student. I wonder if an unintended consequence to viewing education using a consumer perspective contributes to learned passivity.

College costs $90k/year now and many are creeping towards $100k. It simply is reasonable that students expect some sort of job by the end. Fun and pure education with no emphasis on career placement is at odds with institutional goals of championing diversity and supporting underprivileged students. I think this is an obvious failure by many top schools, who previously relied on their students’ parents to get them jobs and an easier economy.
Education is great, but students will have to go out into the real world, and academia does not pay well enough nor does it intend on hiring more than it already does.

It is baffling to me that anyone would argue a $400k education should not have a decent roadmap to a career.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:14:07. I chose the LAC over UVA because I didn’t want to compete with 15,000 other kids for resources.

What do you do now?

[Anonymous]

OP, the math/cs field is not doing great right now, the WSJ had an article about it today. Job postings are below pre-pandemic levels.

I will say, I’m my experience, the best career centers are those within flagship business schools. My husband was a Michigan Econ grad and didn’t apply to Ross because he wasn’t interested in majoring in Business. He was eventually able to get a finance job, but it was a lot harder because Ross only helped their own students. My niece is at business school at Wisconsin and was able to get an internship before her senior year without connections by utilizing on-campus resources.

Finally, to the poster at Brown with a kid in Environmental Science - I’m in the field and entry level positions are very competitive. There’s also a big push for diversity right now, which hurts other applicants. I know lots of people with MEM degrees from “elite” universities who don’t make much. So I think it’s more Brown helping to place students at companies that actually hire many kids that pay decent wages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:14:07. I chose the LAC over UVA because I didn’t want to compete with 15,000 other kids for resources.

What do you do now?

Still in college.

[Anonymous]

My DS graduated from W&M in 2022. He visited the career center his junior year and most interactions with them were virtual (Fall of 2020, Spring of 2021.). They had multiple career fairs and meet and greets with various companies but it was extremely challenging because most of them were virtual. At the meet and greets, the company would put on a presetation - selling their company, talking about their benefits, work culture, etc. Then they would have queues you would go into to meet a rep from the company. Trying to "talk" to people in a virtual setting was frustrating but he slogged through it. Before and after Covid, the meet and greets were more informal "cocktail reception" type events.

The career counselor he was assigned worked with him on his "elevator pitch" and his resume. The counselor advised him how to network and he started by contacting one of his fraternity brothers who had graduated a couple of years earlier. That first networking phone call led to other calls. Fall of his senior year, companies started visiting campus in person and he again went to everything. He ended up receiving four job offers by early November '21. The job he accepted was with a company he actually only interacted with virtually.

My DS felt the career center was excellent but he did admit he had to be proactive with them.

[Anonymous]

I teach at a less resourced university and our career office is small. They are very hard workers, but they are not there to, nor do they have the bandwidth to, get individual students opportunities. Faculty don't do this either. The goal is to equip the students with resources to search on their own, train them for interviews, and help prep materials. Then they need to search internal and external job boards on their own. Sometimes a professor or someone can make a connection but that is not the norm, and is reserved for students who have meaningful relationships and performance. A lot of what Career Services does is processing and group instruction.

[Anonymous]

DS #1 graduated in 2023 from an Ivy, and DS #2 graduated in 2024, also from an Ivy. Both are still looking for work, and according to them, the career center didn't do much to help them. One of their cousins was a recruited athlete at another Ivy, who received a lucrative banking job after graduation in 2024, without ever showing up at the career center.