Post-graduation

Congratulations! Class Day and Commencement are behind you, and you are now Alumni. But what do you want to do with the rest of your life? And how do you go about achieving it?

This page is meant to survey some common post-graduation life paths and goals, and tell you how to go about them, if you so choose. Current students may find suggestions for courses and extracurriculars related to later career paths useful as well.

Academia

Long nights in Butler failed to deter you, and you want to stay in the Ivory Tower? You'll need to start applying to MA and PhD programs...

Fellowships

These prestigious fellowships award you entrance and tuition to top grad programs (and can later be used as "door openers" for further opportunities. Apply via the Fellowships Office.

• Rhodes- the most prestigious of all; awards two years of study at Oxford
• Marshall- awards two years at Oxford or Cambridge
• Fulbright- awards two years of independent study abroad
• Truman- awards grad school tuition
• Kellett- specific to Columbia College, awards two years at Oxford or Cambridge

Arts

Longing after the Platonic ideal of bohemia? Starve your way to the top...in the arts!

Successful performers, screenwriters, and playwrights have often worked on Columbia theatrical or musical productions, such as the Varsity Show.

The Arts Initiative is working hard to make sure students have opportunities in the field, hosting Arts Networking nights, and listing jobs and internships on it's website, CUArts.com.

Business

One of the few fields in which CCE can actually help you out.

Investment banking

See main article: Investment banking

Journalism

It will pay off to have done a lot of hard reporting or editing at Spec, as you won't be able to get the kind of features writing people do at The Blue and White or CPR for awhile. Even top Spec editors, however, wind up taking crap local news reporting jobs, often at small papers in sleepy, provincial cities. After a long, long time, they might climb their way up to a position at a paper like the New York Times. Still longer after that, they may be engaged in features writing or employed as a foreign correspondent.

Want to be in on the action before that? The networks are always looking for sexy young people to stand behind a camera and read off a teleprompter, so broadcast journalism may offer a faster track to the top...if you're sexy (sorry CTV anchorpeople). Or if you're willing to stand on the other side of the camera.

There are also growing opportunities online, so experience on websites like The Bwog might be helpful.

Law

Although you can attain some law-related jobs (such as paralegal or congressional aide) with an undergrad degree, in order to rise any higher, you're going to have to go to law school, at some point. Going to law school doesn't necessarily mean becoming a corporate lawyer, although it probably does if you go to Columbia's. Many people have gone to law school and have become politicians, human rights workers, or professors. The Office of Pre-Professional Advising will help you through the process of applying, even after you've graduated from college.

Getting in to law school

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to major in PoliSci to go to law school. English majors, History majors, Engineers - your background doesn't really matter. What does are your grades and your score on the LSATs...the latter moreso than anything else. At the most elite schools, such as Yale's, Stanford's, and to a lesser extent Harvard's, your extracurriculars play a bigger role. In general, only major extra-curriculars will have any impact- such as serving as Class President.

Generally, you want to shoot for a law school in the "Top 14" of the US News rankings, because anything less will leave you potentially jobless and scrambling to pay back your expensive loans. Plus, it would drag down Columbia's ranking in the Wall Street Journal rankings of colleges based on their undergrads' admission to elite grad and professional schools. Doing this means scoring high on your LSAT: above 165, at least. The Columbia average, for the record, is 163, which matters, because it's how your grades are evaluated vs. applicants from other schools. Since this is one of the top five average LSAT scores (Harvard's 166 is the highest), Columbia grades are looked upon favorably.

Conventional Wisdom says don't count on Columbia Law School favoring you; they only have a dozen or so ex-Columbia undergrads in their class every year. However, it's been argued that this is because NYU's law school is more or less as good as Columbia's, and given the option, former Columbia students will opt for the change in scenery over institutional loyalty.

Surviving law school

The first year of law school is called "1L" (the subsequent two being 2L and 3L), and will include certain "core" classes every law student takes, including Contracts, Civil Procedure, Property, Constitutional Law ("ConLaw"), and others. During this dreadful period, your class is divided into sections, which more or less stick together for each course meeting, or are mixed with a different section in each. Essentially, your fellow section members will be in nearly every class with you. Befriend them. Mock other sections for some perceived collective stereotype.

You're going to have to put up with the Socratic method, sure, but years of experience in Core Curriculum class discussions ought to have prepared you for that to some extent. Some people like to get practice for this in President Bollinger's free speech class, which is for undergrads but run like a law course. Be sure to use citations from Contemporary Civilization authors to get a leg up on your competitors.

Although you may wish to use summers to earn cash for living expenses and loan repayments, most 1Ls are not hired by firms as "summer associates," and instead are forced (or choose) to engage in "public interest" law, including but not limited to human rights, NGO, or better governance work, sometimes (but not always) abroad.

After 1L year, you generally take elective classes. If you're planning on working for a firm, you'll probably secure employment by 2L year, though (see below), and your grades for the rest of law school won't matter.

Employment with a law firm

After a round of "On Campus Interviews" (OCI) in 2L year, your post-2L summer is more often used for work as a "summer associate," which generally involves getting paid a lot for doing little and attending social events. If the firm you work for likes you, they're likely to make you an offer to become a real associate, which means you get to become the slave of the firm's partners upon graduation.

What this means is that, if you choose to work for a law firm after graduation, you will most likely be employed by the middle of your 2L year. As such, your 2L grades barely matter and your 3L grades not at all. So work hard in 1L...it will pay off, and the rest of law school will be a joke.

Other post-law school employment

There are many less traditional career paths for law school graduates than work in a corporate firm. Many law students at elite schools choose to become clerks for federal court (and in some cases even Supreme Court) judges before joining a firm or doing other work. Gaining a clerkship may or may not have to do with not only having top grades, but serving on the law review, a prestigious journal that publishes work by law professors. Serving on law review is officially contingent upon your grades or your writing skills, often, admission has a lot more to do with affirmative action.

Those who want to work in legal academia generally follow the clerkship route, and either rely on whatever they had been able to publish in law school, their credentials as an editor of the law review or another journal, or, increasingly, go on to pursue a PhD in some other subject.

Still others channel their 1L and 2L summer work into real jobs at NGOs. Some optimistic and ambitious law school graduates call all their fellow alumni to raise donations for election campaigns.

Medicine

O-Chem + MCAT. Office of Pre-Professional Advising will help you. If you didn't finish your pre-med requirements in college, you can apply to the post-bac pre-med program at GS.

Writing

The best way to author nonfiction books may be to become an experienced journalist or academic (see above). You might also choose to head off into some uncharted wilderness and attempt to pen a travel narrative about it, although this can be hard to do well and originally.

Fiction writer wannabes sometimes go on to arts schools, where they earn MFA (Master in Fine Arts) degrees, although these are expensive.

If you're talented, the best thing to do might be to find a day job to pay your expenses, and write on the side, submitting small pieces to obscure magazines at first, and working your way up.