What advice would you give a college student who has no idea what career she wants?

[Anonymous]

To take a double gap year major waitressing Silver Dinner.

[Anonymous]

Tell her to date premed.

[Anonymous]

Eh it doesn't matter a lot what she majors in, just so long as she gets it done. That is the advice: get it done. Also, get good grades so that when you do figure out what you want to do, you can get a graduate degree in that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is a rising sophomore in college, and she truly has absolutely no idea of what kind of career she wants. It's extremely frustrating for both her and us. She has decided to major in Sociology only because she find the classes interesting but she knows it won't make her employable. Personally, I would rather she major in something more practical where she can at least earn a decent wage while she figures out what it is she really wants to do.

LOL , “interesting” to an aimless lazy student = the classes are easy, period. Which they are - sociology is a waste of time joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:quit helicoptering

plenty of entry level jobs just want college grads regardless of major

Yea, deadend jobs that prob don’t require a $100,000+ bachelors degree in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My cousin majored in sociology and now he's a VP at a credit card company making $$$. I'm not sure why you think it's such a dead end degree.

Because what you posted is an outlier. It’s 2018. Unless you’re at a top university, and in that case it really doesn’t matter what you study, sociology is well known bimbo department. Total waste of money. In 7 years OP’s daughter will be headed back to college for a nursing degree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She should take some math and the hardest statistics classes - sociology can be very quantitative, and she should make sure she has good grades.

This. If she knows a lot of stats, she'll do fine employment wise.

What entry level job would she get with a sociology major and statistics courses?

Data analyst/research analyst in marketing research. I hire interns for a marketing research dept and often they are psychology+stats majors and occasionally sociology+stats.

A big plus 1 on this. I work in tech and we can’t hire data analytics people fast enough. Enough stats as she can manage including stats programming. And if she learns so qualitative research skills too (interviewing, ethnography) she will be very well set.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:quit helicoptering

plenty of entry level jobs just want college grads regardless of major

I have not found that to be true. I graduated with a degree in Sociology, worked crap jobs for 5 years that barely paid beyond minimum wage, and eventually decided to go back to school to become a teacher. Plenty of liberal arts majors never get decent paying jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:quit helicoptering

plenty of entry level jobs just want college grads regardless of major

Like what? Seriously. People say this all the time, but really what professional entry level jobs are just hiring anyone with a college degree?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My cousin majored in sociology and now he's a VP at a credit card company making $$$. I'm not sure why you think it's such a dead end degree.

But what led to his job with the credit card company? It couldn't have just been his sociology degree. He must have gotten some kind of useful experience/skills somewhere else that made the company want to hire him.

[Anonymous]

I read through the thread pretty quickly so I might have missed it.

OP, what jobs has your DD had?

Has she worked retail?

Has she been a camp councilor?

"In the context of college, passion is really just the feeling of having mastered something that you don’t hate." Prof Cal Newport Georgetown University

[Anonymous]

Communications or marketing .

Both are good for tons of jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My cousin majored in sociology and now he's a VP at a credit card company making $$$. I'm not sure why you think it's such a dead end degree.

And Zuckerberg and Gates didn’t graduate from college, but I’m sure you’d never tell your child to forgo higher education.

Anecdotes mean absolutely nothing.

[Anonymous]

Has she looked at what jobs grads from her department are getting? Does she want to do any of those jobs? She can learn a lot from career services.

She also needs to start interning. She also needs to watch job postings and figure out how to credentials to apply for jobs that interest her. She also needs to network.

I'm not sure why this is a big mystery. People start talking aboiut college with high school freshman. People need to be talking jobs with college freshman. Work on a plan and execute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She should take some math and the hardest statistics classes - sociology can be very quantitative, and she should make sure she has good grades.

This. If she knows a lot of stats, she'll do fine employment wise.

What entry level job would she get with a sociology major and statistics courses?

Data analyst/research analyst in marketing research. I hire interns for a marketing research dept and often they are psychology+stats majors and occasionally sociology+stats.

A big plus 1 on this. I work in tech and we can’t hire data analytics people fast enough. Enough stats as she can manage including stats programming. And if she learns so qualitative research skills too (interviewing, ethnography) she will be very well set.

I work in data analytics and I agree it is a great, growing field. But it would be exceedingly rare for us to hire a sociology major. Most of our new hires are either specifically data analytics/science majors, or Econ, math, comp sci, applied math, statistics, etc.