I've
been combing through all the reviews for UC Davis, 90%
of them are of people who have no idea what
they are talking about, are still in the process of
graduating or are extremely biased or skewed. I will
be as fair and non-biased as possible. I will
not rate Davis in a positive or negative manner; rather,
I will try to dish out some real world advice
upon graduation so other students do not go experience some
of the hardships I've gone through. I am only
referring to the social sciences department and my political science
major. Any other major will most likely have a
different result/experience so do not use this review as a
blanket statement for the entire school. First and foremost, UC
Davis has a great campus, school facilities and the teachers
are semi-competent, if not moreso. I have nothing to
really complain about the services provided by the school.
There is the Arc recreation facilities which is very nice,
the school bus system is usually efficient and on time,
so on and so forth. I've taken a few
community college and state university courses and the teachers there
are complete rubbish compared to the ones at Davis.
Overall, academic wise UC Davis is pretty decent.
However, I
came here to talk about post-graduation life. I am
the first to admit that I am not a great
student, have squandered many classes and opportunities while at my
4.5 year tenure at UC Davis and I do not
have the greatest GPA. These are my faults and
I completely accept that. I also accept the fact
that I did not take advantage of some of the
career fairs and some of the counseling provided for careers
after graduation. HOWEVER, the times I did get counseling
with the Political Science department and the Social Studies/humanities, the
staff didn't really give much advice on how to find
jobs, write up resumes, or provide good links for career
sites / job listings/ internships. Keep in mind
I graduated with a Political Science major; I already knew
the jobs related to the field were slim. I
thought it was purely my fault for not working as
hard as I should have. I thought it was
because of my failings as a student and me not
knowing what to do with the major or wanted to
do with my life caused me to be in the
position that I am in today.
I started
talking to numerous people who were non-technical, med/computer engineering majors.
My friends all have majors in political science, english,
arts, dance, etc. Most of them also felt that
UC Davis did very little in assisting you with finding
a job after graduation. More importantly, the things that
I have learned while at UC Davis have had almost
ZERO real world application. All the political theories, law,
the constitution, history courses, so on and so forth had
nothing to do with my first job as an inside
sales/marketing rep for a cellphone carrier. Basically, this argument
can be used for almost every college, where your major
you graduate with have no application or relevance to your
first, second and your final job.
I accept blame
on my behalf for not being a great student, but
the lack of career focus at UC Davis really upset
me. Luckily, at the last year of Davis I
realized I really enjoyed video editing and post production and
have been dabbling in that. I'm now shifting focus
from the traditional 4 year colleges to a more career
oriented 2-3 year technical college (art institute, etc). I'm
now at a crossroads in my life where I decide
to continue searching for a job with my UC Davis
BS degree in Political Science (which has yielded very few
results, and the companies that I have gotten interviews with
were not related to my major at all) or to
attend a school that emphasizes and teaches me real world
job experience/technical know how.
So I guess my
point here is to figure out what you will enjoy
doing as a CAREER. Too many students come into
colleges these days, expecting they will learn real life/world experience
in the job market while studying in college. This
might be true for some majors, but for the majority
this simply is not the case. This couldn’t be
anymore true for the Social Sciences department at UC Davis.
So figure out what you are good at or
what you enjoy and stick to it. I would
recommend shopping around at technical 2-3 year colleges that are
extremely career oriented and focused. A lot of those
colleges have classes on resume building, public speaking, interview practices,
demo-reel sessions for graphic designers/ art/video post production majors, and
a whole slew of practical classes that will help your
future career.
All in all, my experience at
Davis is one of mixed feelings. I enjoyed the
campus life, the facilities and the friends I met, but
the major that I chose (because I was undecided for
the longest time and chose one out of convenience) did
not prepare me for the job market after graduation.