MTGandP comments on What should a college student do to maximize future earnings for effective altruism? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: D_Malik 27 August 2013 07:06PM

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Comment author: MTGandP 28 August 2013 03:02:29PM *  5 points [-]

Stanford sophomore here. I can offer some Stanford-specific advice. In fairness, I've only been here for a year, so you'd probably figure this stuff out pretty soon anyway, but hopefully it'll help.

  • 18.8 units per quarter is a lot. I only know a few people who are taking that much. However, I've found that taking 16 or 17 units is pretty feasible (assuming you don't have any other major undertakings such as research or a part-time job).
  • This may be obvious to you, but I wish someone had told me this: Go to career fairs. At Stanford, unlike at most universities, you actually have a pretty good chance of getting an internship your first year.
  • If you're going to Stanford, you should absolutely take CS106A at the very least. If it goes well, take more CS classes. I'd suggest taking CS106B and CS107 even if you don't end up majoring or minoring in computer science.

Non-Stanford-specific advice:

If you're looking to maximize future earnings via a job, you should probably look at the highest-paying graduate majors, not undergraduate. You can make more money, as Peter Hurford said, in law or finance than in most any job you could get with just a Bachelor's degree.

EDIT: Also, Stanford has a chapter of The High Impact Network. You should join us! I'll PM you the President's email.

EDIT 2: Based on personal experience, I'd recommend against becoming an actuary. My dad was an actuary for 14 years, and he hated it. If you like mathy work, you'll probably find actuarial work terribly dull. Of course, you might have a different experience.

Comment author: Izeinwinter 28 August 2013 06:55:09PM 5 points [-]

(US) Law is a bad idea. That job market has been supersaturated by too many people taking that advice already. Look up job statistics and debt burdens for recent law-graduates if you want to be really depressed. Finance will hopefully get regulated into oblivion in the nearish future.

Comment author: D_Malik 28 August 2013 06:58:01PM 0 points [-]

18.8 units per quarter is a lot. I only know a few people who are taking that much. However, I've found that taking 16 or 17 units is pretty feasible (assuming you don't have any other major undertakings such as research or a part-time job).

Thanks, I forgot to get that sanity-checked. I figured that each unit is 25 minutes a day, or 35 if you only work during the week, so 4 units isn't that much extra when you're already working 6.5 hours or 9 hours a day. But I guess it could be a lot since it would mainly cut into social time. I hear the relationship between units and workload is pretty tenuous, though, so it might be possible to take lots of units without doing as much more work.

Thanks for the other advice also! I'll go to career fairs, probably at least minor in CS, and sign up for THINK.

Here's a graph of salary by major including graduate majors. CS still seems to win out, though the dataset is small.

Comment author: MTGandP 29 August 2013 08:27:43PM 2 points [-]

I hear the relationship between units and workload is pretty tenuous, though, so it might be possible to take lots of units without doing as much more work.

The unit-workload correlation is predictable, but not entirely straightforward. In particular:

  • IntroSems and other similar freshman/sophomore classes are usually easier than their units would suggest.
  • Humanities classes usually have less work per unit than sciences.
  • Almost every higher-level math class is 3 units, no matter how much work it is. You can usually expect 5 units worth of work for a 3-unit math class. (This also means that even though a math major takes fewer units than most other majors, it's more work.)
  • For people who aren't particularly fast at programming, CS classes can take an extraordinary amount of time (20-30 hours a week for a 5-unit class).
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