I'm completely at a loss!! I really wanted to go to college for Exercise Science but the more I've searched and read, I seem to be finding out that the job outlook is terrible and the pay sucks. I'm a single mom and although I may REALLY want to major in this, I wont waste 4 years on something that wont provide for me and my son. So as I've searched I've narrowed it down. Psychology is something that interests me but I am worried about job outlook and pay and so forth related to how many years you must dedicate. Law has ALWAYS been an interest of mine, so i figured paralegal or I could continue on and become a Lawyer. My question is with all these majors what has a good job outlook and decent pay? I'm dedicated and I know I'll follow threw till the end w whatever i do, I just wanna be sure its worth dedicating myself too.
Thanks so much for all your help!! Any other opinions on possible majors would be appreciated too.
Answers & Comments
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The job outlook for Law right now is terrible - many law firms have stopped hiring at all levels. I have a friend who graduated at the top of his Law School class and had amazing internships, and he still had to move to a rural area to get a job (and not a very high paying one, at that). Most of the others in his class are now working as waitstaff in restaurants or at entry level office jobs - not exactly a great way to pay back student loans.
Psychology is a really broad field - you'd need to specialize to one branch of Psychology in a graduate program before you could get a job. The job outlooks are different for different fields - if you do counseling, you can get licensed and start your own private counseling practice; School Psych is having a rough time right now because of tight educational budgets; Org Psych is doing well in some cities, and is pretty much dead in others. You'd really have to do a lot of research on your own to decide which field seems most interesting to you.
Contrary to what the previous poster said, you can't become a doctor by working as a nurse and going to school part time. Medical School takes up to 80 hours a week, as does residency. If you became a nurse, you would have a lot of fields available to you (you could even work with psych patients if that was interesting to you), but you'd have to stop working to go to Medical School.
Exercise Science doesn't have a great job outlook, or great pay, but you may also want to consider Physical Therapy or Occupational Therapy. Both require a Master's Degree, but once you're licensed have a good job outlook and pay pretty well. You could also become a PT or OT Assistant, which takes less time, but doesn't pay quite as well.
I say go for law, they pay good and you can always advance in education and change your job to something higher (paralegal to lawyer to judge, etc) and it's always going to be available because there's always bad people out there. Now another job I would recommend and it's not something you mentioned but I would say Nursing. They pay well, there's so many different areas you can go into (pediatrics, oncology, forensic), the more you study they more you get payed and you might eventually become a doctor if you work and study part-time. It's all up to you! Oh, and if you still want to do Exercise Science you can always do it as a minor, whatever you choose just make sure it benefits your son in the long run :)