Hey WSO,
I'm currently a student at a non-target. Recently, I have been taking a class that brings in guest speakers, who work in various industries (tech, investment banking, etc.).
Both from my instructor and these guest speakers, I have been told that some majors are useless. While I agree with them to some respects (an art history major might prove tough to get a job with), some of the majors they look down upon seems odd. For example, they all keep talking about how an econ major is useless.
Listed below is their perception of majors:
1) Accounting
2) Finance
3) Marketing
4) Computer Science
5) Economics
6) Management
7) Any other liberal arts major
So my question is:
Is a specific major the most important criteria for getting a job, or is better to achieve a high GPA in perhaps a more "useless" major?
Thanks again everyone!
Ranking majors is stupid. What do you want to do with your life? If you want to be a doctor, major in bio. If you want to go to law school, major in something with no grade curve. If you want to work at Google, better be a CS guy.
Some majors make getting some jobs easier (example: accounting -> accountant). If you don't know what you want to do, better to get a high GPA for grad school aps than worry too much about if some dolt wants to rank undergraduate introductory studies (which is all they really are). You don't get the real deal until grad school or work experience.
The rest of the personal bias is noise.
I agree with this. Although some majors are fairly "useless," it's all about your personal experience and what you've actually done that matters. I know kids majoring in Psychobio that have worked at banks because of a previous internship around finance. Anything can be done but being a certain major does indeed make things a lot easier for you.
STEM, Finance, Accounting and Econ are really the only majors that would impress me, although some others (e.g. nursing) are quite respectable.
Everything else gets lumped together in my mind. Nothing wrong with them, I just don't see any transferable skills to finance. That said, even a finance degree doesn't confer that much of a head start. But the above majors say either "I'm interested in finance" or "I'm quantitatively adept".
Undergraduate Major Rankings: Are Some Majors Useless? - Student at non-target (Originally Posted: 02/13/2013)
Hey WSO,
I'm currently a student at a non-target. Recently, I have been taking a class that brings in guest speakers, who work in various industries (tech, investment banking, etc.).
Both from my instructor and these guest speakers, I have been told that some majors are useless. While I agree with them to some respects (an art history major might prove tough to get a job with), some of the majors they look down upon seems odd. For example, they all keep talking about how an econ major is useless.
Listed below is their perception of majors: 1) Accounting 2) Finance 3) Marketing 4) Computer Science 5) Economics 6) Management 7) Any other liberal arts major
So my question is: Is a specific major the most important criteria for getting a job, or is better to achieve a high GPA in perhaps a more "useless" major?
Thanks again everyone!
2x
1) Engineering with high GPA*
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