An undergraduate's dilemma

[poisongirlxv]

I'm a undergrad student majoring in sociology, going into my second semester. Sociology is my passion and it has opened up avenues of intellectual thought in my life, as I'm sure it has for most of you. It has compelled me to change and critique my own life. As much as I love the subject, I am worried about graduating in this field and heading to

Comments

[arrivee]

basically, i just had this argument with myself. i've decided to go for my BSW post-degree so that i get field placement and find useful work. for me it would only take six years total (of which i have already completed two) to obtain an honours BA in sociology with a minor in art history and a BSW.

if for some reason they do not accept me for the BSW program post-degree, i will go back to college for something useful.

my advice is to not switch out of doing what you love, if sociology is truly what you love.

[lostreality]

if you don't want to go the grad school route, I would focus on your quantitative skills- take as many applied stats classes as they have in your program and if you can take a grad level stats class or 3, that would put you an even better position to get a job. There are tons of jobs out there at places like the census, the CDC, etc., for statistical analysts who analyze and run the surveys that those organizations run

[lostreality]

oh and if you are planning on going the academic route the dirty secret of academia is that school rank counts a LOT more than you think it does- my friend just did a study that found that 80% of people with tenure track jobs in sociology got their degrees from the top 20 schools in sociology or something like that...so aim high if you are planning on being a professor.

[uberconfused]

has this been published?

[lostreality]

no he's still writing up the results as far as I know.

[eliset]

Here's my background

[uberconfused]

Go to the ASA website and look in the "careers" section. Particularly at thisThe fact is, there are very few undergraduate majors that qualify you for jobs in anything, anymore, unless you are doing something applied like accounting. You aren't going to get hired as an economist anywhere with a BA in Economics; you're not going to get hired as a psychologist with a BA in Psych. With a sociology degree you can go the quantitative route (as described above) and you will be highly employable. You could focus your studies on criminology and go into corrections or law enforcement, on the white collar side, without too much difficulty. If you study health and aging, there are more opportunities to work for policy groups or NGOs in that area

[maritov]

As you will continue to learn in your sociology courses, the most successful people in *any* degree or field tend to be those who are middle/upper class. Sociology is a great major for preparing for entry-level jobs. And if you switch to something you don't like, you are more likely to burn out and hate what you are doing.

Most of your professors have not recently (or ever) held non-academic jobs, so they aren't going to be helpful in that regard. If you have a career services office on campus, go talk to them, or try to find some recent sociology alumns who might talk to you. One idea is the informational interview, where you find people in careers or jobs you might think are interesting and go talk to them about how they got those jobs. And do try to hold an internship or at least do some volunteer work that might prepare you for a job.