Your first job out of college actually matters. Here’s why.

Why we reviewed The Permanent Detour: Unemployment’s Long-Term Effects on the Careers of College Grads: This week, SocratesPost reviewed this white paper that digs into unemployment, the majors at highest risk, and what the long-term effects are of starting your career underemployed. After all, while some students attend college to merely learn without concerning themselves with post-grad employment, many students also attend college just to jumpstart the career they want. This review is for the latter student.

Why this is relevant to the college admissions process: Picking the right major to get the job you want is one of the main concerns of college applicants and students. Your major not only affects how you write your essays and how you meet the needs of a college, but it also affects what happens after college graduation.

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Our review of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything emphasized that loving, wanting, and seeking to do what you do are crucial elements of success. In America, though, we struggle to determine success without talking about money. So here’s the data behind that, with the hopes that understanding underemployment woes of current grads can guide your thinking on how to best articulate what you want and why.

What are the 4 best takeaways from the study, in the simplest form possible? We got the answers to the following questions from this May 2018 study:

  • Does your first job out of college actually matter?
  • Which majors and disciplines are at the lowest risk of underemployment?
  • Who is most affected?
  • What are the actual financial costs of underemployment?
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4 best takeaways from this study on the long-term effects of underemployment:

  • Does your first job out of college actually matter?

Yes. If you start off your career underemployed, you’re very likely to

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