Simon Fraser University (Canada)

Date: Aug 03 2012
Major: Communications (This Major's Salary over time)
This is general advice, but it's important to explore your post-secondary options and know what you want out of the decision you make. If you choose to go to a university, as opposed to a technical institute, then you will not leave school with job-ready skills. SFU does not prepare you for the work world, it's an ACADEMIC institution so there are very few practical courses.

If you want to be job-ready by the time you graduate, you will have to make the effort to gain work experience ON YOUR OWN TIME. Don't expect to make $50,000+ a year fresh out of university, your undergraduate degree means nothing to an employer if you don't have proven skills to do the job. Chances are, your friends that didn't go to college or university will be making $15-20k more than you by the time you graduate. It's hard enough graduating school without job-ready skills, people with student loans will feel an even heavier burden.

It was difficult for me to get through school because the course material is very academic and theoretical and I craved practical application. There are very few, if hardly any, practical courses where you can actually apply what you learn in lecture.

The professors and TAs were hit and miss. Some were completely unqualified, others were engaging and entertaining. You have to take what what you learn in lecture with a grain of salt—professors can have very bias opinions. Know that teaching is 5% of a professor's job, they're priority is in their own research at the university. In most courses, your assignments and exams are marked by TAs, so you're in for it if you have a bad TA.

I started in Kinesiology before switching to Communications and the marking for science courses was ridiculous. Science courses were scaled, sometimes curved, so it was impossible to really know how you were doing in the class and whether you were going to fail or not. I managed to completely bomb two midterms in a calculus course yet still pass with a C+. The grading became better when I switched to Communications, there was a more standardized marking format.

I avoided campus life. It's hard to socialize when you're taking a full-time course load and working two part-time jobs to pay your tuition. It seems like a good way to meet people though.

The best thing I did at SFU was take part in the Co-op program. Even with two, 8-month, full-time coops under my belt, it STILL took me over 8 months to land a full-time job after I graduated. Don't think that gaining work experience can wait. There's no point having a degree if you can't get a job when you're done school. It's probably the most worth-while thing you do at SFU to prepare yourself for getting a job after you graduate.

If you don't participate in co-op, make sure you seek out career-related job opportunities before you graduate. I also recommend doing informational interviews to understand what to expect in the industry you want to work in.

It's a tough job market—and always will be, just meeting the minimum requirements isn't good enough anymore. You can't go to school forever so figure out what you want to get out of your education before making the investment.