How did you guys decide on your majors?

BTW I graduated in Business Administration and work in the IT industry.

 

Well, you should have a degree period to get a decent job with decent pay. But no, you don't need an IT degree to work in IT.

 

Be a dentist. Work 3 days a week and spend the other 4 banging your hot young dental assistants.

 

i think it's time for that major switch i was talking about,

 

I'm not ****ing with you. By the time you are 30, you will be wondering what to spend money on. Your house will be paid for, so too will your student loans. At 30 you'll be a dentist with no notes, wondering WTF to do with the gobs of money you will be wallowing in.

**** IT and anything else.

Becoming a dentist is pretty damned similar to printing cash.

 

I'm amazed that all you guys don't really do the job you have your degree in. I'm studying electrical engineering, and although I might in the distant future have a management job or something more business-related, it's completely impossible that someone from the economic branch would do 'my' work.

btw, +1 on the dentist. We have couple of them in our neighbourhood, all in their 30s with huge houses and every Mercedes you can choose with the 5 liter engine. My dentist knows I'm a car guy and when I'm there for the usual routine check, he always asks me what to buy next...

 

If you're going to do IT pick the engineering version, either computer science or computer engineering, and couple it with an accounting or finance minor. Do not do the business version of IT.


It is hard to argue with the dentist option however

 

I wanted to do what i was interested in and i wanted to make some money. Although, i want to be happy more than i want money. I've always been interested in business and investing and stuff like that.


Finance and Management double major



Only 2 more years left. I took classes all summer, will need to take classes over Christmas and will also need to take classes all next summer too. It'll be worth it in the end though

 

My brother works in IT, is brilliant, and failed out of college with a .666 GPA (which he thought was hilarious)

But an IT degree would serve you well.

 

MIS is still in strong demand. Get into IT consulting unless you're going to work for yourself. There is a strong demand for anyone that can not only develop, but also help management use that data to see trends and make better decisions. Get into a small firm and you'll be compensated well, have a fairly normal workweek, flexible hours, and plenty of time to enjoy your life outside of work.

Unless you are one of those types where your life is your work, then try to choose a job that gives you a large pay but doesn't break your back or your soul in the process.

And I would advise against a strong IT/programming degree. You'll just end up being the code monkey for all of the more business oriented/less technical project managers that are making more money and moving up the ladder faster.

 

Medical School was it.

 

In my opinion, you gotta know how to do the actual work before you can tell other people to do it. There's a reason many legitimate schools DON'T offer undergrad business/management degrees. You gotta do your time. If nothing else, the employees you're managing will have a lot more respect for you.

 

Coding is slowly becoming a thing of the past. It won't disappear entirely, but it's becoming more automated and modulaized every day.

No, you NEED a Degree to get you in the door. TONS of companies won't even get a chance to look at you unless you
have the 'Degree - Yes' box checked on your online job app.

Just to get you in the door, you do.

This is EXACTLY what my next door neighbor does.
Not his hot young assistants - he has middle-aged MILFS - but he's banging everything BUT the ones that work for him.
His office is only a couple miles away, he comes and goes all day long, in between 'appointments'.
And yes, he 'works' 3 days a week.


Folks, I'm not saying to avoid IT entirely - but you really gotta watch what area(s) you go into - some will become antiquated - some won't, but MOST will.
If I had a choice, I'd become a SQL/ORACLE Guru. And even that I'm not so sure about.

Personally, I myself would be very leery of Sys Admin work, or 'coding'.
The next thing that scares me is it seems a lot of companies hiring specific-IT folks - these companies are selling out, being taken over, merging, and then they consolidate staff. And let some go. It's happened to me twice, and I still see it I'd say twice a month with my friends.

 

Get your MIS degree. Then forget all the technical stuff and only retain the business stuff, and go into technology sales with a blue chip company. If you know how to work your ass off you can easily make that right off the bat and then the sky is the limit.

 

I'm just about to start my 3rd year of a 4 year marketing management degree...I had no idea what i wanted to do going into university...and i still dont. But at least now I've got a few ideas of what i want to do and more importantly i know what i dont want to do. The only thing i would suggest is that if you go into business/marketing, take some classes that you might find interesting even if they dont have anything to do with business...you may find something you really are interested in and could go into a business related to that subject....this is the beauty of a business major...you can do just about anything with your degree. For example, I took classes like Asian history, humans in the natural world, and sociology...all of which i found to be quite interesting...I was surprised about how good Asian history was especially...I really only took it cause it was the only class that fit my schedule, and it ended up being one of my favourites.

The other thing about a business major is the economics classes...I personally find economics to be very interesting and it is a huge part of my degree (at least one economics class per semester). I would recommend spending a lot of time and effort on it as it seems to be very advantageous in the business world to know at least the basics of economics.

hope this helps and good luck with your decision.

 

Degrees for psychiatric ward patient counts as medical school these days?

 

Get silver subscribed then you'll have access to the private business section. Because it's private, the members there are a lot more willing to 'open up' and share personal experiences, etc.

 

I've wanted to be a lawyer since I was a little kid. So I chose literature. What is good about that is that there are tons of women in that major, so there you go. I would study something basic and simple (English, Philosophy, Poli Sci.), then go to a great grad school and do really well.

However, at the end of the day, nobody cares what your major was, or what school you went to. A guy who knows cash flow over a harvard kid who doesn't know how to make money will get hired first every time.

If you're starting a business, working in a business, or working for somebody else's business, there are only a few questions to be answered, and these talents can be learned in any major: can he generate more cash than the present; does he know how to cut costs without harming product quality; and does he think outside the box? If you can answer yes to all these questions, you'll make more cash than you know what to do with.

As you can tell, I'm not a big education believer.

 

One thing that I think is absolutely imperative with a Marketing Degree TODAY - a Foreign Language.

You don't have to 'Minor' in it, but if you can learn it from Rosetta Stone, or wherever, and you pick something 'odd' like Chinese or Russian, you will be head-and-shoulders above others.
'Everybody' is learning Spanish, but that would work, too.

The point is, find out what you would like to 'Market', and the companies you would like to work for ? Where do they plan on growing, or expanding to ? Asia, Brazil ? Do something that will separate yourself from others in your classes.
Anyone can 'Market', but can you Communicate ?

 

MIS is a far cry from being a coder. I'm an IT consultant and I would say that 70% of my job is understanding and interacting with business. The next 20% is using a variety of specialized tools to manipulate and create datawarehouses and cubes to do reporting. The last 10% might involve some type of coding(SQL/PLSQL).

It would be very difficult to outsource what I do becuase it is so interactive with business. And it adds true value and shows great results to upper management. I think the combination of good pay, flexible hours, and the ability to venture out on your own at a later date in the future or apply your industry and functional knowledge in a high level role within similar companies that I consulted at are big pluses. I've also gained some great understanding in how different businesses within a multitude of industries functions and I could possibly apply that later on down the road if I feel like I could start a business of my own.

A lot of people that have more experience than me take executive level jobs because they have such a deep knowledge and understanding of the data and are better decision makers because of this.

Do I see myself doing this forever? No. But it is rewarding and a good stepping stone. And I'm probably better compensated than most of my friends that are my age.

I'm not trying to completely sell someone on IT and would never try to sell someone on the system admin/mainframe/java/cxx programming, but there are a ton of IT jobs that are completely different and unrelated to the latter skillsets i just mentioned. I really found healthcare IT to be a fascinating field as well because it is just in it's infancy still...long ways to go to have it completely mesh with the business processes within a health care organization.

 

Ok, BorisSF here goes the truth: if you don't have natural God given talent as an artist you can forget being successful in graphic design. It is an exclusive club & you cannot buy or work your way in. Either you have it or you don’t. Sort of like great race car drivers. Successful designers have the right stuff from the start & use college to refine & diversify their skills.