Poli sci for college

Considering Poli Sci for college major. I am seriously worried about finding a job with it. I know places like McKinsey & Co and Bain & Co employ people fresh out of bachelors and masters training, but competition must be harsh. Do any of you know if a Poli Sci degree is good, or is there a similar degree that has a higher chance of getting me a job with a salary like McKinsey?

well I'd be lying if I said I knew anything about these specific companies you're mentioning or that I'd research it for you..

but I can tell you that political science is an absolutely horrible major, and I can't imagine anyone with less than a 3.9 ever finds a job. and not just a 3.9 from any old college, I'd imagine people with bachelors from harvard are doing alright, maybe. Otherwise I think you might just be forced to try and get a masters or doctorate in a desperate bid to be able to teach somewhere..

have you seen those graphs that are all over the internet when you google, "average income by degree/major"? well all that data is pretty important and is trying to tell you something. i hope you're intelligent or have some affinity for math because if you don't there's almost no reason for you to go to college.

if you aren't having it paid for you by family or something and you're going to have to assume the debt then college has to be a very purposeful investment. are you familiar with the modern cliche of the 28 or 30 year old with a masters in art, history, philosophy, poltical science, biology, english, sociology, or psychology, who is living at home and can't find a job?

over 67% of all high schoolers today are moving onto higher education, spurred on by cheap credit and baby boomer parents and grandparents telling their children things like "follow your heart and the money will follow." the fact that you say you're seriously worried about it speaks volumes as to your intelligence.

the kid who doesn't think twice about whether or not their degree will bring them income in the future are the ones who end up living at home at age 30 or as managers at McDonalds. i won't cover them all, but there are a narrow handful of things worth going to college for: science (excluding social sciences & biology), mathematics (must be applied in some way, don't try and become a teacher or theoretician unless you're the next john nash), engineering..

cont..

engineering: chemical, mechanical, electrical, petroleum, all pretty fucking good.. technology: computer science is alright, IT is meh, tons of other majors are decent here..

but jesus man, as someone who is profoundly interested in all things humanities and bored to death by everything that involves hard work (math/science) i'm telling you right now that you'd enjoy making 100k/yr and reading sartre in your off time MUCH MORE than you'd like sitting around without a job.. or working at auntie annes, and trying to get some what think tank? or some fucking bullshit to hire you to spout your opinions.

and if you absolutely don't want to go to college for any scientific pursuit and fear you'll struggle with calculus or software programming.. then just go ahead and learn to trade forex or start your own business. those are the real goals at the end of the day anyway, to work for yourself.

kinda all over the place, hope you take into consideration all i've tried to say.

Thank you for your input. Before my interests suddenly changed to humanities, I was immersed in neuroscience (most likely because my neighbor was one and introduced me to a bunch of people).

I looked at a "salaries by major" table on WSJ, and I finally get why so many people at my school aspire to be engineers.

I actually planned for Comp Sci or Cryptography to be my major, just in case shit like this happened.

I am not too bad in math (then again, my standards for bad are different). My school has lanes and I am in a mid-tier lane. But science was hell for me, probably because teachers not giving a shit due to having tenure. Taking AP AB Calc starting August.

I really don't know what the hell to choose for my major now. I am applying to colleges soon and I really need to make a decision.

In Canada you need a BA before getting into law school. Poli sci is pretty common for that. unless that's your plan, dont do it

That was something my father suggested, but that isn't my plan, and thus, not doing it.

Political Science B.A. here. Don't do it.

Unless you're planning to go into law (which is full of young kids plus all the old people who refuse to retire) or you want to go into criminal justice (everything from detective to FBI) you're better off going with a boring but safe bet like what said.

I'm in journalism (top kek right) and the only reason I picked political science was because I wanted to write about politics (plus the degree involves lots of research skills believe it or not). Had I picked a journalism degree I'd be even worse off, but had I really wanted a journalism job I could have made a better choice majoring in economics, computer science or some kind of petroleum engineering, because those are all hot topics that editors want experts to write about.

TL;DR: Political Science grad telling you to bet on a better horse.

May I ask where you graduated?

i don't know anything about how neuroscience is looking right now but i'd imagine it's alright--probably a lot of meh positions in academia with some meh positions in medicine and then some nice positions in the private sector.

i'm doing comp sci. right now and i'd recommend the same to you, it's a safe bet and you can take it a lot of different ways and combine it with any number of minors. plus with comp sci you're actually learning about the direction our world is going, technology wise, and would probably do more for you in terms of starting your own business than ANY business degree would.

at the end of the day i'd say double down and take college as seriously as you can, don't fuck off and study hard. try and pursue whatever interests you most out of a small group of extremely lucrative options. don't let perceived difficulty or how inadequate you feel you may be change your mind and take you out of a path like chem. eng or mech eng. and lead you instead into poli sci, sociology, communications.. or any similarly ballooning with young idiots humanities major.

There seems to be a lot of jobs out there though. A quick Indeed search with salary of +95000 reveals +2000 jobs in my area.
As mentioned above, there seems to be some opportunists. But things always have a chance of failing. Would you support the idea of taking Comp Sci as a minor?

opportunities, not opportunists.
gg misspell

opportunities in poli sci? sure, there's opportunities in absolutely everything. since you are probably a bit smarter than most you might always be capable of being in that top 10% or whatever. but still, just because you're musically gifted and think you can be as good as steven tyler, or yo-yo ma, or whatever, doesn't mean that it's guaranteed, or that it's even the better choice. at the end of the day, certain fields are going to be expanding and growing and getting a lot more money and new needs while others like all the humanities will continue to be less and less useful as more and more people get degrees in them because they're easy and interesting.

I have a bachelors's in Economics from a top-10 econ school worldwide. Decent GPA (3.7), but no writing experience. Just graduated.

How do I start down your career path?

I'm a senior poli sci major at an unranked state uni. Lots of my friends who graduated found jobs. Lots of dummies in the major because it isn't hard, and they don't find jobs.

Protip: biggest employer in the us is the government, and they pay decently well. If you have a poli sci related career you'll eventually get a master's degree, but you should probably work for a few years before getting that.

If you can, minor in math or stats, or double major in math or stats. I did a minor in econ which will give me a substantial leg up, at least for federal jobs.

My plan after graduating is to join the military, then probably go to law school.

>over 67% of all high schoolers today are moving onto higher education,
That's not true. Only 2% go directly from high school to college. Let me find the statistics but only 19% of millennials have a college degree.

Working for the government kind of blows. I know a lot of people leave the government sector because it gives no promotion or incentive to be creative.

Most people get a job in something unrelated to their degree, people who leave uni and don't get a decent job have nothing but their lack of drive to blame, instead of graduating and getting a shitty job just for quick money then getting stuck just enter a graduate scheme.

I started a small political and market consulting company in DFW (Texas) 2 years ago.

While I don't know what either of those companies are like, I do know quite a bit about the other consulting firms in the area. If you are creative and hard working they will hire you, It's very easy to work your way from the bottom of one of these firms into an actual position with a career path. (i started out working for who is currently my opposition in most races)

I've only had a national contract once but most of my work involves state representatives and judges, had two congressional races thus far, only one won of them. You do not need a poli sci degree to pursue any consulting work especially political consulting. If you're planning on studying Law then it's a good way to go, the government will hire you with just about any fucking degree though.

It kind of depends on what you really want to do at the end of the day, but I would honestly tell you not to choose poli sci unless you are just a fucking genius and are adept in some other field.

Nice trips. Do you want to be a freelance journalist, or work in a newsroom somewhere?

First off, location, location, location. The vast majority of journalism jobs are in Texas, New York City, California, Washington D.C., Washington State, and Oregon. In that order.

Sometimes NYC is ahead of Texas in available jobs but right now Texas is in the lead. That's talking Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston.

So if you don't want to move to those cities (inlcuding L.A., Seattle, etc.), rethink going down the path.

Secondly, you need to network, network, network. Getting a job is 90 percent nepotism. Anywhere from 50 to 150 people might apply for a good journalism job these days, and what always floats to the top is someone who went to a "brand name" school like Columbia, or someone who knows someone who works at the job.

Why? Because you're already vetted by someone they trust. It makes you less of a risk to hire. Simple as that. I mean, there's a shitload of qualified and semi-qualified people who want the job. Have to pare them down somehow.

Third, skills, skills, skills. Aside from knowing AP style, you need to have abilities they want. So, knowledge of a particular field is a good start. Know about computers? Fuckin' A. Know about economics? Good. Etc. BUT that only counts if you have clips. As in bylines. Just having a degree is worthless unless you have proof of your writing.

Problem is, you can't get clips without a gig, and you can't get a gig without clips. This is where writing in college comes in. If you're already out of school and looking to get your foot in the door, start small. Try finding online publications to pitch story ideas to, try hitting up the news departments at local colleges/universities, or try starting up a blog where you write a well-written, 500 word article at least once a week. Then start pitching to editors, later on apply for full-time jobs as they develop.

Any questions?

A university in Texas that you've never heard of.

Is Physics a good major? I am at Ivy right now and doing well with it, but don't know what career path to go down.

I just want to get real rich and make an actual mark on this world, be a high energy impact player like Trump

My MBTI is ENTJ is that matters

help me out Veeky Forums senpai

physics? better than most majors for sure. i'm aware though that positions for theoretical work are tight in academia and the private sector, whereas most job openings are in the field of "experimental physics"--which i take to mean applied physics in some sense of the word.

if you're going to an ivy school though you should be fine either way... you'll probably know more about jobs in the field than I do since you're majoring in it.

Are you taking an MA in International Relations into account? I know of a few cool government jobs that seek IR MA degrees that pay relatively well (60k-80k) for jobs that are more enjoyable than working in a cubicle.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of dumb fucks in Poli Sci programs, but if you know what you're doing, and your GPA is high, why wouldn't these gov agencies hire you?

>2% go directly from HS to college
check pic related, I source my info. apparently it's going down though, as most people are catching onto the fact that it's a giant fucking bubble. still, 2%? that number is so freakishly low I seriously wonder where you pulled it from, almost as if you were literally like a college board admissions shill or something crazy. I trust it was an honest mistake or you just heard that somewhere.

you are right that less millennials have college degrees than gen Xrs, I've just confirmed that. but at the same time tons of millennials are still in school.

How does a political science degree translate into generating an income?

What skill is it that you wield? You have political opinions? Doesn't everyone?

I won't lie I haven't dug into the specifics of these gov't agencies or what kind of degrees they're looking for, how many people hire, or how good that section of the market looks. If you really believe you're onto something good and that it's possible and your data is all well based then I urge you to try.. my message is intended simply to discourage or dissuade any starry-eyed 18 year olds who think they can major in anything and find a job. At the end of the day some English majors still get jobs and some poli sci. type jobs need done too.. just seriously consider how these specific careers are growing, where they might be going in the future.. and what's marketable. I wish you only the best of luck.

something I've often wondered.. I think it mainly boils down to a small market based primarily in academia, some positions in government, and some other positions in the private sector that work close to government or in the realm of think-tank type shit.

I concur with you that everyone has an opinion (especially on politics) and just spouting out my personal and likely biased opinion will not magically give me an income. If everyone can do that, why should I get paid?

Regardless, I am going to college, and I need to make this investment count. If possible, I would like to gain a good income from something that I genuinely enjoy. Knowing this is unlikely, I want to know if there is anything similar to political science that has a higher likelihood of landing me a job with a good/decent salary. I hope that the bachelor's or master's course I pursue gives me the tools I need to make this happen. The world will not evolve for me to succeed, I must adapt to succeed.

>How does a political science degree translate into generating an income?
>What skill is it that you wield? You have political opinions? Doesn't everyone?

Spoken like a true high school student. If you were in any university (hell if you were in some city-level community college) you would know enough to know that a Political Science degree is the stepping stone to law school.

Even that notwithstanding you'd have read this thread and seen all the other jobs mentioned that stemmed from a POLS degree.

Inb4 "hurr just trolling"

>Spoken like a true high school student. If you were in any university (hell if you were in some city-level community college) you would know enough to know that a Political Science degree is the stepping stone to law school

That's very cute and all, but what about the 95% of poli-sci BAs that don't make it to law school?

Not to mention the fact that average lawyer income is like 80k/yr, and that's after 4 years Poli sci + law school. And you can imagine how many kids life dream it is to become a "lawyer."

You weren't wrong to accuse poli sci. majors of wanting to get paid to spout off their own political views. The real shame is that despite their genuine interest in politics and shit they're just going to be normies subscribing to the American left-right dichotomy. Anyone who's smart enough to see past that shit isn't going to major in bullshit in the first place. Ever talk to stand up white-dude STEM majors? There's a reason most of them are smart and got all their shit straight. Humanities majors? Majority of them are pure average IQ 102 idiots whose every political thought is spoonfed to them from Good Morning America, Facebook, and Reddit.

>sarcasm

Thanks for proving you were caught with your fucking pants down and you don't have a fucking argument anymore.

Also

>citation needed

Most veterinarians make $60K a year after 4 years of undergrad + 4 years of vet school + 2 years of residency so you're a moron for trying to cherry-pick.

Jesus fucking Christ, just study what you want to study. If all you care about is money, don't go to college or just major in engineering. Simple.

Idk what you mean by trying to cherry pick. It seems like being a veterinarian is a horrible thing to get into as well.

B-b-b-but user . . . vet school is a STEM degree . . . Veeky Forums and /pol/ said STEM degrees were all better than social sciences!

well I know at some point I said biology is a shit science, but if I've seemed to argue that all things STEM are holy and all other things are 100% worthless then that's my bad.

biology is shit, pure mathematics can be shit.. medicine is pretty bad nowadays by virtue alone of how expensive school is and how long you have to go.. not to mention the fact that the field is constantly under political pressure and the whole health insurance scene is fucked up.

psychology is total shit, and some would consider that STEM, archeology is probably shit, same with forestry type wildlife sciences.. then again I don't know how bad geology is, I think some of them do pretty well..