Job, Salaries, and Degrees - Page 4

Military, been in 5 years (I'm 23), currently E-6, clear 50k/yr. Jobs in my tech fields (industrial engineering) outside of the military start in the 50-90k/yr range and hold steady there. These are the no degree life experience type jobs. The trade off is the long hours a military based engineering background takes (my normal week not deployed is 100hrs). Current education is BS Nuclear based Engineering, working on a masters in Engineering Managment.

Get good grades in High School. Be part of clubs, get in the good AP classes. Work on school projects (year book, dances, ectra). Do things outside of school like community projects, servicies. Volunteer work for local political campaigns, hospitals, old folk homes, ectra. Take your ACT/SAT and the pre versions seriously, study them, get good grades.

Being a well rounded high school kid will open more college doors for you than just good grades alone.

As for learning computers, use them, upgrade them yourself, play around with old parts, and read up on new technologies. Don't worry about the certifications. Even just doing them for the knowledge is a waste of time. You will learn more by actualy useing them. You can also spend that time doing something for someone else, like community service.

By building up a list of all the activities you do, the experiences you have, backing it up with good/great grades and test scores, you can get into the schools you want. Not to mention the life experiences you get out of all of this.

The fields you want to go into, a good education sets you up well. If over the next 4 years, and then the 5+ after that you decide you want something different, your still set up. At this point in your life, live it. Don't hold up in your bedroom, go out and do things. Be social, learn about computers and other parts of life.

It sounds strange, because I have a degree, but I am working in a career that does not require it. Work towards the degree. The civilians that I work with have it, make more money, do the same thing, and work way less hours than I do. There are two roads to take to get to where you say you want to be. You can get there without the degree. The road is harder, possibly longer, and the options open to you if you don't force your way through are less appealing than that of education.

Best of luck to you. The most important thing for now is to live life, do things, get good grades, and keep not only your options, but your eyes open. Oh, and let your mom know you love her

unless you can't stand her because she's a psycho b!tch

That was a good post though, military is always a good thing on a resume. It means you actually did the job and there's all the other things you do that no school can ever teach you...

Right now I'm a computer science major at UCF and in Air Force ROTC. I want to do something in the computer forensics field. I'm just trying to figure out if Air Force is the way to go or not.

Greetings;


This would depend on what the degree is in. I know that on this board, the degree would be in relation to IT and other technical applications, for which an online program makes intimate sense. For other programs however (Science in particular), I would strongly advise students to take the classroom route. The reason is simple, distance-ed equals no wet-labs. This means that unless you are in a co-op program you will have no hands on time in a research lab. What this means is that your chances of getting either hired with your BSc or admitted into a graduate program could be greatly reduced.

Also, just because we're responding to a 14 year old, don assume that he cannot make decisions about his future. I knew right when I went into high school at 12 that I wanted to go to university and study biology, with the final goal of getting my PhD (the paths still diverge after that in relation to academic or industry (AKA sell my soul for six digits)). The only thing that I was unsure about was what specialty to choose. Just because you're young, it does not mean that you're stupid.

hmmmmmm.......

This is consider a very good question from a 14 yrs old boy..... What am I doing when I was 14???

Do whatever you like and be the best of it.

As for salary.... Sales is the #1 pay of 90% population within the nation.

I have to disagree w/ the military part being "good" on your resume. I am ex-army (was in 4 years as a Medical Specialist from 98-02) and I must say that it is pretty much meaningless. I hold myself to certain standards that most people don't, but as far as others looking at you in a different way -- what a joke.
About the only good thing that has come out of my military time is my GI Bill, which I am using right now. Well, and my wife too

I am about to start a degree, (masters oh yeah) in aerospace eng, i looked long at hard at gaining RAF sponsorship and the joining up as an engineering officer, however i felt this was not the way to go, the initial salaries are ver good, comprable to the ones in industry, hoever, in industry salaries rise faster to a higher level,

But there is more to life than just a salary, and the military does offer lots of thinkg that civie street never can, like i trp to iraq, lol

so you didn't put any of the training/schools you went to in the military on your resume?? Did you go through ACAP before you got out?? I think you're missing out on quite a few good things and I have yet to find an employer that doesn't look at time spent in the military as a plus..

I just finished high school and I have a few advice:
- You can almost always do better than you think. This may be cliche but from what I observed, people often settle for less than what they could've gotten (in terms of academics and real life stuff).
-Shoot for high goals, but don't get trapped in the typical ivy league obsession. I shot for UPenn, Harvard, and yale but missed all three (rejected =D~) but I'm by no means disappointed. I knew my chances of getting in was only so-so but to know that I had a chance at all was an indication that I at least did something right.
-For extracurriculars, focus on something you like and are good at. Since you like computers you can take high level comp sci courses at your school or your local community collge, and look for opportunities to participated in coding competitions and the like.
-Don't restrict yourself to one career path. Engineering and technology are all good but since you are only 14 there are likely many subjects that you have not delved into. I was dead set on being a computer or chem engineer when I entered high school, but now I am entering the business program at cornell and I'm very excited about it. It was about mid-junior year when I found out that I am much more interested in business/econ/social interactions than the typical sciences.
-Get your writing skills up. I mean, take writing classes if you have to. The new SAT's, many AP exams (even sciences like biology and physics), college apps, scholarship apps, EVERYTHING requires writing skills and the better you can write, the better chance you have at... well almost anything in life. Even if you want to do programming for life or be a physics engineer, still make sure you can write decently elegant and, more importantly, coherent and comprehensive (or concise depending on the situation)papers.
-Start looking into colleges early. 14 is probably a bit too young but when in your sophmore or beginning of junior year you should have a vague idea on what colleges you are interested in. Top engineering/CS colleges such as MIT, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Duke and any of the Ivies require stuff like good extracurriculars, SAT II's and balanced yet challenging courses in high school.

Sorry I am not able to offer any job/salary info as I haven't even started college yet, but getting INTO the college of your choice is one of the most important steps in starting a successful career. I've heard some people say "oh it doesn't matter where you got your undergrad degree" but real life experiences and official statistics all indicate otherwise.

Just curious what your Bachelor's degree is in?

its an all in one course, you cannot leave at the bachelors stage, it will be aerospace engineering and frech.

didnt mean to misslead

Lots of great ideas and tracks to look at and follow. Me personally, I am 20 and starting my third year in college trying to get my BS in CIS, concentration in Security and managment. I am staying away from the math and programing side because I am just not the good in them, but networking, infrastructure etc.. is where my intrests lie. Although I do realize that starting I will not be raking in the money, but it will provide a nice life stlye and will have room to grow. I am hopeing with my CCNA and Network+ with my degree and 2-3 years of experice, this should land me a decent job.

Careful, most F500 companies do not share this sentiment.

Will disagree here too. Military experience places the majority of candidates over the top.

The problem most Veterans have is assigning common (civilian) language to military service.

There are several programs sponsored by the Dept. of Veteran's Affairs that help current and separated servicemembers with the transition to civilian life. If you are having trouble, search the VA site for these programs, or solicit advice from someone with experience.

Well I am a CIS major and I'm currently doing a IT internship with a major retail company. CIS and MIS are more on the business side, just in case you don't want to program for the rest of your life. I'm a senior in college and I must agree with everyone else, YOU MUST LUV THIS STUFF. I love IT and any thing related to it. I'm a trained programmer, self-taught designer, and I'm currently teaching my self all sorts of things. You must have a drive to learn in IT because its constantly changing. Also everyone's previous posts have been very informative because I'm young, entering the workforce, and have experience.

I've done my fair share of interviews here, so I throw in my 2 cents...

I can tell you that having a fancy Ph.D. from some almighty university isn't going to get you in the door. Being able to spew out technical information from every book about computers isn't going to get you in the door.

What will get you noticed is if you can take all the knowledge you've picked up and apply it to the current situation.

I've developed in C/C++ for over 15 years now. And right now, I can honestly say I can't remember a good portion of Standard C library functions (don't even start with the template C++ libraries). But that doesn't matter one whit - if I can take what I do remember and solve the problem at hand.

So if you really want to be in the industry, don't just take courses and memorize - think of new ways of using what you've learnt and combining it with what you already know. Companies want thinkers, not encyclopedias - search on MSDN works just fine, thank you very much.

As for the formal education bit - I'm all for it, not only because of what you can learn, but also because you can make a lot of industry contacts, especially your classmates.

Plus, you might find out other fields of studies that interest you more than technology. Hard to do that if you're stuck all day looking at computers.

^Solid post! That's pretty much my philosophy...

I've been in industry for about 12 years now--I design ICs for, well, PCs right now. I used to design ICs for military applications, telecom, etc...in all cases, the degree was useful, knowing the facts was useful, but the contacts and being able to demonstrate that you can solve the company's problems wins the job.

Totally agree!!

Hey everyone



As I've stated before, I'm graduating in Dec. (3.5 years) and I'm currently doing an internship with a major retail company and I've done an internship with a smaller oil company. I'm doing windows SharePoint development, learning C# and VB.NET, and I have a list of the other programming skills (too much to name).

I was wondering, what are some of yalls salaries (especially people living in the south). I'm curious because I'm currently trying to find my niche. I've been exposed to just about everything, but I'm trying to decide on what I want to specialize in. Starting salaries would be a big part of my decision. I would love to hear from entry-level and upper-level IT Pros. as well. Any info would help.

Also to the posts,

I agree with each and everyone of you. That's what got my internship. I told my Execs that I can think critically, I come from a business and IT background with my Computer Information Systems major, and I'm honest. Thinking outside the box seems to get most jobs, and that's my specialty. My department didn't interview any Computer Science majors because they knew they wouldn't understand finance and retail.