Category Archives: college majors

college guidance, college majors, college planning, parenting, Uncategorized

Career planning tips for parents of teens

options-susan-pOur guest blog post today is by Susan Posluszny, the founder of OPTIONS for Career & Life Planning, specializing in unique programs and services to support students with college major and career planning. Susan is a Master Career Counselor with over 25 years of career counseling experience including 18 years as a college career center director. She is the author of In Search of a College Major & Career Direction, an interactive program designed to support teens and young adults with choosing a college major and career path.Her career counseling and coaching practice is located in New Boston, NH. Subscribe to Susan’s e-newsletter, Career Options, at www.collegesandmajors.com

Think Big Picture

It’s common to overly focus on the details:  Which ‘one’ major should I pick?  Which ‘one’ career should I pursue?  Yet, research studies show that it’s common for students (and adults) to shift direction over time as they explore, grow, and change.  What to do?  Get your student to identify their top 2 – 3 academic and career interests and then explore ways to simultaneously prepare for and reality test more than one interest.  Sound impossible?  Not at all.  Careful selection of academic courses and career exploration strategies (job shadowing, internships, career related employment or volunteer experience) will do it.  Be sure to spread these efforts out over time so as not to overload.

Discard Outdated Notions of ‘Job Security’

Job security in the form of long term employment with one employer in exchange for dedication and hard work is long gone.  Instead, shifts in the work world have been moving towards project based work and ways to match individual interests and skills to marketplace needs.  Don’t expect selection of the ‘right school’, the ‘right degree’, or the ‘right career’ to provide guarantees of post graduation employment or career success.  Today’s students will need to take charge of their own career development in order to ensure a sense of ’employment security’ for themselves.

Consider Career Interests Relative to College Loan Debt

According to the College Board, the average debt for a Bachelor’s degree was $23,200 in 2007-2008.  an individual student’s loan debt can vary significantly from this figure but the bottom line is that many students are feeling pressured to pursue academic and career choices that will allow them to pay off their loans…even if these choices don’t particularly interest or excite them.  So, how about your student?  Will college loan debt drive your student’s college major and career decisions?  If so, it’s as if your student is working for the financial institution.  Help your student to identify their top career interests and to explore creative options for pursuing career preferences while owning one’s financial reality.  Do all that you can to help your student avoid limiting future options by taking on too much debt.

Explore Career Preferences Prior to Choosing a College Major

Many students choose a college major first and then determine their career choice based on their chosen major.  This is a no brainer when a major is directly linked to a career field (nursing, education, engineering, etc.) but this approach has its limits.  First, it doesn’t work so well with majors that cover broad interest areas like English or Business Administration.  Second, many students end up pursuing career interests totally unrelated to their majors.  While it can be helpful for students to consider academic subjects that interest them when choosing a college major/career, it’s also valuable to explore your career interests  Once key career interest themes are identified, research to see if these interests have specific college major requirements.  Chances are that there’s quite a bit of flexibility with academic choices relative to career pursuits.

Copyright, Susan B. Posluszny, OPTIONS for Career & Life Planning LLC

If you would like to contact Susan or find out more information about the services she provides, you can contact her at:

Her websites: www.careeroptions4me.com and www.collegesandmajors.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanposluszny

Email:  susan@careeroptions4me.com

college guidance, college majors, college planning, parenting

When a parent disapproves of a child's career choice

options-susan-pOur guest blog post today is by Susan Posluszny, the founder of OPTIONS for Career & Life Planning, specializing in unique programs and services to support students with college major and career planning. Susan is a Master Career Counselor with over 25 years of career counseling experience including 18 years as a college career center director. She is the author of In Search of a College Major & Career Direction, an interactive program designed to support teens and young adults with choosing a college major and career path.Her career counseling and coaching practice is located in New Boston, NH. Subscribe to Susan’s e-newsletter, Career Options, at www.collegesandmajors.com

While watching the Food Network channel one day, I happened upon a series called ‘Chefography’.  This episode of Chefography featured a biographical account of Wolfgang Puck’s journey to success.  I knew little about this renowned chef but I was intrigued since I’d recently been to Disney World and had a great experience at his restaurant, Wolfgang Puck Café, in Downtown Disney.  While annual revenue from his cluster of businesses now averages millions of dollars, his father did not approve of his career interest and his early career experiences were quite shaky.

wolfgang-puckAt the tender age of 14, Puck left his home to work as an apprentice in a hotel kitchen.  Evidently, young Puck was a bit of a klutz and the chef threw him out and sent him back home to his parents.  He was ashamed to face his father with the news of his job loss since his father was against this career choice.  Dreading going home, he spent hours on a bridge contemplating suicide while looking over a river that ran through town. Eventually, Puck went back and hid in the hotel’s basement, peeling potatoes for the kitchen workers, until the chef discovered him two weeks later.  The chef appreciated Puck’s tenacity and made arrangements for him to apprentice in another hotel’s kitchen.  Puck’s career took numerous twists and turns over time as he honed his culinary skills and began his ventures as a restaurant owner.

As I watched this show, I couldn’t help but imagine the emotions that surged through Puck as he contemplated facing his father or committing suicide.  It’s natural for children to want to please their parents and fear of parental scorn can weigh heavily on a child.  If young Puck had committed suicide, would his father have realized the role his influence played in the choice to end his life?  As I reflected further on Puck’s life and career, I couldn’t help but wonder what his father must think of his son’s career decision now that he’s a successful businessman and one of America’s most famous and influential chefs.  I expect that he no longer considers his son’s decision to have been a poor one.

Research that I conducted while working as a college career center director revealed that parents are the number one influence in the career and college major choices made by their children.  That influence may be subtle, and beyond the conscious awareness of the child, or not so subtle as was the case with young Puck and his father.  Now I suppose you could argue that his father’s influence actually helped to lead young Puck to success.  You might say that what helped Puck to hang in there, when the going got tough, was wanting to avoid hearing his father say, ‘I told you so’.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t help think that there are better ways to influence a child.

As parents, it can be most challenging to support a child’s career decision when it goes against the grain of our own personal values and the future we envision for that child.  Yet, we can never know what the future holds and where a chosen path may lead.  As children grow, they need to cultivate a sense of self in order to one day make their own way in this world.  Along with a growing sense of self, they also need to develop confidence in their ability to take positive action towards their career goals.  This includes learning how to identify their career and lifestyle preferences, how to explore career options that match those preferences, and where to go to gain the skills and life experiences that will move them in a direction of their own choosing.  Parents can help their children to build self confidence by telling them they believe in their ability to take positive action on their own behalf.  Parents can also facilitate a growing sense of self by encouraging their children to engage in activities and experiences that let them explore and reality test their career interests, so that they are making informed choices.  Yes, as parents, we are the number one influence in the lives of our children.  It’s up to us to decide the form that our influence will take.

If you would like to contact Susan or find out more information about the services she provides, you can contact her at:

Her websites: www.careeroptions4me.com and www.collegesandmajors.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanposluszny

Email:  susan@careeroptions4me.com

college guidance, college majors, college planning

Recession Safe Majors

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Today’s guest blog post is by David Replogle for “The Real College Guide”

You could waste four years studying a foundering field. Or, find out right here what careers (and majors) are still worth pursuing during times of economic stress.

Like the national census or a good Bruce Willis movie, a recession hits the United States about every 10 years or so. It doesn’t take a math major to see it’s been nearly that long since the burst of the dot-com bubble, and now, the collapse of mortgage-backed security has brought Wall Street — and the rest of the economy — to its knees again. As for college students? Well, we’re just crossing our fingers that four years is enough time for the job market to rebound.

Luckily, the U.S. financial system seems to be on the upswing. “By the end of the year, things should be looking better,” says Laurence Shatkin, author of The 150 Best Recession-Proof Jobs. college-booksBut Shatkin warns that a recovery would not necessarily signal a return in jobs. “They are the last thing to recover in a recession; businesses are going to wait until the last minute to stop using temporary hires. It will easily be over a year until this country starts seeing an increase in job openings.” Here, we relay the crème de la crème of careers so you can declare a major now that will set you up for success later.

What to Pursue

Health care

Even in dire straits, people need certain services. Shatkin cites the health care industry, which pays well and continues a growth pattern as the field most adept at staying afloat during a financial downturn. Careers in the medical realm — physicians, surgeons, pharmacists, health service managers — round out No. 6 through No. 10 on Shatkin’s list of 150 recession-proof jobs.
Major in: biomedical sciences, biology, chemistry. Plan on being pre-med.

Information technology

High tech is an industry with heavy growth — recession or no recession. With the Internet getting bigger by the millisecond, the stakes for finding a job in the technological world are up. The market does, however, face competition from outsourcing, since labor abroad is cheaper.
Major in: computer science, mathematics, computer engineering, electrical engineering. No lit majors here.

Government

Shatkin is quick to point out that careers in government don’t have to be defined by bureaucratic paper pushing and yards of red tape. “Careers like school administrators and law enforcement officers fall under the government’s sphere,” he says. Government positions have had better protection against layoffs, which means more job security.
Major in: public policy, history, politics. Law school is another path to take if you’re looking to snag a spot working for the Feds.

Green jobs

An important, budding movement is the green sector — especially green energy. Organizations are looking for enthusiastic college grads to jump on board. Plus, the current presidential administration wants to transform energy needs into a self-sustaining machine anchored by clean and renewable power.
Major in: environmental science, civil engineering, environmental engineering. Although, there are opportunities for activists, advertisers and writers to get involved too, since the field is relatively new and malleable.

Education

The good news is that there’s still a very high demand for teachers. The bad news is that schools get funding from local taxes, so when this revenue dries up, so does money toward teachers’ salaries. Making big bucks is almost out of the question.
Major in: various topics in education, from math to P.E.

What to Avoid

Journalism

While Shatkin says several journalists still maintain great jobs in various trades, from padding the blogosphere to entertainment reporting, the field faces an uphill battle against two formidable opponents: bankruptcy and the Internet. Shatkin, himself a writer, claims the trick is to find a good niche: “I write about careers now, and I love what I do.”

Entertainment

“The field has always been fiercely competitive,” Shatkin says. He points out that many who can’t make it in other jobs resort to packing up and moving to Hollywood, betting on a slight chance of making it big. Now that the masses have less money to spend on entertainment, the industry has lost some of its sheen.

Finance

Careers in finance have been hit harder than most. “It was oversold for a very long time, and now it’s hurting,” says Shatkin. He describes the nature of finance as extremely cutthroat. Many financial companies value experience, which puts recent college graduates at an immediate disadvantage. And since many former employees in the financial realm were laid off and are now looking for work, the competition is stiff.

Staying Smart

In the eight months since Shatkin’s book was published, the situation has gotten worse. “When I wrote the book, there was only the likelihood of a recession,” he says. “You never know you’re in a recession until you’re knee-deep. Nowadays, it’s harder to find a job, investments have lost value and layoffs are increasing. People’s retirements are at stake.”

Shatkin’s advice to freshmen? Get a well-rounded education. “We need people in liberal arts who understand science and math, and engineers and scientists who can write,” he says. By pursuing different subjects, students discover skills or talents they never knew they had. “You become more versatile and learn about yourself. Don’t limit it to schoolwork. Pursue out-of-class activities on campus as well.”

college guidance, college majors, college planning, parenting, Uncategorized

Is your college-bound teen a math wizard?



By Lauren Joffe for The Real College Guide

math-picMath is your thing? Cha-ching! Turns out the 15 bachelor’s degrees with the highest starting salaries have a common denominator: They’re all math-related.

Turns out that seventh-grade algebra could come in handy after all — in fact, you can bank on it. Why? Well, recent research shows that math-related fields are highly lucrative. And if you have a solid mathematical foundation from which to build, turns out it’s not all that difficult for undergrads to prepare. Here we check out why majors that require heavy-duty math skills, like engineering and computer science, have recent and soon-to-be grads reaping some serious rewards. …

Hot-ticket Degrees
Of the 15 highest-earning diplomas, a full-on 12 are engineering majors. That’s a hefty number tipping the scale — the findings of a recent National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) survey. Petroleum engineering tops the list with an average starting annual salary of around $83,000. Non-engineering high-earning majors include computer science and actuarial science followed by construction management, which ends the list at a roughly $53,000 starting salary.

While the average post-grad job offer rounds out at $48,500, a chemical or mining engineer (the second and third top-earning degrees, according to the NACE survey) is offered a whopping $64,000 to start. Big diff. Here’s the complete list of the 15 highest earning majors:

  1. Petroleum engineering
  2. Chemical engineering
  3. Mining engineering
  4. Computer engineering
  5. Computer science
  6. Electrical engineering
  7. Mechanical engineering
  8. Industrial engineering
  9. Systems engineering
  10. Engineering technology
  11. Actuarial science
  12. Aeronautical engineering
  13. Agricultural engineering
  14. Biomedical engineering
  15. Construction management

Simply Supply and Demand
Not sure how this adds up? The basics of any economics class revolve around the principle of supply and demand, and engineering majors are making bank because of this very principle. According to NACE executive director Marilyn Mackes, “Many of the engineering disciplines benefit from an imbalance in the supply-demand ratio. Even in a tight job market, there are simply more opportunities requiring an engineering degree than graduates available to fill those positions. That drives up salary.”

“The ability to handle quantitative information makes anyone more valuable in today’s workforce,” agrees NACE director of research Edwin Koc. “Much of the decision-making in any business is based on the analysis of data — numbers. Having that skill not only means you are likely to receive a higher starting salary, but that you are more valuable after you are actually employed.”

Still, Koc doesn’t believe offering higher salaries draws more students into these fields: “While the number of graduates overall increased substantially between 1997 and 2007, those in majors such as engineering and computer science did not increase very much even though these were the majors with the highest starting salaries for bachelor’s degrees.”

Easy as One, Two, Three?
It’s not tough to understand why more students aren’t jumping on the math-based bandwagon. Students probably migrate away from such degrees because they are infamously rigorous. For example, a major such as computer engineering requires its students to take calculus I, II and III; linear algebra; and differential equations along with a slew of other engineering, programming and technical courses. Intimidated yet?

For many students, the thought of spending an entire undergraduate career doing math is more than intimidating — it is downright frightening. But why are so many of us scared of something that really is rather elementary? To get some specifics about obtaining an average engineering degree at a reputable four-year institution, we consulted Fred Greenleaf, New York University’s director of undergraduate studies. Greenleaf professes, “Most people are actually stymied by third- to 9th-grade math experience.”

Not too surprising when a survey conducted this time last year by Wakefield Research found that of 400 kids ages 9 to 14, more than one-third said math was their most difficult subject. Eighteen percent of kids surveyed called math “boring,” while 13 percent actually referred to it as “torture.” And that’s not all: The parents of the kids were surveyed, as well, and a full 86 percent of those parents admitted math is important to their careers — even though half said they thought they’d never need the math they learned in school.

It’s Never Too Late
“If you enter college with a weak foundation where basic skills are not there, when you get to college, it is a great jolt,” says Greenleaf. But keep in mind that Greenleaf does not believe this means a student who is behind the proverbial eight ball is unable to do math. “In the K through sixth levels, if you don’t learn to think in terms of algebra, numbers, fractions, etc., it just becomes more difficult. It is like learning a language: As you get older, it gets harder.”

While math is a skill that can be obtained by studying often, there are still students who struggle no matter how much they try. Sound familiar? At the foundation of this problem lies a simple inability to think analytically. “It’s not that they are incapable; they just are of temperamental thinking,” says Greenleaf. “Reading math is analytical, whereas writing math is more irrational … it comes from intuition. All problem-solving is coupled with rational skills to exploit any intuition you might have.”

But if students work hard at building foundational skills, Greenleaf asserts that they can overcome any difficulties. Many colleges offer remedial courses in calculus and algebra to students who feel shaky with their math skills. Greenleaf helped write the remedial course at NYU nearly 10 years ago: “Many times I hear, ‘This is the first time a math class ever made sense to me.’ These students at the lower [skill] level are the ones we need to focus on to make sure they develop the capability. Learning to think for themselves is a huge adjustment.”

How to Get in the Game
Before you go changing your major, it’s important to understand how to jump aboard and what exactly will be required of you. Because every university varies slightly in terms of requirements, check out your school’s Web site. Go through the list of required courses and descriptions to see if they are of interest to you. Don’t expect to escape calculus, statistics and algebra, as these foundational classes are necessary regardless of your institution. Still uncertain? Make an appointment with your advisor or someone in the math department. A personal meeting will help you discover if a math-related career is right for you.

Also, understand the specifics that will be expected of you once you graduate and join the workforce. According to those already in the field, much of their time is spent doing actual mathematical calculations, while the remainder is dedicated to writing reports on the conclusions. Moreover, you might be responsible for testing prototypes, redesigning products, and researching and developing solutions.

Regardless of compensation, entering a field that you think is a snore will make for an exceptionally unrewarding college and post-graduate career. But if obtaining a math degree is your calling, don’t hesitate! You’re about to enter a field that not only promises to be desirable to employers but also provides financial security and job stability. Koc affirms, “The current prospects for the near future as outlined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the math-related majors, particularly in computer science, have among the best growth prospects.”

Each Wednesday I’ll be posting guest articles from The Real College Guide: great information for college-bound teens and their parents.