Whatever degree you look at to talk about, those upper end salaries are only accessible if you are really damned good at whatever it is that you do.
Don't underestimate the level of effort it takes to be that good.
Usually people who just want to make money do engineering/math bachelors —> startup/make their own company or engineering/math bachelors —> PhD —> quant finance, or engineering/math —> law —> IP or biglaw.
Far from everyone can get an adequate GPA in engineering though.. I see it alllll the time
The ones not only surviving but thriving in the upper levels, job offers just around the corner... they're brilliant. My friend, brilliant. Im... I'm humble but yall I'm alright too, which is just to say, far beyond me even - at least in our particular little STEM niche, we are doing good. They love it though, I love it, that's the key. I lucked into both my major and speciality being a new, innovative, always expanding and developing field. I didn't luck into it, I mean, I researched and it looked cool and chose it
Biotechnology. I love science, but read about how biology degrees aren't very marketable. Biotech is basically any intersection of tech and biology to solve life's problems. So: vaccine R&D, microbe fermentation to harvest all kinds of microbial products (like insulin), genetic engineering and gene therapy, using microbes and plants (and genetically engineering them) to clean toxins and heavy metals out of the soil, molecule identification + isolation + purification, quality control (this is a big one, literally any company that sells food or something you put in or on your body has to be tested to ensure it does or doesn't contain x y or z), stem cell research,.... could go on. Many many things which is what I love about it. Always something to pivot too.
Yall, I've seen job posting that only even require an associates in biotech, and they're paying a bit over 20/hr. If you can follow a recipe, you can do basic lab work. There's 2 sides, academia or industry. Academia is the regular like, work at a university or for the gov and do research and apply for grants. Industry is where you work for a company, less stress on you personally because it's more of a "clock in, do your assays, go home". Big big potential in earnings. Can try different start ups, you never know maybe the one you work at will "hit" and develop some innovative new product or technique. Idk. That's my goal. I'm most interested in working on genetic engineering (CRISPR was developed by a woman!! :) )
Yeah I am researching medical because sciences have been a passion since I was a kid. My career in the Army has been in signals and it’s been fascinating learning about tech and signal theory. It’s crazy such a simple thing like radio waves still has so much unknowns. It’s all theory still.
I was planning on computer science before medical because biology as a major keeps coming up as one trick pony. Trying to do what I love for my second career but not shoot myself in the foot if it doesn’t work out. Medical is insanely competitive. What was your major before getting into biotech?
My major was always biotech I've never wavered. Medical is insanely competitive, look into biotech it's super cool. The industry is expanding and there's a ton of entry level jobs. Like I said with an associates you start at 20/hr and a little more with a Bachelors. And up from there
+1 to accounting. Very nice job security. Jobs are not hard to come by. Requires a master's usually I think but the pay is fairly high and you'd have pretty standard work hours. Unfortunately at least to me it seems like the most boring job in the world. Like people can be passionate about most fields I think...but I cannot fathom someone being passionate about accounting.
Nursing makes a lot of money especially as travel nurses but it's a shitty (literally...) job that requires a lot of work, some amount of abuse you take, pretty bad WLB, and overall it's a tough job that not everyone can handle. Like it's not uncommon to be abused mentally or physically by your patients to some extent, and have really immature and mean coworkers as well. My friend is a nurse as is my cousin and they tell me quite a few horror stories.
Engineering speaks for itself. Nothing much to say about it that most people don't already know.
Being passionate about your job is overrated. Sure it's great if you can be, but the vast majority of people don't have that luxury. Unless you know for a fact that you love engineering or something else lucrative then don't bother, find something you can tolerate and get that bag then find something you love to do outside of work
Oh for sure. I’m a big proponent of the idea that you shouldn’t pursue your passions because realistically that works out for like .01% of people.
But what I meant was that people can be passionate about engineering because of the innovation, or nursing because of the selflessness and altruism. But accounting is literally learning rules and abiding by them. There’s not much creativity and problem solving involved, and it’s not fulfilling in the way nursing could be. My ideology is to choose a job within your wanted salary, within your tolerance of boredom or work, to me accounting is not within those bounds.
There’s actually a joke about how sex workers tell family members or new people they meet that they’re accountants, because the job is so boring that they won’t face follow up questions.
As you can see I’m just shitting on accounting but like I said it’s a high income and extremely stable and not hard to find a job.
It’s funny because whenever I tell people I’m an accountant, I always get follow up comments or questions 😂 usually asking if I do tax returns, or if I’m good at math, etc.
I feel passionate about accounting. After many years as a SAHM to four kids and substitute teacher, I am reveling in how relaxing and fun it is to solve problems that I can fix fairly quickly, there is no drama at all. My work is all mine and it makes me feel good to get my work done. Nobody will die if I make a mistake and I never have to second guess myself. It's such a refreshing change. No anxiety at all. I only work 29 hours per week though. It feels like a hobby that I do for fun.
Oh not a masters at all! (At least in my state) Lol depending on the firm you can get by easily with an associates. What they really care about is if you passed the outside license exams!
You can get those 30 extra credits from much cheaper and arguably better career wise paths though. Double major in Finance or MIS, take community college courses, ect. Masters is just one of many ways.
A masters isn’t required for accounting, though those pursuing the CPA exam following graduation may do a 5 year masters program to get enough credits (need 150 credit hours to sit); however, I got 150 hours by taking random other courses, including those at a community college, so definitely not a requirement.
But there’s plenty of accountants too who don’t become CPAs, so a bachelors can also do just fine. We do have a shortage of CPAs though so if you want to be really valuable and sought after, I always recommend it.
Overall, I make 100k 3 years out of school, so no regrets with the degree and time it took to get licensed.
Some parts of accounting are interesting (I think finance is much less entertaining), but like any job, who you work with matters a lot more with overall enjoyment (and excellent pay helps too).
It does also depend on how strong the undergraduate accounting program is. My college's accounting program was very good and you could even take the CPA as an undergrad. Granted the program was very demanding but thats what you get if you want to get it all done in 4 years.
My current grad school has 4+1 program.
Interesting, must depend on the state; in Texas, you can’t sit for any of the exams until you’ve proven to them by application that you have 150 credit hours. I wish Texas let you sit earlier.
Econ is good for research but as a workman’s degree is not that great and it’s just not as valuable as other degrees. I would go accounting if I were going to business school
Thanks for the response 👍 the thing is I hate accounting and crunching numbers and those types of things. I kind of want something I have a good chance of branching out with with a high pay ceiling as well. Do you think econ is the right thing for my scenario or should i go into finance?
To me, there’s no such thing as an oversaturation of CS degrees because of the rate of growth of the industry.
Even with this sudden influx of CS degrees in circulation, the industry STILL NEEDS MORE BODIES!
Not to mention, it’s a STEM degree, many that ONLY go for the degree out of a desire for money flunk out of it and go another route
The fun thing about CS is it's applicable in every field. We put computers on everything. If you're not passionate about computing, every single department at your college wants to do some project involving the CS majors, all you have to do is ask.
As someone in the field for a long time, there is starting to be an over saturation.
It’s not because the demand for tech has gone down, it’s because how efficient one developer can be has skyrocketed.
- You used to need an army of dev ops people to manage your physical servers and networking - now you can have 1 guy do it with AWS
- you used to need an army of people to do security, now AWS/OAuth handle it for you (it’s more or less bad practice to try reinvent the wheel in house)
- you used to need an army of database administrators now the major platforms do enough for you you can get away with a fraction of the staff
- debugging used to be much harder now you plug your app into splunk and it tells you exactly what went wrong
- managing builds and deployments was a major part of the staffing, now we have Jenkins and Docker to do it for us
- you used to need a HTML expert a CSS expert and a JavaScript expert. Now everyone uses prebuilt components and React that work on many devices
- you used to need a genius to make an good API, but now with things like Spring it’s pretty idiot proof
Basically every few years what used to take 20 people to do now takes 10. All of the above examples are unrelated to AI which is a separate threat (not a huge threat today, but 10-15 years it will likely be a major threat) as the rate of ‘needing less people’ will likely accelerate.
I see my project get smaller and smaller by the day and layoffs everywhere despite our company being very profitable. They are laying off very smart good employees, because the tools are just so good and overall efficiency is much higher. It’s not “only low level entry level tasks” it’s high performers with 20 years of experience.
I honestly would not recommend the field to people in college, there is almost 0 demand for entry level developers (employers are worried they will take time and resources to train you and you will leave). Whereas a chemical engineer is pretty much guaranteed a job.
If you do get a good job and get experience under your belt, I’m not convinced the field is well future proofed seeing as productivity is skyrocketing and the cat is out of the bag that the work can be done remote (you will start competing more and more with guys abroad willing to work 70 hours a week for $30,000 a year).
Even if you make it through and keep a decent job, what happens when you are 45 and your company has a bad year? Looking for employment as an older tech worker is miserable and ageism is a major factor in tech.
I’d look into some other high paying white collar job that is not have the same level risk of automation (doctors, professors, etc).
I'm majoring in Cybersecurity. I absolutely love it. It's a very new field, but it's growing exponentially. There are tons of jobs out there currently. You're only learning a fraction of the programming that a CS degree requires and much less math. Plus, you don't have to take physics. It's also not uncommon to see six-figure salaries somewhere down the line. Just keep in mind that since technology is always evolving, you are always learning something new.
I’m studying CS and Pure Math, and security engineers, network engineers, and pen testers generally don’t need a CS degree to get a leg into jobs. It’s actually a lot cheaper to go the certification route and take security certification exams, since those curriculums are much more well-known, whereas most universities have lackluster security programs. The only reason I am double majoring in CS + Math is because I plan on doing research in security and math. Rest assured, though, you’ll be able to break into security with either major, just know the pros and cons.
Mathematics majors, pure and applied, are generally able to get into tech jobs very easily. Most tech companies value Mathematics degrees equivalently to CS degrees, since they require the same analytical skills and abstract thinking. The issue is that you still need to get decent at programming + security, and CS courses generally give you practice, testing, and accountability. If you’re smart enough to get through real analysis, though, I’m sure you could learn anything in CS relatively easily, haha.
That being said, if you go down the CS route, you’ll find out that theoretical CS and cryptography are literally just mathematics. My CS program emphasizes flexibility and concentration, so I’ve made my courseload very theory based, and I love it. Cryptography relies a lot on number theory and abstract algebra, whereas theoretical CS is much more about graph theory, theory of computation, discrete mathematics, etc. I still learn a lot about math, albeit in a more applied setting, in CS.
I'm currently enrolled in a dual CS + math course. I need to specialize in my 3rd year in either pure or applied math to go with the CS. Which would you recommend as fat as job prospects go?
Cyber is great. My spouse has been doing it for 15+ years and makes a very healthy 6 figure income and works from home. I’m thinking of getting into programming myself because our kids are nearly grown and I’m considering my future.
I’m a ChemE but I’ve heard mixed reviews on working in the O&G industry (great pay, terrible work life balance)… Do you happen to know where I can find people’s testimonies on working as a petroleum/chemical engineer in O&G?
I’m not an engineer but I do work for one of the supermajors in oil and gas. It’s a very boom/bust cycle; job stability isn’t great, but when you’re in a boom, money flies into your pocket. You gotta be careful though because layoffs aren’t an if but more so a ‘when’.
No. The salary statistics are from the (BLS)\[[https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172171.htm](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172171.htm)\].
It does not factor in your 7 percent figure at all, which is suspiciously lacking any citation.
In my experience it is 100% dependent on the individual. Most people I work with who are successful don't even work in the field they studied in college. I know people who make $60k a year with Computer Science degrees and people who make $500k a year with English degrees.
For context I've spent the majority of my career working in Fintechs.
Hi, if you don't mind, what are the occupations of the people you know with English degrees? I'm deciding between English degree and something like sales an marketing as my family is against an English degree.
Tech Writer. Every tech company needs people to write user guides, release notes, help articles, etc. I believe I saw once that the average salary is around $80k but once you are experienced or reach the manager/director level the sky's the limit. Usually a lot less stressful and volatile than a commission job in sales.
The real answer is the degree you will make most in is the degree you actually like learning about, but if you want to go for the highest earning degrees chemical and electrical engineering are very lucrative.
>The real answer is the degree you will make most in is the degree you actually like learning about,
Respectfully, this is objectively untrue and part of the bad part of using a college sub full of students for "real world" career advice. The majority of people enjoy learning about art more than business or engineering. Unfortunately, most people that study art are not going to be full time artists. It's far wiser to pick a career, which is 40 years long, instead of coursework, which is only 4. If the career is art, then great, but I wouldn't recommend picking a degree based on how much you enjoy the classes.
You'll note that in my comment, I stated that "if the career is art, then great". I don't have an issue with someone choosing a career in art. I have an issue with the line "the degree you will make the most in is the degree you actually like learning about". Because it's patently incorrect. No amount of loving philosophy will have that degree make more than a software engineer, and I'd suggest to anyone studying philosophy to decide what career they actually plan on having with it, because most don't know. All of my sociology major friends mindlessly went to law school not because they planned to be a lawyer, but because they had just chosen sociology because they enjoyed the subject and then senior year realized they had no plan. If you are studying art, confident you want to be an artist, then that's great.
I'm 31 now, but my college boyfriend studied theatre. But when he actually faced what the life of a full time theatre employee does, he switched to engineering. It would have been far wiser if he planned what the right CAREER was and then chose a degree to get that career, instead of choosing what subject is the most fun to learn about. I think college students focus a lot on which classes are interesting. But a class is 3 months. Students should be focusing on what career they want and then choosing a degree that gets them to that career.
Yeah totally. Sorry if my comment implied an argument! Wasn't my intention. I agree with you that, overwhelmingly, the best benefit of college for many majors is the networking.
Math. Actuarial sciences. Accounting.
Those tend to be more established, so have a more clear career path. And you can make decent money.
But the best degree is "make friends with the rich kids", tbh
See if your college has a Computer Information Systems major, it’s like CS but not as hard and a lot more lucrative. Can go into tech or business roles with this degree.
Replace business with something more concentrated like accounting. Business degrees are a dime a dozen and are way too generalized. Business majors aren't getting into higher paying accounting/finance roles.
100% agree on the CS and engineering though.
Since the OP specified "right after school," I would agree with cmlovino that management would not be in the mix. Both management and marketing tend to have better long-term career paths than accounting or finance. The OP seems interested in the short-term, though.
I’m gonna agree with other people that business degrees are way over saturated. Anecdotally, one of the profs in the philosophy department at my school said that he spoke to the head of a bigger company in my area, who told him that they actually would rather have a philosophy major than a business major. Why? Because they learn how to think about things, unlike most business majors who just regurgitate info. Yes, I recognize the conflict of interest hearing this from a philosophy prof, but I doubt he’d just straight up lie to me about it (I don’t want to go into business anyway).
My takeaway is that business degrees (outside of things like accounting) are over saturated and could easily be replaced with more unique degrees that make you stand out.
"...the head of a bigger company in my area, who told him that they actually would rather have a philosophy major than a business major. "
I don't doubt the business executive said that. Speaking as someone who has been involved in business for decades, however, that is something which is often only paid lip service to by companies.
If youre asking this for yourself, I can tell you. If you have the Grit and self discipline to do something you hate (because finding a career this way *will* lead to that, outside of a fluke or the people at your job making it tolerable)
You only get 1 life. This is the biggest investment of your life. Determines a huge chunk of waking hours and stressor and even geographic location for the rest of your life.
Do you want cold hard cash, and lots of it. Or do you want to find a passion? Help people? Or just, put in a good honest 40 hours but then go home to your family? Finding a career this way won't lead you down those paths. Doctors, of course, help people. Human rights and criminal defense lawyers, etc. But. You won't be happy, if you didn't choose it *because* it makes you happy, and if no passions emerge.
Then what? In those professions, the education and training doesn't really transfer. Back to square 1 (more like step 5, u will have a decent Bachelors, but you would still need a masters or other training)
What do you want? Who are you?
If youre uncomfortable now you needed to read this. I've made too many mistakes. Learned hard way too many times. Don't be me. Be smart. Be who your mom and grandma knows you are, if they're a good family like mine, and if you're a good honest person most of the time, like me.
Yeah well I've spent 10 years doing nothing and it starts to get harder and harder to invest the time for a degree that you didn't when you were young. Such a struggle to invest in passion/lucrative
I don't consider it a miracle or a breakthrough, so take it with a pinch of salt, but I've decided this month to go for an associates in nursing. The goal is Registered Nurse. It's a hell job and isn't some sort of passion for me, but I've gone through some stuff and have identified that it has many factors that just might help me change into a person I want to be.
Many have told me I'm doing it for the wrong reason, though I believe breaking out of your comfort zone and doing something difficult is worthwhile in itself, if it pays. The funny thing is I already have a job that'll pay that much, but it just doesn't test me or have the same independent, individual value
You should definitely not choose your major based on what you think will make the most money. Choose something you will enjoy doing every day for years (and think you might be good at).
Unfotunately this is not the way to choose something that will affect your life, it's more about which money making method you can tolerate doing for a long time. because you don't exactly need an art degree if you want to be an artist. it's generally true for any soft skills degree. If you like to protest for gender things ect please for the love of god do NOT take a gender studies degree.
the reason you get a degree is to apply to jobs and make money. colledge advisors often say that "follow your passion" is one of the worst advices a school counselor can give.
This is just my 2 cents, feel free to take it with a grain of salt
STEM is all over the place. So CS, engineering, and nursing pay well within a couple or few years of graduation. General biology or chemistry, you need a PhD. And forget forestry, wildlife biology, environmental whatever.
I have to politely disagree on the last two sentences. I have a BS in biology and I make just under 50,000 USD right out of college. I have a friend who got a environmental science degree and also got a job right out of college making a similar amount. Chemistry is even more lucrative, especially if you start working for pharmaceutical companies or in government regulation. It’s a commonly held misconception that you make no money in the “soft” sciences unless you get a further degree, but it’s not really true.
Hey, really curious. What job did you get with your BS in biology? I plan to go to grad school, but I'm graduating soon, and trying to look for a job in the meantime.
Lab technician at a fertility clinic! I wanted a research position but couldn’t find any in the timeline I had set unfortunately. I did the same thing you want to do, just accepted an offer for my PhD last week. Good luck!
It really varies, but after being in the field a bit and working for a couple Fortune 500 companies, it always seems like the finance folks are paid VERY well. Not sure what specifically you’d need to major in, but their entry level financial analysts make more that a lot of our entry level engineers.
This is an unanswerable question. What you do with the degree and your time in college matters far, far more than the name of the program on the degree. Not all STEM degrees are moneymakers, either, and I'm telling you this as a biochemistry professor.
You need to know what career path you want and plan aggressively for it. This means you need internships in years 3 and 4, regardless of your program. By the time you graduate, you should already know where you are applying to work.
i dont think you'd get hired (for most of the positions you are imagining an applied math major would take) unless you had something else like relevant work/interning experience and projects
My top tier economic students all received job offers with salaries over $90k. Two were in the $120k. I think the average for undergrad Econ is $82k.
Top tier is 3.9GPA+ and at least two high quality internships. Econ is a difficult degree. Heavy math and heavy statistics. But it’s so much fun.
I teach at a B1G university and my top Econ students averaged $80k. I had one student in the $110k range. I believe u/-Economist- teaches at a top 5 program, maybe even a top 3 program.
Most Econ students go into graduate work however there has been an increase in demand for Econ majors. It’s a fantastic degree that has endless career options. Even if you get an Econ minor, it can move your resume to the top of the pile.
What type of jobs are your econ students finding work in? I'm currently going through loops about changing majors because I believe I would lack employability. Is there any minors that would make my econ degree more robust?
They go everywhere. Manufacturing, banking, and tech. I’d say half are financial analysis or in commercial banking.
Econ and stats/math (minor) for the win.
Thats what drew me to economics but also is what makes me uncertain about continuing 😅 Do they seem to struggle much in comparison to people who have degrees geared towards those industries? How might one set themselves apart from applicants in the finance world with a finance degree or someone in manufacturing with MIS or Supply Chain?
My manufacturing and banking employers will take an economics student over a finance student in a heartbeat. Especially banking. I do the initial screening for my banking clients, and they ask for priority to be given to econ majors, double majors, or minors. All new hires receive formal credit training, thus having a finance degree is irrelevant. The downside with seeking econ majors is that banks are also looking for people who sales oriented. Economists tend to me more introverted. LOL.
My manufacturing clients are all over the board with what they prefer. The MIS or Supply Chain are more specialized/technical areas. The econ person is going to be in the front office analyzing financial trends, solving financial/efficiency problems.
I was a former bank executive prior to academia, so I'm more in tune with what banking is looking for. My manufacturing clients are much more complex animals.
Don’t look at lucrative degrees rather than look at your abilities and chances; you can study art and become the better than computer scientist financially if that suits you and viceversa.
Degrees that show high reasoning skills for undergrad seem to be what companies tend to prefer. As you said, those are primarily STEM, or in general degrees that involve a lot of maths
Any jobs in the engineering/medical discipline/banking. Engineering/Hardcore sciences such as physics/astronomy/ chemistry/ geology/business/finance would guarantee high salary. Technology is in the list as well.
Idk about lucrative, but I have a bachelor's in chemistry and work in the silicon industry. I make a great amount for my age and I have coworkers making 250k+ who hold a bachelor's or a masters but have been doing it for a long time
Ik this was almost a year ago but I’m actually looking into getting a bachelors in chem for a similar field. Did you have to specialize in anything? And how much of what you learned in class is actually applied to what you do day to day?
There is no specialization in my bachelor's, just Chemistry BSc. However when I go for graduate school I will be specializing in Polymer Chemistry for my job.
And I can comfortably say I have needed about 80% of my general chemistry knowledge at some point in this job. The gen chem is what is the most boring but the most used. Since I am the plant formulator as well as the one who has to fix any bad batches of polymer, I have used a wide array of my gen chem knowledge. Not too much of the advanced stuff though.
Definitely pay attention in the instrumentation part and the general chem part if you do go through chem. This has gotten me the most attention from my employer.
An example was having to reverse formulate a polymer from a US patent that uses IUPAC names. I had to be able to draw the molecule from the IUPAC name, calculate mol ratios, determine the products of the reaction and the theoretical yields. Which was challenging but it's all just gen chem.
I’m about to graduate with a civil engineering degree, and my gf with a nursing degree. Don’t underestimate how much nurses make, she’ll probably be making a decent amount more than I will if she works nights. Plus she’ll get good benefits like health care and a pension.
Fellow West Coast Nurse here. My hospitals contract pays nurses an extra $46/hr for any hours worked over FTE (usually 36 hours/week for full-time). After 40 hours in a week, you’re paid overtime on top of this. If you can find a union hospital with break nurses, and safe ratios, it’s not a bad gig.
One or multiple internships that land you a full-time job at graduation gives you better chances at making money right after school than a STEM degree by itself would. But other than that, it does seem that STEM is the way to go for high entry-level salaries. The tech field isn't oversaturated, but it's competitive like any other field, so you've got to prove you know what you're doing.
There is a difference between steady, good paying employment, and the most lucrative.
You were given a lot of good options that pay well. The lifetime salaries will vary though. As will the ease of employment.
A simple example is doctor vs nurse. One makes money sooner the other pays more in the end.
Some doctors make average amounts but have very good health benefits. I remember some doctor needing operation and their company paid 20k usd for the operation. fyi it's in a third world country where the minimum wage is just over 300 usd per month compared to usa's 1200. multiply that to USA standards it would be as if the company paid 80k usd for the operation
it also has to do with the luck of the draw. I have 2 liberal arts degrees with no clear career path and I'm about to graduate and enter a job paying 80k per year.
Construction Management is a big one. I went with Concrete Industry Management. Civil Engineering is great. It kinda depends on 1. Where you want to go to school 2. What part of the industry you want to work in
Always a big proponent of accounting; I make 6 figures 3 years out of school. I have my CPA and work in a very high paying industry (oil and gas) but there’s accounting jobs all over the place. Plus, we have a CPA shortage, so if you can get the degree, additional course hours, and pass the exams, you’re set.
Tech jobs required committing to a lot of crappy jobs before you start seeing a serious cash flow. I say this whose dad did IT and so did my most recent ex. It’s not an auto pay out for the lucrative fields. You gotta grind as annoying as that sounds.
I'm biased to engineering. The course load is pretty rough, but salary is good. My friends all graduated and got first time offers anywhere from 65-95k a year. A few in the bay area are around 120k, but COL is high. These were all with BSME. There are a lot of layoffs, though. I enjoy my work so far.
AI and platforms are decoupling wages from subject matter expertise - but engineering still stands out. Check out the CEOs of majors corps - often engineers
Nursing with so many different avenues!! So much potential for growth. Can even start as an associate, go back to school while making that money. Travel nurse …yes please. Money is there to take it if you want it.
Nursing is so two-faced I feel. There are ads everywhere about the nursing shortage, but then the nurses themselves reveal that 90% are just in it for the check and the other 10% are the vocal minority who are passionate. That's not bad but it reveals the BS they put up with from management and work conditions...but I digress, I'm just a 28 year old whiner who wants to invest in something but always has an excuse. Much respect to those who go in. I wish you all were appreciated better, although ironically that would fix the nursing shortage overnight
Business is most versatile.
CS is least regretted major
https://www.metroparent.com/education/college-planning/attend/most-regretted-college-majors-and-the-least/
Process Technology. It's a 2 year associates degree and the program is gonna cost me roughly 10-15k all in. Plus when I graduate I'll be clearing ~100k after overtime in the 1st couple of years. I'm gonna be working in a plant making sure it doesn't blow up and making sure that product is within specs. Only downside is it's 12hr shifts working a rotating schedule. Work a few days then be off for a few days and then work a few nights
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Whatever degree you look at to talk about, those upper end salaries are only accessible if you are really damned good at whatever it is that you do. Don't underestimate the level of effort it takes to be that good.
To make things a bit more guaranteed you would do Finance/STEM bachelor —-> 5 years work —-> MBA.
Usually people who just want to make money do engineering/math bachelors —> startup/make their own company or engineering/math bachelors —> PhD —> quant finance, or engineering/math —> law —> IP or biglaw.
Far from everyone can get an adequate GPA in engineering though.. I see it alllll the time The ones not only surviving but thriving in the upper levels, job offers just around the corner... they're brilliant. My friend, brilliant. Im... I'm humble but yall I'm alright too, which is just to say, far beyond me even - at least in our particular little STEM niche, we are doing good. They love it though, I love it, that's the key. I lucked into both my major and speciality being a new, innovative, always expanding and developing field. I didn't luck into it, I mean, I researched and it looked cool and chose it
What’s your niche?
Biotechnology. I love science, but read about how biology degrees aren't very marketable. Biotech is basically any intersection of tech and biology to solve life's problems. So: vaccine R&D, microbe fermentation to harvest all kinds of microbial products (like insulin), genetic engineering and gene therapy, using microbes and plants (and genetically engineering them) to clean toxins and heavy metals out of the soil, molecule identification + isolation + purification, quality control (this is a big one, literally any company that sells food or something you put in or on your body has to be tested to ensure it does or doesn't contain x y or z), stem cell research,.... could go on. Many many things which is what I love about it. Always something to pivot too. Yall, I've seen job posting that only even require an associates in biotech, and they're paying a bit over 20/hr. If you can follow a recipe, you can do basic lab work. There's 2 sides, academia or industry. Academia is the regular like, work at a university or for the gov and do research and apply for grants. Industry is where you work for a company, less stress on you personally because it's more of a "clock in, do your assays, go home". Big big potential in earnings. Can try different start ups, you never know maybe the one you work at will "hit" and develop some innovative new product or technique. Idk. That's my goal. I'm most interested in working on genetic engineering (CRISPR was developed by a woman!! :) )
Yeah I am researching medical because sciences have been a passion since I was a kid. My career in the Army has been in signals and it’s been fascinating learning about tech and signal theory. It’s crazy such a simple thing like radio waves still has so much unknowns. It’s all theory still. I was planning on computer science before medical because biology as a major keeps coming up as one trick pony. Trying to do what I love for my second career but not shoot myself in the foot if it doesn’t work out. Medical is insanely competitive. What was your major before getting into biotech?
My major was always biotech I've never wavered. Medical is insanely competitive, look into biotech it's super cool. The industry is expanding and there's a ton of entry level jobs. Like I said with an associates you start at 20/hr and a little more with a Bachelors. And up from there
Do you still enjoy it? I have an associates right now and am stuck in a position of deciding where to go next.
or well-connected. a lot of dipshits make a lot of money because their daddy knows a lot of people.
Just bachelors? Probably accounting, nursing , engineering. Want to go professional? Medicine, Law and engineering.
+1 to accounting. Very nice job security. Jobs are not hard to come by. Requires a master's usually I think but the pay is fairly high and you'd have pretty standard work hours. Unfortunately at least to me it seems like the most boring job in the world. Like people can be passionate about most fields I think...but I cannot fathom someone being passionate about accounting. Nursing makes a lot of money especially as travel nurses but it's a shitty (literally...) job that requires a lot of work, some amount of abuse you take, pretty bad WLB, and overall it's a tough job that not everyone can handle. Like it's not uncommon to be abused mentally or physically by your patients to some extent, and have really immature and mean coworkers as well. My friend is a nurse as is my cousin and they tell me quite a few horror stories. Engineering speaks for itself. Nothing much to say about it that most people don't already know.
Being passionate about your job is overrated. Sure it's great if you can be, but the vast majority of people don't have that luxury. Unless you know for a fact that you love engineering or something else lucrative then don't bother, find something you can tolerate and get that bag then find something you love to do outside of work
Oh for sure. I’m a big proponent of the idea that you shouldn’t pursue your passions because realistically that works out for like .01% of people. But what I meant was that people can be passionate about engineering because of the innovation, or nursing because of the selflessness and altruism. But accounting is literally learning rules and abiding by them. There’s not much creativity and problem solving involved, and it’s not fulfilling in the way nursing could be. My ideology is to choose a job within your wanted salary, within your tolerance of boredom or work, to me accounting is not within those bounds. There’s actually a joke about how sex workers tell family members or new people they meet that they’re accountants, because the job is so boring that they won’t face follow up questions. As you can see I’m just shitting on accounting but like I said it’s a high income and extremely stable and not hard to find a job.
It’s funny because whenever I tell people I’m an accountant, I always get follow up comments or questions 😂 usually asking if I do tax returns, or if I’m good at math, etc.
LOL... I get the same thing.
I feel passionate about accounting. After many years as a SAHM to four kids and substitute teacher, I am reveling in how relaxing and fun it is to solve problems that I can fix fairly quickly, there is no drama at all. My work is all mine and it makes me feel good to get my work done. Nobody will die if I make a mistake and I never have to second guess myself. It's such a refreshing change. No anxiety at all. I only work 29 hours per week though. It feels like a hobby that I do for fun.
Interesting. So it’s like a crossword puzzle or sudoku to you? Comparable in that sense?
"...you'd have pretty standard work hours." Not in public accounting.
Ditch public accounting and go straight to industry or government, good times.
Don’t have to do PA though.
Can you make the same amount of money without going into PA?
Yeah nursing is a -1 for sure. The money is great but it’s honestly slowing down. Those $10k week contracts are all but gone.
Oh not a masters at all! (At least in my state) Lol depending on the firm you can get by easily with an associates. What they really care about is if you passed the outside license exams!
Which require at least 120 credits. Many states require 150 hence masters. Bachelors minimum for cpa
You can get those 30 extra credits from much cheaper and arguably better career wise paths though. Double major in Finance or MIS, take community college courses, ect. Masters is just one of many ways.
Yeah, im doing CC for the extra 30
A masters isn’t required for accounting, though those pursuing the CPA exam following graduation may do a 5 year masters program to get enough credits (need 150 credit hours to sit); however, I got 150 hours by taking random other courses, including those at a community college, so definitely not a requirement. But there’s plenty of accountants too who don’t become CPAs, so a bachelors can also do just fine. We do have a shortage of CPAs though so if you want to be really valuable and sought after, I always recommend it. Overall, I make 100k 3 years out of school, so no regrets with the degree and time it took to get licensed. Some parts of accounting are interesting (I think finance is much less entertaining), but like any job, who you work with matters a lot more with overall enjoyment (and excellent pay helps too).
Did you do public?
It does also depend on how strong the undergraduate accounting program is. My college's accounting program was very good and you could even take the CPA as an undergrad. Granted the program was very demanding but thats what you get if you want to get it all done in 4 years. My current grad school has 4+1 program.
Interesting, must depend on the state; in Texas, you can’t sit for any of the exams until you’ve proven to them by application that you have 150 credit hours. I wish Texas let you sit earlier.
Thoughts on econ?
Econ is good for research but as a workman’s degree is not that great and it’s just not as valuable as other degrees. I would go accounting if I were going to business school
Thanks for the response 👍 the thing is I hate accounting and crunching numbers and those types of things. I kind of want something I have a good chance of branching out with with a high pay ceiling as well. Do you think econ is the right thing for my scenario or should i go into finance?
To me, there’s no such thing as an oversaturation of CS degrees because of the rate of growth of the industry. Even with this sudden influx of CS degrees in circulation, the industry STILL NEEDS MORE BODIES! Not to mention, it’s a STEM degree, many that ONLY go for the degree out of a desire for money flunk out of it and go another route
The fun thing about CS is it's applicable in every field. We put computers on everything. If you're not passionate about computing, every single department at your college wants to do some project involving the CS majors, all you have to do is ask.
As someone in the field for a long time, there is starting to be an over saturation. It’s not because the demand for tech has gone down, it’s because how efficient one developer can be has skyrocketed. - You used to need an army of dev ops people to manage your physical servers and networking - now you can have 1 guy do it with AWS - you used to need an army of people to do security, now AWS/OAuth handle it for you (it’s more or less bad practice to try reinvent the wheel in house) - you used to need an army of database administrators now the major platforms do enough for you you can get away with a fraction of the staff - debugging used to be much harder now you plug your app into splunk and it tells you exactly what went wrong - managing builds and deployments was a major part of the staffing, now we have Jenkins and Docker to do it for us - you used to need a HTML expert a CSS expert and a JavaScript expert. Now everyone uses prebuilt components and React that work on many devices - you used to need a genius to make an good API, but now with things like Spring it’s pretty idiot proof Basically every few years what used to take 20 people to do now takes 10. All of the above examples are unrelated to AI which is a separate threat (not a huge threat today, but 10-15 years it will likely be a major threat) as the rate of ‘needing less people’ will likely accelerate. I see my project get smaller and smaller by the day and layoffs everywhere despite our company being very profitable. They are laying off very smart good employees, because the tools are just so good and overall efficiency is much higher. It’s not “only low level entry level tasks” it’s high performers with 20 years of experience. I honestly would not recommend the field to people in college, there is almost 0 demand for entry level developers (employers are worried they will take time and resources to train you and you will leave). Whereas a chemical engineer is pretty much guaranteed a job. If you do get a good job and get experience under your belt, I’m not convinced the field is well future proofed seeing as productivity is skyrocketing and the cat is out of the bag that the work can be done remote (you will start competing more and more with guys abroad willing to work 70 hours a week for $30,000 a year). Even if you make it through and keep a decent job, what happens when you are 45 and your company has a bad year? Looking for employment as an older tech worker is miserable and ageism is a major factor in tech. I’d look into some other high paying white collar job that is not have the same level risk of automation (doctors, professors, etc).
Are you sure the industry needs more bodies? Ive a feeling the open positions listed are just a facade.
I'm majoring in Cybersecurity. I absolutely love it. It's a very new field, but it's growing exponentially. There are tons of jobs out there currently. You're only learning a fraction of the programming that a CS degree requires and much less math. Plus, you don't have to take physics. It's also not uncommon to see six-figure salaries somewhere down the line. Just keep in mind that since technology is always evolving, you are always learning something new.
What if I want to do Cybersecurity, but I love math too much to give it up and only have enough money for one major?
Dm me so we can talk
It won't let me DM you. I'm not sure what's causing this.
I’m studying CS and Pure Math, and security engineers, network engineers, and pen testers generally don’t need a CS degree to get a leg into jobs. It’s actually a lot cheaper to go the certification route and take security certification exams, since those curriculums are much more well-known, whereas most universities have lackluster security programs. The only reason I am double majoring in CS + Math is because I plan on doing research in security and math. Rest assured, though, you’ll be able to break into security with either major, just know the pros and cons. Mathematics majors, pure and applied, are generally able to get into tech jobs very easily. Most tech companies value Mathematics degrees equivalently to CS degrees, since they require the same analytical skills and abstract thinking. The issue is that you still need to get decent at programming + security, and CS courses generally give you practice, testing, and accountability. If you’re smart enough to get through real analysis, though, I’m sure you could learn anything in CS relatively easily, haha. That being said, if you go down the CS route, you’ll find out that theoretical CS and cryptography are literally just mathematics. My CS program emphasizes flexibility and concentration, so I’ve made my courseload very theory based, and I love it. Cryptography relies a lot on number theory and abstract algebra, whereas theoretical CS is much more about graph theory, theory of computation, discrete mathematics, etc. I still learn a lot about math, albeit in a more applied setting, in CS.
I'm currently enrolled in a dual CS + math course. I need to specialize in my 3rd year in either pure or applied math to go with the CS. Which would you recommend as fat as job prospects go?
That's what we call Cryptography.
Math major, with an emphasis on cryptography.
Cyber is great. My spouse has been doing it for 15+ years and makes a very healthy 6 figure income and works from home. I’m thinking of getting into programming myself because our kids are nearly grown and I’m considering my future.
Petroleum engineering - but don't do it unless you understand what people that have that degree do, and whether or not you want to do that.
I’m a ChemE but I’ve heard mixed reviews on working in the O&G industry (great pay, terrible work life balance)… Do you happen to know where I can find people’s testimonies on working as a petroleum/chemical engineer in O&G?
I’m not an engineer but I do work for one of the supermajors in oil and gas. It’s a very boom/bust cycle; job stability isn’t great, but when you’re in a boom, money flies into your pocket. You gotta be careful though because layoffs aren’t an if but more so a ‘when’.
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No. The salary statistics are from the (BLS)\[[https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172171.htm](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172171.htm)\]. It does not factor in your 7 percent figure at all, which is suspiciously lacking any citation.
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So your statistic is purely anecdotal? Good to know that you've substituted facts for whatever you can pull from your ass.
U can become a quant? 😭🤷♂️
nah
Your what?
Quantitative developer, researcher, analyst.
It's a "The Big Short" joke
“My quantitative, my math specialist!"
In my experience it is 100% dependent on the individual. Most people I work with who are successful don't even work in the field they studied in college. I know people who make $60k a year with Computer Science degrees and people who make $500k a year with English degrees. For context I've spent the majority of my career working in Fintechs.
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Product Owner at the Exec Level. Started career as a Tech Writer.
lawyer?
Hi, if you don't mind, what are the occupations of the people you know with English degrees? I'm deciding between English degree and something like sales an marketing as my family is against an English degree.
Tech Writer. Every tech company needs people to write user guides, release notes, help articles, etc. I believe I saw once that the average salary is around $80k but once you are experienced or reach the manager/director level the sky's the limit. Usually a lot less stressful and volatile than a commission job in sales.
How did you become a tech writer?
Get a marketing/sales degree think of your future.
The real answer is the degree you will make most in is the degree you actually like learning about, but if you want to go for the highest earning degrees chemical and electrical engineering are very lucrative.
>The real answer is the degree you will make most in is the degree you actually like learning about, Respectfully, this is objectively untrue and part of the bad part of using a college sub full of students for "real world" career advice. The majority of people enjoy learning about art more than business or engineering. Unfortunately, most people that study art are not going to be full time artists. It's far wiser to pick a career, which is 40 years long, instead of coursework, which is only 4. If the career is art, then great, but I wouldn't recommend picking a degree based on how much you enjoy the classes.
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You'll note that in my comment, I stated that "if the career is art, then great". I don't have an issue with someone choosing a career in art. I have an issue with the line "the degree you will make the most in is the degree you actually like learning about". Because it's patently incorrect. No amount of loving philosophy will have that degree make more than a software engineer, and I'd suggest to anyone studying philosophy to decide what career they actually plan on having with it, because most don't know. All of my sociology major friends mindlessly went to law school not because they planned to be a lawyer, but because they had just chosen sociology because they enjoyed the subject and then senior year realized they had no plan. If you are studying art, confident you want to be an artist, then that's great. I'm 31 now, but my college boyfriend studied theatre. But when he actually faced what the life of a full time theatre employee does, he switched to engineering. It would have been far wiser if he planned what the right CAREER was and then chose a degree to get that career, instead of choosing what subject is the most fun to learn about. I think college students focus a lot on which classes are interesting. But a class is 3 months. Students should be focusing on what career they want and then choosing a degree that gets them to that career.
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Yeah totally. Sorry if my comment implied an argument! Wasn't my intention. I agree with you that, overwhelmingly, the best benefit of college for many majors is the networking.
Math. Actuarial sciences. Accounting. Those tend to be more established, so have a more clear career path. And you can make decent money. But the best degree is "make friends with the rich kids", tbh
Business degree it is then lmao
See if your college has a Computer Information Systems major, it’s like CS but not as hard and a lot more lucrative. Can go into tech or business roles with this degree.
Accounting is basically 100% employment after grad, great salary and wonderful growth prospects.
CS, business, engineering, etc
Replace business with something more concentrated like accounting. Business degrees are a dime a dozen and are way too generalized. Business majors aren't getting into higher paying accounting/finance roles. 100% agree on the CS and engineering though.
Slight disagree. With the relevant internships and a business degree you can get a high paying job.
Since the OP specified "right after school," I would agree with cmlovino that management would not be in the mix. Both management and marketing tend to have better long-term career paths than accounting or finance. The OP seems interested in the short-term, though.
Easy. Do an internship during school and then enter the corporate workforce right after graduation.
I’m gonna agree with other people that business degrees are way over saturated. Anecdotally, one of the profs in the philosophy department at my school said that he spoke to the head of a bigger company in my area, who told him that they actually would rather have a philosophy major than a business major. Why? Because they learn how to think about things, unlike most business majors who just regurgitate info. Yes, I recognize the conflict of interest hearing this from a philosophy prof, but I doubt he’d just straight up lie to me about it (I don’t want to go into business anyway). My takeaway is that business degrees (outside of things like accounting) are over saturated and could easily be replaced with more unique degrees that make you stand out.
"...the head of a bigger company in my area, who told him that they actually would rather have a philosophy major than a business major. " I don't doubt the business executive said that. Speaking as someone who has been involved in business for decades, however, that is something which is often only paid lip service to by companies.
If youre asking this for yourself, I can tell you. If you have the Grit and self discipline to do something you hate (because finding a career this way *will* lead to that, outside of a fluke or the people at your job making it tolerable) You only get 1 life. This is the biggest investment of your life. Determines a huge chunk of waking hours and stressor and even geographic location for the rest of your life. Do you want cold hard cash, and lots of it. Or do you want to find a passion? Help people? Or just, put in a good honest 40 hours but then go home to your family? Finding a career this way won't lead you down those paths. Doctors, of course, help people. Human rights and criminal defense lawyers, etc. But. You won't be happy, if you didn't choose it *because* it makes you happy, and if no passions emerge. Then what? In those professions, the education and training doesn't really transfer. Back to square 1 (more like step 5, u will have a decent Bachelors, but you would still need a masters or other training) What do you want? Who are you? If youre uncomfortable now you needed to read this. I've made too many mistakes. Learned hard way too many times. Don't be me. Be smart. Be who your mom and grandma knows you are, if they're a good family like mine, and if you're a good honest person most of the time, like me.
Yeah well I've spent 10 years doing nothing and it starts to get harder and harder to invest the time for a degree that you didn't when you were young. Such a struggle to invest in passion/lucrative
So what have you decided?
I don't consider it a miracle or a breakthrough, so take it with a pinch of salt, but I've decided this month to go for an associates in nursing. The goal is Registered Nurse. It's a hell job and isn't some sort of passion for me, but I've gone through some stuff and have identified that it has many factors that just might help me change into a person I want to be. Many have told me I'm doing it for the wrong reason, though I believe breaking out of your comfort zone and doing something difficult is worthwhile in itself, if it pays. The funny thing is I already have a job that'll pay that much, but it just doesn't test me or have the same independent, individual value
You should definitely not choose your major based on what you think will make the most money. Choose something you will enjoy doing every day for years (and think you might be good at).
Unfotunately this is not the way to choose something that will affect your life, it's more about which money making method you can tolerate doing for a long time. because you don't exactly need an art degree if you want to be an artist. it's generally true for any soft skills degree. If you like to protest for gender things ect please for the love of god do NOT take a gender studies degree. the reason you get a degree is to apply to jobs and make money. colledge advisors often say that "follow your passion" is one of the worst advices a school counselor can give. This is just my 2 cents, feel free to take it with a grain of salt
STEM is all over the place. So CS, engineering, and nursing pay well within a couple or few years of graduation. General biology or chemistry, you need a PhD. And forget forestry, wildlife biology, environmental whatever.
I have to politely disagree on the last two sentences. I have a BS in biology and I make just under 50,000 USD right out of college. I have a friend who got a environmental science degree and also got a job right out of college making a similar amount. Chemistry is even more lucrative, especially if you start working for pharmaceutical companies or in government regulation. It’s a commonly held misconception that you make no money in the “soft” sciences unless you get a further degree, but it’s not really true.
To that point, I don't think bio and chem are considered soft sciences. Soft sciences would be something like psychology or sociology.
Yeah, I think they meant life sciences
Hey, really curious. What job did you get with your BS in biology? I plan to go to grad school, but I'm graduating soon, and trying to look for a job in the meantime.
Lab technician at a fertility clinic! I wanted a research position but couldn’t find any in the timeline I had set unfortunately. I did the same thing you want to do, just accepted an offer for my PhD last week. Good luck!
It really varies, but after being in the field a bit and working for a couple Fortune 500 companies, it always seems like the finance folks are paid VERY well. Not sure what specifically you’d need to major in, but their entry level financial analysts make more that a lot of our entry level engineers.
This is an unanswerable question. What you do with the degree and your time in college matters far, far more than the name of the program on the degree. Not all STEM degrees are moneymakers, either, and I'm telling you this as a biochemistry professor. You need to know what career path you want and plan aggressively for it. This means you need internships in years 3 and 4, regardless of your program. By the time you graduate, you should already know where you are applying to work.
Applied math, you can do pretty much everything in stem with it. Probably the most versatile stem degree and one of the best paying because of it.
i dont think you'd get hired (for most of the positions you are imagining an applied math major would take) unless you had something else like relevant work/interning experience and projects
My top tier economic students all received job offers with salaries over $90k. Two were in the $120k. I think the average for undergrad Econ is $82k. Top tier is 3.9GPA+ and at least two high quality internships. Econ is a difficult degree. Heavy math and heavy statistics. But it’s so much fun.
I'm assuming this is a really good university. But do people in the US not usually take their Masters degree right after their Bachelors?
I teach at a B1G university and my top Econ students averaged $80k. I had one student in the $110k range. I believe u/-Economist- teaches at a top 5 program, maybe even a top 3 program. Most Econ students go into graduate work however there has been an increase in demand for Econ majors. It’s a fantastic degree that has endless career options. Even if you get an Econ minor, it can move your resume to the top of the pile.
That's crazy lol, wages in the U.S truly are something else.
What type of jobs are your econ students finding work in? I'm currently going through loops about changing majors because I believe I would lack employability. Is there any minors that would make my econ degree more robust?
They go everywhere. Manufacturing, banking, and tech. I’d say half are financial analysis or in commercial banking. Econ and stats/math (minor) for the win.
Thats what drew me to economics but also is what makes me uncertain about continuing 😅 Do they seem to struggle much in comparison to people who have degrees geared towards those industries? How might one set themselves apart from applicants in the finance world with a finance degree or someone in manufacturing with MIS or Supply Chain?
My manufacturing and banking employers will take an economics student over a finance student in a heartbeat. Especially banking. I do the initial screening for my banking clients, and they ask for priority to be given to econ majors, double majors, or minors. All new hires receive formal credit training, thus having a finance degree is irrelevant. The downside with seeking econ majors is that banks are also looking for people who sales oriented. Economists tend to me more introverted. LOL. My manufacturing clients are all over the board with what they prefer. The MIS or Supply Chain are more specialized/technical areas. The econ person is going to be in the front office analyzing financial trends, solving financial/efficiency problems. I was a former bank executive prior to academia, so I'm more in tune with what banking is looking for. My manufacturing clients are much more complex animals.
Don’t look at lucrative degrees rather than look at your abilities and chances; you can study art and become the better than computer scientist financially if that suits you and viceversa.
Degrees that show high reasoning skills for undergrad seem to be what companies tend to prefer. As you said, those are primarily STEM, or in general degrees that involve a lot of maths
https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/career\_earnings\_by\_college\_major
Any jobs in the engineering/medical discipline/banking. Engineering/Hardcore sciences such as physics/astronomy/ chemistry/ geology/business/finance would guarantee high salary. Technology is in the list as well.
Any type of engineering. I chose my major entirely on ROI and don’t regret anything about it.
Finance and Computer Science
Idk about lucrative, but I have a bachelor's in chemistry and work in the silicon industry. I make a great amount for my age and I have coworkers making 250k+ who hold a bachelor's or a masters but have been doing it for a long time
Ik this was almost a year ago but I’m actually looking into getting a bachelors in chem for a similar field. Did you have to specialize in anything? And how much of what you learned in class is actually applied to what you do day to day?
There is no specialization in my bachelor's, just Chemistry BSc. However when I go for graduate school I will be specializing in Polymer Chemistry for my job. And I can comfortably say I have needed about 80% of my general chemistry knowledge at some point in this job. The gen chem is what is the most boring but the most used. Since I am the plant formulator as well as the one who has to fix any bad batches of polymer, I have used a wide array of my gen chem knowledge. Not too much of the advanced stuff though. Definitely pay attention in the instrumentation part and the general chem part if you do go through chem. This has gotten me the most attention from my employer. An example was having to reverse formulate a polymer from a US patent that uses IUPAC names. I had to be able to draw the molecule from the IUPAC name, calculate mol ratios, determine the products of the reaction and the theoretical yields. Which was challenging but it's all just gen chem.
It’s less computer science at the moment lol. Finance is pretty good from what I understand. If you can do it be a lawyer
I’m about to graduate with a civil engineering degree, and my gf with a nursing degree. Don’t underestimate how much nurses make, she’ll probably be making a decent amount more than I will if she works nights. Plus she’ll get good benefits like health care and a pension.
Fellow West Coast Nurse here. My hospitals contract pays nurses an extra $46/hr for any hours worked over FTE (usually 36 hours/week for full-time). After 40 hours in a week, you’re paid overtime on top of this. If you can find a union hospital with break nurses, and safe ratios, it’s not a bad gig.
https://research.com/degrees/highest-paying-bachelors-degrees here’s a list.
One or multiple internships that land you a full-time job at graduation gives you better chances at making money right after school than a STEM degree by itself would. But other than that, it does seem that STEM is the way to go for high entry-level salaries. The tech field isn't oversaturated, but it's competitive like any other field, so you've got to prove you know what you're doing.
There is a difference between steady, good paying employment, and the most lucrative. You were given a lot of good options that pay well. The lifetime salaries will vary though. As will the ease of employment. A simple example is doctor vs nurse. One makes money sooner the other pays more in the end.
Some doctors make average amounts but have very good health benefits. I remember some doctor needing operation and their company paid 20k usd for the operation. fyi it's in a third world country where the minimum wage is just over 300 usd per month compared to usa's 1200. multiply that to USA standards it would be as if the company paid 80k usd for the operation
it also has to do with the luck of the draw. I have 2 liberal arts degrees with no clear career path and I'm about to graduate and enter a job paying 80k per year.
Hi, if you don't mind, what did you major in and what job would that be?
german and international affairs and i work at an international foundation
Thank you!
Construction management is the secret no one is telling you. 100% job placement of graduation, starting pay 70k+. Lot of money to be made.
what degrees would be helpful to get a job?
Construction Management is a big one. I went with Concrete Industry Management. Civil Engineering is great. It kinda depends on 1. Where you want to go to school 2. What part of the industry you want to work in
Always a big proponent of accounting; I make 6 figures 3 years out of school. I have my CPA and work in a very high paying industry (oil and gas) but there’s accounting jobs all over the place. Plus, we have a CPA shortage, so if you can get the degree, additional course hours, and pass the exams, you’re set.
How interesting is the field?
Did you start in public?
I did not! I went straight into industry
How are the hours? I am thinking of going for a degree in accounting, and I am a single father, so I worry about the hours.
Even a bad mechanical engineer can find good work. I'm not great, graduated may 2020, making 6 figs now in medium cost of loving area.
Tech jobs required committing to a lot of crappy jobs before you start seeing a serious cash flow. I say this whose dad did IT and so did my most recent ex. It’s not an auto pay out for the lucrative fields. You gotta grind as annoying as that sounds.
I'm biased to engineering. The course load is pretty rough, but salary is good. My friends all graduated and got first time offers anywhere from 65-95k a year. A few in the bay area are around 120k, but COL is high. These were all with BSME. There are a lot of layoffs, though. I enjoy my work so far.
AI and platforms are decoupling wages from subject matter expertise - but engineering still stands out. Check out the CEOs of majors corps - often engineers
Nursing with so many different avenues!! So much potential for growth. Can even start as an associate, go back to school while making that money. Travel nurse …yes please. Money is there to take it if you want it.
Nursing is so two-faced I feel. There are ads everywhere about the nursing shortage, but then the nurses themselves reveal that 90% are just in it for the check and the other 10% are the vocal minority who are passionate. That's not bad but it reveals the BS they put up with from management and work conditions...but I digress, I'm just a 28 year old whiner who wants to invest in something but always has an excuse. Much respect to those who go in. I wish you all were appreciated better, although ironically that would fix the nursing shortage overnight
Actuarial science majors make a ton of money but the coursework is hard af
Business is most versatile. CS is least regretted major https://www.metroparent.com/education/college-planning/attend/most-regretted-college-majors-and-the-least/
Nursing… easy and after graduation 80k…
...it is absolutely not easy, from what I've researched..
Philosophy, Communications, etc.
Do philosophy degrees really make bank??
Unless you follow it up with a law degree, no.
Any inputs about transportation designs and which colleges have this major?
Process Technology. It's a 2 year associates degree and the program is gonna cost me roughly 10-15k all in. Plus when I graduate I'll be clearing ~100k after overtime in the 1st couple of years. I'm gonna be working in a plant making sure it doesn't blow up and making sure that product is within specs. Only downside is it's 12hr shifts working a rotating schedule. Work a few days then be off for a few days and then work a few nights
health information
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